Sir Keir Starmer is the Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, King\u2019s Counsel, Member of Parliament, Privy Councillor, His Majesty\u2019s First Lord of the Treasury, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. \u00a0And yet for all these titles, his government \u00a0has descended into the morass of corruption and tyranny in the name of freedom.\u00a0 In giving a properly informative picture of him and his government, one has to know a bit about the British and Commonwealth Constitutions \u2013 something few British or Commonwealth people are aware of, let alone Americans.<\/p>\n
The first thing one must remember is that the current British system is a desiccated skeleton of what was once a Catholic Monarchy.\u00a0 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. \u00a0This 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. \u00a0His Ecclesiastical Household provided him with daily Mass and frequent confession and assisted him with appointment of clerics to certain churches \u2013 royal peculiars \u2013 which were part of his household and so outside any diocese. \u00a0He financed the requirements of governance from his own lands, the Crown Estate.\u00a0 The King was seen as the servant of the law and not its master;\u00a0 nevertheless, he was the supreme judge of the Realm, and so appointed judges to represent him throughout the country.\u00a0 He also appointed a Privy Council to help him administer the government, and advise in areas where specific Privy Councilors were expert. \u00a0The King also appointed a Lord Chancellor to act as his chief legal adviser, and to supervise the judiciary \u2013 in addition to other tasks.<\/p>\n
As in every other country in Catholic Europe, philosophy strongly affected reality.\u00a0 Aristotle and St. Thomas had asserted that the best form of government was one which mixed together the three types of good government \u2013 Monarchy, Aristocracy, and \u201cPolity\u201d (rule by the majority of stakeholders, such as landowners, taxpayers, etc.). \u00a0It would be left to our own day to create something unthought of by the ancient authorities \u2013 a mixed government made up of the three bad types: tyranny, oligargy, and \u201cdemocracy\u201d \u2013 mob rule, in their parlance.\u00a0 Thus, in each country, the Estates of the Realm (clergy, nobility, and commoners \u2013 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. \u00a0In the English formulation, the Bishops and Abbots \u2013 the \u201cLords Spiritual\u201d \u2013 met together with the hereditary nobles or peers \u2013 the \u201cLords Temporal\u201d \u2013 in the House of Lords; part of their number would also serve as the highest court in the land.\u00a0 The elected representatives of the country landowners \u2013 the \u201cKnights of the Shire\u201d \u2013 met with the envoys of the rulership of the various towns \u2013 the \u201cBurgesses\u201d \u2013 together with representatives of the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the House of Commons. \u00a0Owing allegiance to a common God and Church, both Houses of Parliament and the Judiciary would open their sessions with a \u201cRed Mass,\u201d invoking the Holy Ghost.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
It was a more or less stable system, and served England \u2013 and the other countries of Catholic Europe \u2013 as well as any human system can.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But Henry VIII, son of the victor of the last-named conflict, began to overturn the balance with his break from Rome.\u00a0 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 \u201cconscience of the King\u201d \u2013 one half of the Church\u2019s former role.\u00a0 But he preserved all the rest of the Catholic Church\u2019s social and political role in England for his ecclesiastical creation.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It is not a coincidence that the great nephew of the King\u2019s main collaborator, Thomas Cromwell, was Oliver Cromwell, would murder Henry\u2019s great-great nephew, King Charles I.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 the Wars of the Three Kingdoms as they are called to-day \u2013 is hailed by the British establishment as the birth of that country\u2019s democracy.\u00a0 If we define democracy as rule by a corrupt and deceptive oligarchy with contempt for both its subjects and any nominal \u201csuperiors,\u201d then it is a fair description.\u00a0 If on the other hand by democracy we mean free and responsible government, it is a lie.<\/p>\n
In any case, ten years of Cromwell\u2019s 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.\u00a0 The \u201cMerrie Monarch\u201d 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.\u00a0 So long as the succession comprised his two Protestant daughters, Maery and Anne, he could be tolerated. \u00a0But when his second wife gave birth to a Catholic male heir, it was too much.\u00a0 The result was the so-called \u201cGlorious Revolution\u201d of 1688, upon which Great Britian and the Commonwealth\u2019s current dilemma hangs.<\/p>\n
The oligarchy brought over Mary and her husband and first cousin, William of Orange, and gave them the throne jointly.\u00a0 But there was a price to pay; they must accept the sovereignty of parliament over them.\u00a0 Although the beautiful ceremonial of monarchy and parliament would continue almost unchanged, the reality was henceforth entirely different.\u00a0 Initially, Wiliam and Mary, and their successor, Queen Anne, reigned with a bit of influence over state affairs.\u00a0 But when Anne died in 1714, her cousin George, Elector of Hanover, was brought over. \u00a0Speaking no English and having little interest in his newly inherited Kingdoms, he ceased to preside over meetings of the Cabinet \u2013 that Committee of the Privy Council that had carried on administration under the Kings, subject to the approval of a majority in parliament. \u00a0Now 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.\u00a0 Neither George I nor his son George II were bothered by this; until the latter\u2019s grandson, George III, \u201cthe first of my line to glory in the name of Briton\u201d acceded to the throne in 1760, there were no issues.\u00a0 The Third George attempted not to overturn 1688, but to return to the status quo under Queen Anne.\u00a0 This effort was effectively derailed by the defeat in the 1775-1783 American War, and the Whig collusion with the rebels thereto.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 After all, hereditary peers had a stake in the future which politicians lacked.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 New elections brought back almost the same number of seats in the Commons.\u00a0 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 \u201cpack the House.\u201d \u00a0The King refused, and stalemate ensued.\u00a0 But he died shortly thereafter, and his son, the more malleable George V, agreed to do so if asked.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
When Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, he was resolved to \u201cmodernise\u201d the British Constitution.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He created a Supreme Court, which has since arrogated to itself all the imagined powers of its American counterpart. \u00a0He also ejected most of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords.\u00a0 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. \u00a0These were elected from their own number.\u00a0 Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s government passed legislation last year which removed even them.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s eventual successor David Cameron in his turn transformed the Conservatives into U.S.-patterned Democrats.\u00a0 The result is that both major parties support infanticide, gender-confusion, mass immigration, and all the rest.\u00a0 With the monarchy \u2013 despite the lovely rituals \u2013 completely reduced and the Lords neutered (although they have just delayed the suicide bill for a year), a man in Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s position as Prime Minister may do exactly as he pleases.<\/p>\n
Boy, does he ever.\u00a0 As head of the Crown Prosecution Service, he made a name for himself protecting Muslim \u201cgroomer gangs,\u201d who turned underage British girls into prostitutes. \u00a0He 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 \u201cIslamophobia\u201d and created an \u201canti-Islamophobia Tsar.\u201d\u00a0 All the while Islamist-inspired crimes are increasing, and large urban areas have become \u201cno-go zones\u201d for the locals; in such places there are calls for the institution of Sharia Law (without, presumably, that code\u2019s provisions of the death penalty for theft and murder).\u00a0 Comedian John Cleese\u2019s Twitter reply to charges that Islam is being singled out for verbal abuse was epic: \u201cPerhaps it is because teachers of other religions don\u2019t call for non-members to have their heads cut off.\u201d\u00a0 Starmer\u2019s government has officially complained that the British Countryside is \u201ctoo white.\u201d \u00a0On and on it goes.<\/p>\n
Predictably, with the \u201cMe-Tooism\u201d of the Tory opposition being all too painfully clear, a new party has emerged: Reform.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If one cares to read His Majesty\u2019s 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.\u00a0 But in a time of rising polarisation, fewer and fewer have the necessary calm to do so.<\/p>\n
Therein lies the rub, as the Bard of Avon (whose birthplace is threatened with \u201cdecolonisation,\u201d whatever that might mean, by its custodians) famously remarked.\u00a0 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). \u00a0The 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.\u00a0 The House of Lords has now been completely destroyed as an apolitical check upon the Commons.\u00a0 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. \u00a0If the masses of native British lose their faith in that, then it must be feared that a dark and unpleasant future awaits the \u201cSceptr\u2019d Isle.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Ultimately, the only real hope for any of them is a return to the Faith which created them all.\u00a0 But that, in turn requires a Church whose members wish to save souls.<\/p>\n
Photo by Robert Tudor<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir Keir Starmer is the Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, King\u2019s Counsel, Member of Parliament,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-856471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116307890466103724","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}