No Paper Crown

We do not elect a party in this country, any more than we elect a Prime Minister. Rather, we elect Members of Parliament. There is no reason for the Queen to assume that a Truss Government would command a majority in the House of Commons, and indeed every reason to assume that it would not. Liz Truss is about to become Prime Minister as the first choice of a mere 50 MPs, precisely one in 13. Prepare for all manner of fun and games from the other 12 in 13. Few, if any, of those would share her belief that barking dogs could repel drones. 

It need not matter. The rates of most taxes remain set until specifically altered, and as a sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency, the United Kingdom has no economic, rather than political, reason to levy any tax whatever. The political reasons are compelling. But that is what they are. Even inflation could in principle be controlled by purely monetary, rather than fiscal, means.

Nor does there need to be a Parliament in order to elect, or at least confirm, the Prime Minister. What were the parliamentary voting figures on Boris Johnson in July 2019? Well, there you are, then. A Prime Minister could be appointed, and sometimes has been, during a parliamentary recess. If a Prime Minister were appointed while Parliament was prorogued, then it could never sit at all until the monarch, meaning that Prime Minister, chose to summon it.

For all the hysterical chatter in recent years that MPs might have elected "a caretaker Prime Minister", there is no such office, and MPs have no role in the appointment of the Prime Minister, which is made by the monarch on the advice of the outgoing Prime Minister.

And as we have seen, there is no argument that Parliament would have to sit in order to levy taxes. The Bank of England could just issue currency to the Treasury, as it already does all the time, and control inflation by means of interest rates. By the way, since the Bank of England and the Treasury are both the State, then there is no debt. A sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency cannot be in debt, and it certainly cannot be in debt to itself.

It is the opposite of the truth to suggest that the monarchy occupies a space that a politician therefore cannot. Wresting and then holding the office of Prime Minister effectively makes one an absolute monarch. Orders in Council are primary legislation unless they are superseded by Acts that Parliament would have to sit in order to enact.

Thankfully, Truss does not know any of this, and she never will. But if, dear reader, you are instead a politically serious person, then you have to be serious about wanting power. And if you were serious about wanting power, then why would you want to change any of this? On the contrary, you would want to control it. After all, what would you have instead? An elected Head of State? We all know who wins elections in Britain. And we all know who does not.