Circular Paralysis, Constitutional Crisis & The Final Act of Monarchy

Transition towards a Civic Republic

Jeff Immelt, addressing the Global Leadership Summit at the London Business School last week, spoke passionately about those companies who sit at “the front seat of history”. An hour later, Stephen Hester, in between fielding the obvious questions surrounding his alleged £9.6 million bonus scheme, said a stark choice now lay between “a recidivist borrowing binge and an unstable world”.

World instability has become something of an under-statement. Amid the splendour of the Regents Park marquee, there was much talk about the role of business and its relationship with government; about the shift from West to East (“the West has lost its moral authority” to quote BIS Minister, Lord Davies); about encroaching regulation; and, inevitably, about the role of the markets as a possible catalyst for change. Citizens were of course misappropriated as consumers and the shadow of Sir Terry Leahy, often quoted but not there, stalked the room. “Consumers”, one business leader opined, “will force the tipping point in the minds of politics and business” – as though only market forces can lead us into some sort of promised land. Good business leaders must “embrace this uncertainty”, concluded Immelt. Yet no-one offered anything approaching a comprehensive, workable solution.

Britain, for sure, is trapped in a seemingly circular paralysis. Endless chatter among the great and the good of both Business and Politics is leading us nowhere. Cute soundbites are used as poor substitutes for active leadership. At the LBS Summit, the business glitterati effectively admitted that their heads were best kept below the parapet (“what advantage is there in doing otherwise?” asked one). Politicians meanwhile continue to shore up their base and jockey for electoral position a year hence, in apparent denial of the urgency of the situation. Neither man is brave to act on Principled Conscience.

In a country where, by best estimates, unemployment might still rise by a further 30% and ‘Others’ constitute the second largest political force, growing discontent and popular disenfranchisement could easily lead to civil unrest on a scale unseen in Britain for the best part of a hundred years – the Miners’ Strike and Poll Tax Riots mere precursors of what is yet to come, as warming intensifies, food security weakens, energy poverty escalates, debt grows and infrastructures crumble. At a time when trust in the great institutions of the modern state have reached an historic low, there is in fact no clear leadership of which a nation should be proud. No courage – moral or otherwise. The absence of both is in danger of creating a vacuum to be filled instead by prejudice and poison.

Viewed from the East, as Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Dean and Professor at the National University of Singapore argued, Western business leaders offer little more than “incestuous, self-referential and self-congratulatory dialogue”, ignorant of shifting trade corridors and the fact that 88% of the world’s business population does not live in the west anyway. The imbalanced fact that 25,000 cotton farmers in the US can de-rail an initiative that could help 6.8 billion people improve their quality of life is a powerful metaphor for global societal paralysis and contradiction – as well as a shout-out to immediately address the issues of Doha and the weakened failings of our supra-national institutions. This is not the world of wellbeing we want or need.

Change needs to start somewhere, however, and change can start at home. The issue has become one of catalysts and consequences – who and what can unlock this state of vested interests and paralysed authority? Who blinks first?

Perhaps now, perversely, is the time for the monarchy to step forward and lead Britain once again. Now is the time for the crown to do what we are always promised it could and should do – take urgent, rectitudinal action for the benefit of the people in times of constitutional crisis. Make no mistake, this should be the monarchy’s final, graceful act – overseeing the transition from a nation of subjects to a society of citizens – rooted in a properly open, democratic and participative system that bravely faces and shapes the future and admits to, and reconciles, the failings of its past. Charles has always been looking for a genuine cause – and the cause of the citizen knows no equal. He should talk to his mum.

The cause of the UK citizen invokes certain immediate demands: Britain needs a written constitution. Britain needs electoral reform. Britain needs an elected Upper Chamber that safeguards society’s interests and not those of a ruling party, let alone elite. Britain needs a new framework of responsibility. Britain needs a secular society and not an established Church, one that recognises and positively embraces multi-culturalism and inclusion, while allowing healthy moral debate but stripping religious morality of political power. Britain needs a programme of radical reform that can help wellbeing flourish but not at the expense of environmental responsibility. Britain needs courage and leadership.

The monarch still has the power to summon Prime Ministers and to dissolve Parliaments; to force unlikely coalitions and to demand legislation in her name. The benign authority of an 80+ year-old monarch (and her apparently reforming son) could thus be put to dramatic effect, working with the last Privy Council to create an environment and a roadmap for rapid national renewal – the final act of which will be to reform and re-shape the monarchy itself: to render herself and the institution of monarchy unemployed and to enshrine, within a proper constitutional framework, the true planetary and environmental responsibilities of Britain’s new civic republic.

Across the centuries, many great Empires – including, latterly, those of business – have fallen by failing to read the signs and to understand the rising temperature and angry sentiment. The popular thirst for national and global renewal exists in Britain today. The time has now come for urgent and radical action. And, bizarrely perhaps, the hitherto beleaguered monarchy could step centre stage in this final, properly altruistic act – as the ministers of the Crown and of her loyal Majesty’s opposition have failed to do. We could of course wait for business to step forward to lead, but one suspects that their heads will remain shielded by the parapets for some time yet.

This is the ultimate irony, for sure – whereby the absolute symbol of anachronistic authority is called upon to unlock and empower the citizen society of the twenty-first century state. But someone needs to sit at the front seat of history. Someone needs to address the uncertainty and instability of which we are all acutely conscious and ultimately fearful. Someone needs to blink first and to catalyse change. We should all believe that this will come from the reforming power of the citizen. But if someone can bring about the transition to citizen power faster and with fewer negative consequences, then we should consider that option, too.

Make no mistake: a constitutional crisis beckons and a constitutional correction is inevitable, either way. We have been brought up with decades of belief and doctrine that a constitutional monarchy exists primarily to resolve a constitutional crisis. Maybe that time of crisis is now. A clear transition plan would work well for us all.