Description
Quotation: "At the core of the British constitution is the 'cardinal convention,'" Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert at Bangor University in Wales, said via email."This is the constitutional requirement that the Queen always acts on the advice of the government."
Government is carried out in the name of the Crown, Prescott said, "but ... the role of the monarch is a formality."
"This ensures that political decisions are reached via the political process, meaning that politicians are held to account for the decisions that they make," he said.
Still, the Queen has the right to be consulted, and can express her views to the British prime minister of the day and other government ministers, something she can do in her weekly audience with the PM (now occurring with Boris Johnson over the phone, courtesy of COVID-19).
"These discussions are strictly confidential," said Prescott. "This means that it's difficult to know much about the Queen's views on politics, although one of her former private secretaries, Lord Charteris, suggested 'that the Queen prefers a sort of consensus politics rather than a polarized one.'"
These days, there's been speculation about the political stances of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who are living in California after stepping back from the upper echelons of the Royal Family. Much attention focused on comments they made recently about voting in a video released in connection with Time magazine's list of 100 of the world's most influential people.
Those comments, Prescott said, are in contrast to comments made by the Queen that have been seen by many in a political light.
"Her comments before the Scottish referendum 'about using your vote wisely' were widely interpreted as being against independence.
"Similarly, in 2019, the Queen made comments calling for 'common ground' and respecting those who hold a different point of view. This was widely interpreted as a coded comment on Brexit."
It all reflects consensus politics, Presscot said. "On both occasions, it's hard to believe that the Queen was acting entirely without government advice, but she was willing to make these carefully chosen comments."
Harry and Meghan's recent comments about voting "in and of themselves may seem inoffensive, and in isolation actually hard to disagree with," Prescott said.
The problem, he said, is the context in which the comments were made. Looking at U.S. politics from the U.K., it appears polarized, "making any intervention fraught with difficulty."
"Given the views of the Sussexes on a whole range of issues, it is not hard to see where the Duke and Duchess stand on the political divide."
For Prince Harry in particular, Prescott said, "it does appear to be 'meddling,' as he remains a British citizen and is ineligible to vote in the upcoming [U.S.] election."
"By extension, this applies to all members of the Royal Family, and ... they also are expected to be above day-to-day politics."
| Period | 11 Oct 2020 |
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| Held at | CBC, Canada |