In his book, The Hidden Wiring, the historian and journalist Peter Hennessy noted how the Cabinet Secretary, the Queen’s Principal Private Secretary and the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary provided a tripartite nexus through which constitutional challenges are worked through. In a country without a written constitution, they were the ‘golden triangle’. often spoken of when the possibility of a ‘hung parliament’ arises, who had to establish precedent and ensure that decisions which the Monarch might be called to make - the dissolution of a parliament, or the appointment of a prime minister, for example - adhere to precedent and avoid political controversy as far as possible.
The Cabinet Manual, drawn up by Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell at the request of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was intended in part to avoid placing the monarch in a difficult position in a potential hung parliament in 2010 by setting down precedent. Issues of dissolution were governed by the Lascelles principles (Tommy Lascelles, a former PPS to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II). Reference was also made to the Armstrong Memorandum on the departure from office of Edward Heath in 1974, which gives a detailed account of discussions between Number Ten and Buckingham Place at the time. The Cabinet Manual is a guide but also a living document, used in a Cabinet Meeting in 2018 by then Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill to remind then Cabinet Minister Esther McVey that there were no votes in Cabinet meetings.
The Cabinet Manual reminds us that the UK is a constitutional monarchy.
The section on the Royal Prerogative states that it has evolved over time:
Originally the Royal Prerogative would only have been exercised by the reigning Sovereign. However, ministers now exercise the bulk of the prerogative powers, either in their own right or through the advice that they provide to the Sovereign, which he or she is constitutionally bound to follow. The Sovereign is, however, entitled to be informed and consulted, and to advise, encourage and warn ministers.
The Sovereign has the responsibility for consenting to the dissolution of Parliament. As I said a few weeks ago the idea that Parliament might be prorogued to enable a no-deal Brexit was advocated by Conservative leadership candidates in 2019. This would inevitably have brought the Queen into a political controversy and the Cabinet Secretary publicly warned Conservative leadership candidates about this. Yet Boris Johnson’s government sought the prorogation, which was granted, but then following court action in Scotland and England, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on 24 September 2019 that the prorogation was unlawful, stating ‘it is impossible for us to conclude, on the evidence which has been put before us, that there was any reason— let alone a good reason—to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks’.
The Heywood Foundation, a charity set up in memory of the late Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood, published last week through its new Heywood Quarterly, accounts by two former members of the ‘Golden Triangle’, Gus O’Donnell and the former PPS to Her Majesty the Queen, Edward Young. There’s also an excellent article on cyber-security and the risks during an election by someone I like to think of as my mate from the deep state, former National Cyber-Security Centre boss Ciaran Martin. (Ciaran was also a senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office working on consitutuional issues in the run-up to the 2014 Scottish referendum, and has written on these issues subsequently).
Young wrote of how he and the then Prime Minister’s PPS, the late Chris Martin, had war-gamed a number of possisble election outcomes in 2015:
The only scenario Chris and I had failed to plot thoroughly was an outright majority for David Cameron’s Conservatives. This would mean an earlier than anticipated return by helicopter to London for Her Majesty. I remember Chris ringing me at 10pm on election night to say, “Oh dear; we may have to recalibrate our plans.” Fortunately, we navigated our way through it, and no one was any the wiser.
Gus O’Donnell had some tips for civil servants working in an election and considering a transition, the first of which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is:
It is crucial not to presume that the polls are right. I remember 1992 when even the exit polls suggested that the Conservatives would not get an overall majority. As it happened, John Major ended up with the highest ever popular vote in UK electoral history.
His article talks about briefings for the incumbents if they stay in power, briefing for an Opposition party taking over, and briefing for a smaller party if they suddenly beome a coalition partner. He notes:
In my experience of transitions the Civil Service is good at preparing detailed and comprehensive briefings, but sometimes neglects to find ways of helping a new Minister absorb all the information.
These briefings are often enormous. Former Labour Cabinet Minister Alan Johnson told the Institute for Government:
somewhere over there is the day one briefing that they give you at every new department and if anyone’s got past page 50, well done! Because you start reading it and suddenly the job’s on top of you.
When introducing my students to the concept of welcome packs for incoming ministers, I like to start them off with the pack prepared for the incoming Labour Government in 1992. Here’s an extract:
It’s a bit of a trick – of course, there was no incoming Labour government in 1992. Nevertheless, the civil service had prepared for the possibility that Neil Kinnock would be Prime Minister and the full pack is available in the National Archives. That illustrated the thoroughness with which the civil service approaches the arrival of new ministers. But it was ‘wasted labour, and a very sad moment’, recalled Lord Butler, who had been in charge of coordinating the briefing. I’ve written about some of this in my recent book:
Although the people of Wales and Scotland voted to create their own parliaments, in what might be seen as acts of civic republicanism, they were firmly established within the context of the existing unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom, as their foundation documents, the White Papers of 1997, made clear. Not only was the halo of monarchy used to inaugurate the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales, now Senedd or Welsh Parliament, it is reinforced after every Scottish or Welsh parliamentary election with a Royal Opening. Draft speeches for the opening of the National Assembly in 1999 by HM the Queen and HRH the Prince of Wales were circulated by one member of the Golden Triangle, the Queen’s Principal Private Secretary, to another, the Cabinet Secretary (these are from files released by the National Archives):
The appointment of Scottish and Welsh Ministers bears the Sovereign’s stamp . The Scottish First Minister is Keeper of the Scottish Seal – the Great Seal of Scotland, ‘which allows the monarch to authorise official documents without signing each one individually’. The Government of Wales Act 2006 formally designated the First Minister of Wales as the Keeper of the Welsh Seal (Ceidwad y Sel Gymreig). The form of the seal was approved in 2011 and formerly delivered by the Queen to the First Minister at a Privy Council meeting in Buckingham Palace in December 2011, the end of the year in which Wales voted in a referendum for the Assembly to have full law-making powers and the title of Welsh Government replaced Welsh Assembly Government.In Wales, the Crown has a defined role in the appointment of the First Minister under section 46 of the Government of Wales Act (GOWA). Under section 48 of GOWA, Welsh Ministers are appointed by the First Minister, and their appointment is approved by the Monarch. Scottish and Welsh Ministers take an oath of allegiance in the presence of a judge, in the Scottish case, formally signing ‘the Parchment’.
Former Deputy Welsh First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones has recalled the situation in 2007:
I do remember that there was panic because you had to have the Queen’s consent to the appointment after 2007. I was appointed Deputy First Minister before any other ministers in the party. That position had to be established first, and then of course I had to make an announcement in the chamber. There was great panic because it wasn’t looking as though the consent to the appointment would come in time from the Palace, so it was quite hair- raising. Eventually it came, so I was able to do it.
UK ministers are Ministers of the Crown. Welsh and Scottish ministers act on behalf of the Crown. There was a significant exchange of views between UK Ministers in 1997 in the relevant UK cabinet committee on the proposed Assembly’s relations with the Crown, and the existence or otherwise of devolved Welsh Ministers, as I’ve written elsewhere. These letters, again from a release by the National Archive, illustrate some of this:
The role of the monarch is deeply entrenched in what passes for the UK constitution. New developments, like the creation of the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, have been established within the framework of existing relationships, despite their civic republican sentiment. Devolution is an example of what former Labour Minister John Denham has called ‘strategic incrementalism’. (The phrase comes from a paper John wrote for a group I was part of back in 2021 thinking about Labour’s approach to the state under the umbrella of Labour Together). Labour’s manifesto for the 2024 General Election, published last week, carries forward some strategic incrementalism in respect of the House of Lords:
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