Sir Keir Starmer is the Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, King’s Counsel, Member of Parliament, Privy Councillor, His Majesty’s First Lord of the Treasury, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And yet for all these titles, his government has descended into the morass of corruption and tyranny in the name of freedom. In giving a properly informative picture of him and his government, one has to know a bit about the British and Commonwealth Constitutions – something few British or Commonwealth people are aware of, let alone Americans.
The first thing one must remember is that the current British system is a desiccated skeleton of what was once a Catholic Monarchy. At the summit was the King, whose legitimacy and so authority was conferred upon him by God via the Catholic Church, as symbolised by the anointing and crowning by the Archbishop of Canterbury, acclamation, prayers, exhortations, and mutual oaths of the Coronation ceremony. This was reinforced throughout the Church year, by such ceremonies as his washing of the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday, and his presentation of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Chapel Royal to the Epiphany. His Ecclesiastical Household provided him with daily Mass and frequent confession and assisted him with appointment of clerics to certain churches – royal peculiars – which were part of his household and so outside any diocese. He financed the requirements of governance from his own lands, the Crown Estate. The King was seen as the servant of the law and not its master; nevertheless, he was the supreme judge of the Realm, and so appointed judges to represent him throughout the country. He also appointed a Privy Council to help him administer the government, and advise in areas where specific Privy Councilors were expert. The King also appointed a Lord Chancellor to act as his chief legal adviser, and to supervise the judiciary – in addition to other tasks.
As in every other country in Catholic Europe, philosophy strongly affected reality. Aristotle and St. Thomas had asserted that the best form of government was one which mixed together the three types of good government – Monarchy, Aristocracy, and “Polity” (rule by the majority of stakeholders, such as landowners, taxpayers, etc.). It would be left to our own day to create something unthought of by the ancient authorities – a mixed government made up of the three bad types: tyranny, oligargy, and “democracy” – mob rule, in their parlance. Thus, in each country, the Estates of the Realm (clergy, nobility, and commoners – the latter in some countries divided into urban dwellers and landed gentry) would meet whenever the King needed their assistance and/or their money in some national emergency or other. In the English formulation, the Bishops and Abbots – the “Lords Spiritual” – met together with the hereditary nobles or peers – the “Lords Temporal” – in the House of Lords; part of their number would also serve as the highest court in the land. The elected representatives of the country landowners – the “Knights of the Shire” – met with the envoys of the rulership of the various towns – the “Burgesses” – together with representatives of the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the House of Commons. Owing allegiance to a common God and Church, both Houses of Parliament and the Judiciary would open their sessions with a “Red Mass,” invoking the Holy Ghost. The King would open Parliament, with much pomp, and give a speech from the throne laying forth the measures he wished the assembled Lords and Commons to vote for funding.
It was a more or less stable system, and served England – and the other countries of Catholic Europe – as well as any human system can. In England, it was even stable enough to survive several hard-fought civil wars, of which the last fought was the War of the Roses. But Henry VIII, son of the victor of the last-named conflict, began to overturn the balance with his break from Rome. By detaching the control of the Church of England from the Pope, Henry destroyed the independence of his new body from the State, and its ability to serve as the “conscience of the King” – one half of the Church’s former role. But he preserved all the rest of the Catholic Church’s social and political role in England for his ecclesiastical creation. By suppressing the monasteries, however, he removed the Abbots and Abbesses from the House of Lords, while carefully preserving the legislative role of the Bishops. He distributed the monastic lands among his supporters, thus unknowingly creating the foundations of an oligarchy which would in time reduce the monarchy to its present insignificance. It is not a coincidence that the great nephew of the King’s main collaborator, Thomas Cromwell, was Oliver Cromwell, would murder Henry’s great-great nephew, King Charles I.
The conflict in which that King would lose his life for the great crimes of negotiating for reunion with Rome, insisting on maintaining bishops in the Church of England, and defending his poorest subjects from the enclosures – the Wars of the Three Kingdoms as they are called to-day – is hailed by the British establishment as the birth of that country’s democracy. If we define democracy as rule by a corrupt and deceptive oligarchy with contempt for both its subjects and any nominal “superiors,” then it is a fair description. If on the other hand by democracy we mean free and responsible government, it is a lie.
In any case, ten years of Cromwell’s rule was sufficiently unpleasant that a year after his death, the army called for the return of the King, and Charles II came back from exile. The “Merrie Monarch” was adept at placating the still-entrenched oligarchy on the one hand and appearing as the sovereign ruler of yore; his brother, the Catholic James II, was not. So long as the succession comprised his two Protestant daughters, Maery and Anne, he could be tolerated. But when his second wife gave birth to a Catholic male heir, it was too much. The result was the so-called “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, upon which Great Britian and the Commonwealth’s current dilemma hangs.
The oligarchy brought over Mary and her husband and first cousin, William of Orange, and gave them the throne jointly. But there was a price to pay; they must accept the sovereignty of parliament over them. Although the beautiful ceremonial of monarchy and parliament would continue almost unchanged, the reality was henceforth entirely different. Initially, Wiliam and Mary, and their successor, Queen Anne, reigned with a bit of influence over state affairs. But when Anne died in 1714, her cousin George, Elector of Hanover, was brought over. Speaking no English and having little interest in his newly inherited Kingdoms, he ceased to preside over meetings of the Cabinet – that Committee of the Privy Council that had carried on administration under the Kings, subject to the approval of a majority in parliament. Now the first lord of the treasury would take over that role, and so emerged the office of prime minister as we know it to-day. Neither George I nor his son George II were bothered by this; until the latter’s grandson, George III, “the first of my line to glory in the name of Briton” acceded to the throne in 1760, there were no issues. The Third George attempted not to overturn 1688, but to return to the status quo under Queen Anne. This effort was effectively derailed by the defeat in the 1775-1783 American War, and the Whig collusion with the rebels thereto.
If the 18th century saw the end of the Monarchy, for all of its ongoing ceremony, as a check upon whomever dominated the House of Commons, the 19th saw a progressive diminution in the powers of the House of Lords. Of course, appointments to peerages had long rested with the prime minister, although, as with most knighthoods and other honours the monarch still formally awarded them. But successive PMs were all too aware that they would have to be somewhat careful with whom they elevated to the Lords, as the results would be around so long as the appointee had descendants. Moreover, while the new appointee doubtless would be loyal to whomever had paced him in his elevated state, his grandchildren and further on might well be interested only in the welfare of the nation. After all, hereditary peers had a stake in the future which politicians lacked. Things came to a head in 1910, when the Lords threw out first the Irish Home Rule bill, and then the budget, effectively bringing down the government and ejecting the liberal cabinet from power. New elections brought back almost the same number of seats in the Commons. The liberal prime minister asked King Edward VII, the most independently-minded monarch since George III (he came into the Catholic Church on his deathbed) if he would create enough peers to “pack the House.” The King refused, and stalemate ensued. But he died shortly thereafter, and his son, the more malleable George V, agreed to do so if asked. The prime minister was then able to blackmail the Upper House, and the result was the so-called House of Lords Reform Act of 1911, which limited the ability of the Lords to stop a bill for more than two years; in 1949, that was dropped to one. In 1963, the Life Peerages Act allowed for the appointment of Lords Temporal for their lifetime only, after which the creation of hereditary peers effectively ended.
When Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, he was resolved to “modernise” the British Constitution. He effectively destroyed the ancient office of Lord Chancellor, who at that time was head of the British Judiciary, speaker of the House of Lords, and effectively minister of justice. Blair removed the first two roles, leaving only the third; he would have taken away even the title from the last, but resistance was too strong. He created a Supreme Court, which has since arrogated to itself all the imagined powers of its American counterpart. He also ejected most of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. In 1999, the House of Lords Act abolished the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords; out of about 750 hereditary peers, only 92 could sit in the Lords. These were elected from their own number. Sir Keir Starmer’s government passed legislation last year which removed even them.
It was often said that Maggie Thatcher had transformed the Conservative Party into American-style Republicans, while Tony Blair turned Labour into American-style Democrats; similar wags claimed that Blair’s eventual successor David Cameron in his turn transformed the Conservatives into U.S.-patterned Democrats. The result is that both major parties support infanticide, gender-confusion, mass immigration, and all the rest. With the monarchy – despite the lovely rituals – completely reduced and the Lords neutered (although they have just delayed the suicide bill for a year), a man in Sir Keir Starmer’s position as Prime Minister may do exactly as he pleases.
Boy, does he ever. As head of the Crown Prosecution Service, he made a name for himself protecting Muslim “groomer gangs,” who turned underage British girls into prostitutes. He has instituted rigorous attacks on free speech on the internet; two-tier policing, where native Britons are punished for expressing their fear and dismay of losing control of their own country; and has now instituted punishments for “Islamophobia” and created an “anti-Islamophobia Tsar.” All the while Islamist-inspired crimes are increasing, and large urban areas have become “no-go zones” for the locals; in such places there are calls for the institution of Sharia Law (without, presumably, that code’s provisions of the death penalty for theft and murder). Comedian John Cleese’s Twitter reply to charges that Islam is being singled out for verbal abuse was epic: “Perhaps it is because teachers of other religions don’t call for non-members to have their heads cut off.” Starmer’s government has officially complained that the British Countryside is “too white.” On and on it goes.
Predictably, with the “Me-Tooism” of the Tory opposition being all too painfully clear, a new party has emerged: Reform. Meanwhile, the King himself, who like most of us raised in the Cold War-era has been taught to see things in terms of believers versus non-believers, continues to praise Muslim piety. If one cares to read His Majesty’s voluminous writings and speeches, one can easily see the benevolent context into which his comments must be placed, if one wants to understand them as he means them. But in a time of rising polarisation, fewer and fewer have the necessary calm to do so.
Therein lies the rub, as the Bard of Avon (whose birthplace is threatened with “decolonisation,” whatever that might mean, by its custodians) famously remarked. The Church of England has been reduced to its lowest ebb by Sir Keir, who appointed an Archbishopess of Canterbury (as this writer predicted he would). The King, whom that body so beautifully crowned three years ago, owes his throne to that very Act of Settlement which precludes him from doing anything effective. The House of Lords has now been completely destroyed as an apolitical check upon the Commons. All that remains is the hope of a peaceful election which shall pave the way for a real opposition to try to undo the mess into which Blair and Sir Keir and the Prime Ministers between have placed the country. If the masses of native British lose their faith in that, then it must be feared that a dark and unpleasant future awaits the “Sceptr’d Isle.”
Of course, in different ways the same sad story is playing out in Canada, Australia (where the local Labour Prime Minister recently went to lick boots in a Sydney Mosque, and was mobbed for his troubles) and all of Western Europe. Ultimately, the only real hope for any of them is a return to the Faith which created them all. But that, in turn requires a Church whose members wish to save souls.
Photo by Robert Tudor on Unsplash