IT IS one of those tragedies for which everybody blames themselves after the event. The row of neglected milk bottles outside the door of No 10 should have aroused suspicions; Alistair, the next-door neighbour at No 11, sat tight and did nothing; the occupant of No 10 was known to be a man of uncertain temper who kept himself to himself. By the time the police broke the door down it was too late.
An all-too-familiar story of public indifference in an age of selfish individualism; except that the cadaver inside 10 Downing Street is that of the 109-year-old Labour Party. For this is it: Old Labour died under Michael Foot; New Labour has now fol
lowed it to the grave. Factor in the rise of alternative political parties and Labour's demise is irretrievable. When the governing party is being trounced at the polls by the Lincolnshire Independents, the writing is on the wall for The Party We Love.
Yet still Gordon clings to the furniture in No 10, fabricating ever more fantastic governments – Sir Alan Sugar as Enterprise Tsar, Mandy as First Secretary of State, a title half redolent of the reign of Queen Anne and half of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which Labour now joins in the dustbin of history. Gordon and his zombie government, trailing the grave-clothes of their tattered legislative programme, are still tottering around Whitehall. Britain needs to emancipate itself from these undead. 'How?' is the question.
Last week demonstrated how, despite rumours of mutiny, when it came to the decisive moment most of the curs slunk away, fearful of the whip. There were kamikaze exceptions ("Purnell, my dead king!"), but David Miliband (remember his Portillo moment last year?) declined a date with destiny; ditto the overrated Alan Johnson. The latest rumour is that, if the European election results are as bad as expected, 70 Labour MPs will torpedo Gordon tomorrow night at the meeting of the Parliamentary Labour group.
And if, by some extraordinary freak of fate, they do not, what is Plan B? To allow Brown, the devastator of pensions, the seller of gold reserves at the bottom of the market, the deluded squanderer of trillions, the guru of post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory who turns out to have the economic nous of a seven-year-old, to continue to wreck what remains of our economy for a further year? There will be lynch mobs storming Westminster long before the end of any such nightmare scenario.
There can be no Plan B, insist the hand-wringing nay-sayers, thanks to our outdated, unwritten constitution that gives us no opportunity to remove the Chief Bed-blocker. Twelve years of water-dripping-on-stone black propaganda from the demented constitution-mongers of Charter 88 and New Labour has brainwashed many into believing this nonsense. In fact we have a constitution perfectly equipped to deal with the present emergency: now is the time for the Queen to invoke her Royal prerogative and dissolve Parliament over the head of Gordon Brown.
There is no disputing she has the right to do this and there is a relevant precedent. In 1834, after Lord Althorp the Whig leader in the Commons inherited as Earl Spencer, the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne wished to appoint the ultra-Radical Lord John Russell to succeed him. Fearing an extremist Radical programme, William IV dismissed the Whig ministry and asked the Conservative leader Sir Robert Peel to form a government. Peel did so, but almost immediately legitimised his appointment by going to the country.
The constitutional principle is this: dismissal of a government by Royal prerogative is not undemocratic, provided it is immediately followed by a general election, giving the electorate the right to choose the government it wants. In the present circumstances, with a revolving-door Cabinet, more and more unelected ministers being drafted in via the House of Lords and election results pouring in that show the electorate's overwhelming rejection of the government, a compulsory dissolution would be perfectly justified.
The term "Royal prerogative" has a reactionary, absolutist flavour to it. It has sometimes been abused, though never by the Queen and most notoriously by Tony Blair. Yet the whole point of it is that, when properly and very sparingly invoked, as an instrument of last resort, it is the ultimate guarantor of democracy. The conduct of the present government is a negation of democracy. Gordon Brown has never legitimised his premiership by election.
The current crisis, with its innumerable strands – economic, constitutional, ethical – would normally persuade a prime minister, by the conventions of his office, to resign or face the country at the polls. Gordon Brown refuses to do either. The chief purpose of the Monarchy is to assert the public interest in such an impasse. Over to you, Ma'am.
