Even The Shade?

So far, we have at least been spared the spectacle of Donald Trump in an orange jumpsuit. He would have looked as if he were naked. The Department of Justice is a federal executive department, so the pursuit of Trump, like the sweetheart deal for Hunter Biden, is the unitary executive theory in action. Similarly, it would not be an abuse for President Trump to pardon himself. The trick is to get our hands on such power. We must not want to abolish it, or to give it away.

There are too many problems with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It is Cornel West who has all of Kennedy's good points, several of his own, and not all of Kennedy's bad points. West's candidacy opens the way, as his Presidency would open it even more clearly, for a successor who recognised that Christological orthodoxy, West's protection against dialectical materialism, could not be separated from fidelity to the Petrine Office, with implications that were far more radical than anything that Marxism could ever formulate, much less deliver.

As with the Presidency of the United States, so with the Royal Prerogative. Like the Police, or the education system, or the BBC, or anything else that is alleged to have become "politicised", the monarchy has always been political, since, like each of those, the very concept of it is profoundly so. The question is whose politics. We ought not to be seeking to abolish the Royal Prerogative, but to exercise it. The whole of it, no matter to which committee or self-perpetuating oligarchy any part of it might have been surrendered. All of it must be taken back, and in most cases that would be perfectly simple to do.

Previous Governments have handed over jaw-dropping amounts of power to the Deep State, having of course been installed for the purpose. These people clearly never wanted to run the country. Again, that was why they were put in by the people who did. For example, while each generation presumably produces an obvious Astronomer Royal, why hand over the power to appoint Regius Professors, or certain Oxbridge Heads of House, or the Poet Laureate? Never mind the judiciary? Or 26 members of Parliament? And how entitled is the Liberal Establishment in the Church of England, to presume the right to appoint those 26 legislators over the rest of us?

But those powers have never been legislated away. Almost nothing in Britain ever is quite abolished or repealed. It falls into prolonged desuetude, but it is still there. Jeremy Corbyn would have made full use of the Royal Prerogative; there are no republicans in possession of the powers of a Medieval monarch. Disgracing Eton and Oxford, Boris Johnson also showed tendencies in that direction. So the Deep State had to get rid of the pair of them. 

The Deep State encouraged violence against Nigel Farage. It has debanked not only him, but also Gina Miller, since it insists on its right to license centrism as much as anything else. It incited the attempted murder of George Galloway. It tried to imprison Alex Salmond for the rest of his life. It persecutes the world-historical figure of Julian Assange. And it is in the process of installing as Prime Minister the man who wielded its knife against Corbyn, one of Assange's principal assailants, one of the Deep State's most dedicated living servants.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden's sister, Valerie Biden Owens, has endorsed the former Meghan Markle's obvious ambition to become President of the United States. The Titles of Nobility Amendment has never been ratified, so rule nothing out. And little Lilibet, who was also born in the United States, will be 55 in 2076. What a way to mark the Tricentenary, by electing a President whose first cousin was King George.

To see the condition of the American Republic today is to recall Wordsworth's On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, "Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade/Of that which once was great is passed away." The Most Serene Republic of Venice lasted exactly 1100 years, from the proclamation of Paolo Lucio Anafesto in 697, to the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797. There were 120 Doges until Napoleon forced the abdication of Ludovico Manin. One hundred and twenty. Eleven hundred years. That is pretty good going.

The people who called Elizabeth II "Elizabeth the Last" are calling Charles III "Charles the Last". Being older than William the Last, I am unlikely to see the reign of George the Last. But assuming that this King lasted 15 to 20 years, and in the unlikely event that they got their way, then that would place me between 60 and 65 at my Cincinnatus moment, when I would be called from my plough, not to be Consul of Rome, but to be the founding Doge of the Most Serene Republic of Great Britain. I am not joking. I have known far too many politicians to want one as Head of State, but if someone had to do it, then I would seek to contest that election. I know of no one else who says that.

I would be more than willing and able to find myself a corno ducale, and a Benedictine nunnery to present me with a new camauro every Easter Monday. As well as a plot on which the Order of Preachers might erect a basilica for my interment and for that of my successors, if I were to be granted a dream of a flock of white doves flying over the auspicious site. The school where I slogged for eight years on the Buildings Committee stands in a swamp, so perhaps it will be there?

Being held at Santi Giovanni e Paolo, were the Doges' Requiem Masses celebrated according to the Dominican Rite? Or were the Doges only buried there, after the Patriarch had done the business in San Marco? But the business according to the Roman Rite, or according to the Aquileian Rite? Ah, yes, the Patriarchate. I could hardly be a Doge without a Patriarch, an office that was for centuries filled in a manner quite singular. I should have so much to consider. Not least, I need to give thought to the form of my and my successors' Fèsta de ƚa Sènsa.

The Patriarchal Throne would not be difficult to fill. Economically left-wing social conservatism will have well and truly come into its own by then, which would be no small part of why I would want the Presidency. The core of its core has always been male Catholics, at least 50 per cent unmarried, and thus eligible to be raised to the Episcopate in the manner of the laymen who were usually ordained only in order to assume the Patriarchate of Venice. They were drawn from among the patricians, and we shall be the patricians then.

That said, I also have priests on whom I could call, and one in particular. Either way, the red biretta topped by a tuft beckons for someone, and we may dare to hope also for the privileges of the Patriarch of Lisbon, such as the right to wear the fanon, the subcinctorium, the falda, and a mitre similar to the Papal Tiara, as well as to be processed on the sedia gestatoria with two flabella, and to be created a Cardinal at the next consistory after appointment. My Confirmation sponsor must be kept in the style to which he is accustomed. But I would be far more likely to offer it to my heavyweight intellectual of a godson.

In any event, though, to be the Patriarch of where, exactly? However regretfully, he would probably have to be seated at London, and two years ago this month, the title of the Primate of the Chaldean Catholic Church was changed from Patriarch of Babylon, to Patriarch of Baghdad. Seated at London, let the Patriarch of Babylon accompany the Doge of the Most Serene Republic of Great Britain. And let the Doge join the President of the French Republic as an Honorary Canon of the Archbasilica Cathedral of the Most Holy Saviour and of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist in the Lateran, seat of the Pope (contrary to what is often assumed about Saint Peter's Basilica), and primarily dedicated to the Most Holy Saviour, with its titular feast day on the Transfiguration, which is tomorrow.

But the main point is this. For all the weakness of the arguments for the monarchy, the case for change has not been made, and there is no chance or risk of it while Charles III is alive. But if, when the inevitable came, it were the view of enough people that that case had been made, then I would be a candidate for President. I am not aware of anyone else who is saying that, and I am absolutely serious about it.

More immediately, as with the powers of the President of the United States, we need to take control of the Royal Prerogative, both in order to exercise it, and in order to keep it out of the hands of the most dangerous Pretender to it ever. Thankfully, Rishi Sunak has delivered a body blow to the Green-aligned SNP in the North East of Scotland. The Liberal Democrats are roaring back in the West County. Not even Keir Mather expects Labour to hold Selby and Ainsty. Net Zero is Keir Starmer's approval rating here on the Red Wall. ULEZ is dooming Labour in Metroland, with the suspicion of similar things poised to do it no end of damage in suburbia generally.

Interest rates and inflation may be a lot lower this time next year than they were now. The few Labour MPs who had withdrawn their signatures from the Stop the War Coalition's statement on Ukraine will have been shown to have been right the first time, as they already have been. Corbyn is going to hold Islington North, if he had not decided to become Mayor of London instead, or even if he had. Diane Abbott is going to hold Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Emma Dent Coad is going to win back Kensington. And so on.

When I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.