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A NEW CONSTITUTION To End the Excessive Power of Prime Ministers |
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CIVIC REPUBLICAN MANIFESTO 2008 For Great Britain VIRTUE FREEDOM ASPIRATION WEALTH PEACE |
DEBT FREE MONEY
To End the Misery of Debt Based Money |
FIRST REPUBLIC
NATION FLAG OF THE PROTECTORATE |
REDISCOVERING BRITISH CLASSICAL REPUBLICANISM |
 OLIVER CROMWELL Statesman 1599 - 1658 BRITISH REPUBLICAN |
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"It does not argue the necessity of abolishing monarchy to establish a republican government" Richard Carlile, Republican (1819) |
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The sections can be read in any order but it is best to start with the three INTRODUCTION sections.(Grayed out pages have not yet been posted) --------------------
Economic Enfranchisement Non-aggressive Foreign Relations
Authority to Create Constitution Lower House Upper House Judiciary Supreme Court Public Services Monetary Policy Regions and Federation (to be completed)
Meritocracy Civil Society Crime and Penal reform Vice Cultural and Intellectual Life Church Disestablished Virtue and Happiness Young Generation
Monetary Policy (to be completed) Existing MPC and FSA Banking Money Flow Currency Industry
First British Republic History of Republicanism
Problems of Current System Advantage Votes Electoral System
National Flag Federal Flag
Republican Theory General History of Republicanism in Britain First Republic Period in Britain British Constitution Economics Enlightenment
The Need for a Republican Party
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SIX FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT A fundamental principle upon which all Republics are founded is the "Separation of Powers". This principle was essential to the ancient Roman Republic, and it was described by the contemporary Greek historian, Polybius. However, the source of the modern theory of Separation of Power is The Spirit of Laws by Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu, aka Montesquieu, written in the eighteenth century. The idea is that there exist definable, different "powers" of any government and that the Constitution should be constructed in such a way that the exercising of these powers is done by separate and separated individuals or institutions has become a cornerstone of Modern Republics. Modern constitutional monarchies, such as the United Kingdom, also have in greater or lesser degree a Separation of Powers. The only contemporary national governments that do not incorporate this principle in some measure (except as a sham) are highly authoritarian states, or out and out dictatorships. This experience is consistent with the theory of Separation of Powers for the whole point of it is to prevent "tyranny" taking over. This was the purpose of its implementation in ancient Rome and has been its purpose ever since. What are the "Powers" here that we are talking about? Montesquieu defined them as the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary and these were the three that informed the framing of the US Constitution. He claimed to have identified the separation of these powers of government in the British Constitution of his time and this was a major model that he used. The notion of a "power of government" has also been termed, a "branch" or an "estate" of government. However, the word that will be used here is "Function". "Function" embodies best what we are really talking about here, which is something that government does. In spite of this the phrase "Separation of Powers" has become so intrinsic to republican thought that it will be used alongside "Separation of Functions". Montesquieu said that governments essentially do three things that we can, or should, identify as separable. There is the Legislature which decides what the laws of the land should be and enacts the necessary processes to put these on the "statute", that is to say, to make them formally recognised as laws, visible to all and capable of being enforced. There are clearly many aspects of government, but sticking just with the idea of law for the moment, it falls to the Executive to administer the front line in enforcing the laws for the police force normally comes under the Executive. Thus it is the Executive that takes the laws that the separated, and presumably independent, Legislature has made and through the police (or other body) catches transgressors. In an authoritarian regime that might be the end of the story, but in any state with, at least, a pretension to endowing the citizen with some rights, there will be a further process whereby the culpability of the putative transgressor will have to be publicly proved. For this the Prosecution Service (again part of the Executive) will have to bring the case to a court of law. The Function of the Judiciary is to organise the courts and the trail procedure and defense. In this tripartite system, taken in its pure form, neither of the three Functions can question the actions or the wisdom of the other two. For instance, judges cannot question the law makers in the Legislature, and neither can the Executive head of state. The Legislative cannot question the decisions of the judges in implementing the laws it has passed. And so on. The wisdom of this separation of powers has been proved time and time again in history for wherever it has been lacking, an over concentration of power in the Executive, or what is called here, "Excessive Executive Power", has been the result. Furthermore, dictators and despots have always sought to abolish the Separation of Powers where they may have found them. An obvious example would be the Stalinist show trials were the Executive is clearly wholly controlling the Judiciary. A homegrown example would be of Charles I's attempt to control the Legislature (Parliament) in the seventeenth century which lead to the Civil War. The same king also used his notorious Star Chamber, which was his own "judicial" court dishing out arbitrary executive "justice" so bypassing the Judiciary. So far the discussion has mentioned only law and the processes of enforcing and judging. So what of all the other actions governments may or must take? The list is long, especially for governments in our time, but a brief list would include, foreign policy, taxation, making war, providing public services, running a central bank and dealing with social problems. With an important proviso (of which more in a moment), these actions tend to fall to the Executive. If you think of the way the Kingdom is run, initiatives on these matters almost always issue from the Cabinet (i.e. Executive) office. There are department and ministry heads sitting in the Cabinet that correspond to all the actions that the Executive performs. And so we have the Function of Judiciary, providing fairness in the implementation of the law, the Legislature making the law and the Executive doing pretty well everything else. But this is not the reality of how any Modern State works and Montesquieu in the eighteenth century well understood this. He understood that if the principle of Separation of Powers were to be incorporated into a state without any qualifying principle the result would be unworkable. You could not have the three Functions all working completely separately without talking to each other or attempting any kind of unified overall direction. This is why this principle has always been placed alongside a second principle: the principle of Checks and Balances. This is the important proviso referred to above in outlining the Function of Executive. The Constitution has to provide for, on the one hand, a Separation of Functions and on the other a knitting together of these Functions. Examples of this are, say, the way the Legislative body will have to approve a decision by the Executive to go to war, or the way that the Executive will appoint judges so maintaining a certain influence over the Judiciary. Modern Republican Constitutions have numerous such "Checks and Balances" to ensure that no single Function could go its own way entirely and create its own "fiefdom" within the nation state. We must have clear separation but with an appropriate degree of integration. * * * Having made clear the idea of different Functions that can be attached to government activity, we should be clear that the "Functions" are not the same thing as the "Institutions" that embody them. Function represents an abstract notion that may or may not correspond to a single institution of state or it may be divided between different such institutions. Different constitutional solutions may create different institutional frameworks to perform the Functions. The only point the principle of Separation of Powers insists upon is that no single Institution of State should perform exclusively more that one Function - always allowing for the interplay between the Institutions according to laid down Checks and Balances. For instance, in the United Kingdom, the Legislative Function is performed by two bodies: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Together the two Houses comprise "Parliament". The House of Lords, in addition to its Legislative Function, also has a Judicial Function as it is (at present) the highest Court of Appeal. If this appeal function is seen as part of the Checks and Balances, then in respect of Parliament, the Kingdom is consistent with the principle of Separation of Powers. Where it is not consistent with it is in the way the two Functions of Executive and Legislature are allocated. This is because the relationship between the House of Commons and the Prime Minister's Cabinet is too close. The Cabinet performs the Executive Functions but it has an enormous influence, some would say nearly total influence, over the legislation that is passed in Parliament. We can argue about the degree of this influence but it is clear that in practice the party nature of Modern politics means that the wishes of the Prime Minister, and his or her Cabinet, are rarely denied in the House. If the Executive wants to enact certain legislation the official legislative assembly invariably complies. Incidentally, where the British system does start to approach Republican principles is in the operation of the Parliamentary Committees, both in the Commons and the Lords. However, these really only operate within the area of Checks and Balances rather than constitutional power. It is the purpose of a Republican Constitution to devise Government Institutions that preserve the Separation of Powers. Admittedly, there are Republics in the world today where this principle is compromised and a "Parliamentary" constitution, whereby the Executive is derived from Parliament, much as exists in the Kingdom today, has been put in place. This is sometimes called a "Westminster" system. These, however, tend to be the smaller countries, where there is a closer relationship between the people and the government (as in Finland). Or else the power of central government is balanced by a strong regional structure (as in Germany). The United States was the first modern country to formally adopt the principle of Separation of Powers in its Constitution and is possibly still the best, in the sense of the clearest, example. The Framers of this Constitution influenced most, or many, subsequent framers of other constitutions. Notably in the United States, the Executive Function is embodied in the Institution of President. The President appoints a Cabinet to assist them in this Function. Under the British Constitution, the Executive Function formally lies with the Monarch and this is the system that Montesquieu admired. The problem is that since his time the real power of the Monarch has all but evaporated for the simple reason that no one is now going to accept that some one can exercise political power because of birth. The result of this is that the Executive power flows to the Prime Minister and this process is has an official description: the "Royal Prerogative". The Prime Minister of Great Britain by virtue of the practical operation of the constitution has a power conferred on the office that is unrivalled by any Executive office in any developed nation anywhere. This is the most pressing and fundamental constitutional problem that needs to be addressed in the Kingdom. * * * It is worth pausing just for a moment to, at least, consider the arguments sometimes put foreword against a Separation of Powers. These arguments, of course, do not normally seek to justify authoritarian rule as an alternative to Separation of Powers, but they see virtue in a system where the Executive is chosen by Parliament as in the British system. Perhaps the best, and certainly the most renowned, example of this kind of argument is in Walter Bagehot's The English Constitution published in 1867. In making his case Bagehot compares the British system as he interpreted it with the operation of the US Constitution. Bagehot is adamant that the Separation of Powers, that Montesquieu had claimed to detect in the British system, did not, in fact, exist and, in contradiction to Montesquieu, this lack of separation he saw as one of the system's great virtues. The difference of viewpoint between the two writers can be partly put down to the 100 years that separates their two observations, but we will not dwell on this point. For Bagehot the primary function of the House of Commons is as the elective assembly for the Government or Executive. The great significance for him in this is that the Commons holds the Executive in its power for having selected it, it can at any time equally deselect it - throw it out of office. This means that the Government has to watch its step continually, for it must have the continued support of the large (and so presumably representative) elected assembly that is the Commons. This he contrasts with the American system, where once the Executive (in this case, the President) is elected, he or she is there for the full four year term. There is a constitutional basis in this argument, of course, because the Commons can, at least theoretically, by means of a censure motion "bring the Government down". On the other hand an impeachment action can be brought against a US President. Although, it must be said, even a successful impeachment will not dislodge the "Government" for it will result in the Vice-President taking over, not a mass expulsion of the President's Cabinet. There have been two impeachments procedures against US President's since World War II. That against President Nixon, was not concluded for he resigned and that against President Clinton passed through the House of Representatives but was blocked by the Senate. There have been no motions of censure in the British Parliament in the same period that have achieve comparable results. Bagehot is a skilful and entertaining writer, but few readers will recognise his picture he paints of a British Government having to justify at every turn their continuation in office. At present, for instance, all political commentators see Prime Minister Brown comfortably in office until the end of the term in 2010 unless he himself decides to go the country earlier. The situation can be more problematic if the government has a small majority but in two postwar cases of this, the Labour Government 1975-79 and the Conservative Government 1992-97, there were no real threats to the governments serving out the term.* () What invalidates Bagehot's argument is a central fact of British political life that he barely mentions throughout his book - political parties. Whereas the image he draws of the Commons as 600, or so, elected members all independently standing up for deeply held personal beliefs which then transfer into the political soul of the nation has appeal, it has little relationship to the reality. Party organisation sees to that. This not a bad thing and nor is it a particularly good thing. It just happens to be how modern politics operates, and has to operate, in all modern states. But it makes a mockery of Bagehot's argument. We all know that when we vote for an MP, although we may have regard to the particular candidate, we are voting above all for a certain party to be returned to power. And once in power, the strength of their party will ensure that they stay there, almost regardless of what happens in the Commons. The idea that they have to constantly play to Parliament to avoid being put out of office is pure fancy. Where Bagehot's argument might carry a bit more weight is in his claim that the British system serves to better inform the population about the political process and therefore engages them better in it. He attaches real weight to the debates in Parliament as having an "educational" effect on the electorate. With the US President isolated from the Congress, he argues, political life is far duller. The easy answer to this is that if we wished to preserve the boisterous knockabout of Prime Minister's Question Time, there is absolutely no reason why we should not have an equivalent President's Question Time built into the Constitution of the Second Republic. What we see most of Parliamentary business on television is the animated discussions that occur from time to time, but these are not the day to day grinding processes of examining the details of new statutes that take up the majority of parliamentary time, with just a handful of MPs present and probably even fewer contributing to the discussion. The more important answer to Bagehot's point is that most of the important work of Parliament is done not in the chamber but in the Select Committees. These form an aspect of the Checks and Balances that exist in a modern constitution whereby the committees examine the conduct of the government and its agencies and report and recommend. It is through the committees that the Government is held to account in a serious and meaningful way. These British Parliamentary Committees have an exact counterpart in the United States in the Congressional Committees. And so the really significant check and influence that the Legislature has on the Executive can and would be fully preserved in a Republican Constitution. Bagehot's is clearly in love with the theatre that the British system produces and he views it as essential to maintaining a healthy political life. He says quite categorically that the Americans, because of the nature of their political system are "not especially addicted to politics", an observation hardly appropriate to what we see of current presidential elections. And the current low and declining turn out in British general elections scarcely bare out the idea that our systems generates much enthusiasm. By contrast, we might look to the 2007 presidential elections in the Republic of France, which certainly has the Separation of Powers that Bagehot was so dismissive of, where well over 80% of the electorate voted - an unheard of figure in a British election of recent times. There is one more criticism of the Separation of Powers made by Bagehot that should be considered because it goes right to the heart of the argument. He says it is inefficient and cumbersome because government is divided. On the face of it this is a rather obvious point. How annoying when you are in charge as, say, President, to find you cannot easily do what you want, because you have to involve whole other institutions of government in the decision, which might be full of guys who think quite differently to you. Yes, we can see how frustrating that might be. Without picking through the details on how Separation of Powers works, the best response to this argument is to look at history. Ancient Rome had Separation of Powers, and however you may want to judge it, you cannot say it did not achieve very much. On the other side eighteenth century France did not have Separation of Powers, but an absolute Monarchy that ended in a Revolution that convulsed Europe. Soviet Russia did not have Separation of Powers but twentieth century France did. The list of comparisons goes on and on. But what of the constitution that Bagehot admired the most - the English (now British) Constitution. The amalgamation of the Function of the Executive with that of the Legislature that he considered such a fine feature of this constitution has become, since his time, more and more of a problem. As well it might, for without Separation of Power, as history shows us, power accumulates with the Executive. So we have had a succession of recent headstrong Prime Ministers, to whom the term "control freakery" has frequently been attached, and who have exploited, and continue to exploit, the British constitutional weaknesses in order to assume more and more power. If Bagehot had been writing today, it is difficult to believe he would have come to the same conclusions as he did in 1867. * * * Montesquieu based his proposals for a tripartite Separation of Powers mainly on the models of ancient Rome and eighteenth century Britain. But, ever since his ideas were consciously adopted by the new American Republic in 1789, people have wondered whether for a Modern State we should not really be talking about a fourth, or even fifth, Function of Government to add to his three. In fact, the US Framers did effectively add in a fourth Function right at the inception of the new Constitution by including a Supreme Court - an Institution that corresponded to nothing in any previous republican (or monarchical) state. Officially the Supreme Court is part of the Judiciary, but it has a constitutional role that goes beyond the normal remit of a Judiciary. The function that distinguishes the Supreme Court is its role in arbitrating on any disputes about which Institution of Government can decide any particular issue. It is there to determine what the Constitution says and to interpret it. The Framers wisely saw that without this new "Function" being present, all other Institutions were equal before each other and so, in any dispute as to which one could decide a matter, conflict could ensue and that this could be exceedingly dangerous for the nation. In deciding on constitutional matters the Supreme Court also decides on the legitimacy and desirability of any amendments to the Constitution, although, because of the great authority of the US Constitution, Amendments are few and far between. The unique Function given to the Supreme Court will be called here "Protector of the Constitution". The US Supreme Court also happens to be the highest court in determining cases in the courts that go to appeal and so it does also have a traditional judicial Function. This is strictly against the principle of Separation of Powers and so is probably not universally desirable. To avoid this conflict, in France and Germany the role of Protector of the Constitution is separated out into a "Constitutional Court". In the United Kingdom, of course, there is no independent Institution that assumes the role. It is an extraordinary fact that the constitution can be modified by normal statute even without any special voting arrangement (such as exist for instance in France for constitutional changes) and certainly a referendum is far from obligatory. So the British Constitution is wide open to change by the Executive through its power over the Legislature. New Labour has not been shy in its efforts to see its many ideas on constitutional reform being enacted. The farce of the situation however is that because of the UK's constitutional laxity all New Labour's changes can quickly be reversed by a new party taking office - or even just a change of leadership. Most Modern Republican Constitutions* incorporate as a Separated Function that of Protector of the Constitution. Here this will be regarded as the Fourth Function of Government. * * * Having established that in practice Modern Republics do incorporate a Fourth Function, and that this is often embodied in a separate Institution of Government, we might at least pose the question as to whether we should identify any further Functions of Government that would benefit from a similar Institutional separation. In fact the idea of having organisations that are part of the government but that, nevertheless, have independence from the Executive to make decisions within a prescribed area and to control it and/or regulate it, is very much a part of the practice of Modern Government everywhere and the Kingdom is no exception. Take a very conspicuous example of this that was created in 1997 by the current Prime Minister when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer - the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, the MPC. The MPC was given "operational independence" to set interest rates at monthly meetings. It comprises nine members at any time including the chairman (currently Mervyn King) and decisions are made by majority vote. "Monetary Policy Committee" is a misnomer for the MPC does not set policy, but only implements it. The policy is set by the Executive and in concept, if not in practice, is simplicity itself. The MPC must set the level of the bank interest rate to control shopping basket inflation and the target to be achieved over the short term is 2%. The remit of the MPC does not allow for the compromising of this objective by any other considerations, such as unemployment, asset price inflation, growth or the exchange rate. What is of interest here, however, is not the economic consideration, but the general principle whereby it is believed that, by having a body that is separate from any other, better government can result. Gordon Brown has frequently been praised for detaching the setting of interest rates from the Executive where until 1997 it had always resided. The supporters of this policy of "independence" may not realise it but they are, in effect, supporting the Republican principle of Separation of Powers. However, Republicans are extremely aware that there is one big problem with the "independence" that Gordon Brown granted to the MPC - it can be reversed at any time. The members of the MPC sit each month with the knowledge that, if the Prime Minister so decided, this could be their last meeting. Of course, this would not happen that quickly as New Labour and other supporters of the notional "independence" have invested political capital in the idea. The problem might come when the economy hits stormy waters and the government does not like the actions of the MPC. In reality we will never get there because the MPC has one eye over its shoulder all the time. A recent newspaper report observed that the most reliable predictor of MPC decisions has always been Gordon Brown's close confident over many years, Cabinet Minister, Ed Balls, whose predictions have been uncannily accurate. There is no need to expand on the implications of how this might be possible. So why is it that the "independence" of the MPC is such a charade? Compare it with, say, the Supreme Court in the USA as discussed above. No one doubts the authority of the Supreme Court in the way that that of the Monetary Policy Committee can be doubted. It is true from time to time there are issues concerning its independence due to partisan appointments by Presidents (President Bush has been repeatedly accused of this) but it still retains its freedom to act. A perhaps closer comparison can be made with the European Central Bank which, like the MPC, makes decisions on interest rates for the euro (amongst other decisions). As with the Supreme Court, trying to tell it what to do is not an easy matter. The essential difference between the MPC and the Supreme Court or ECB is that the last two are both enshrined in Constitutions. The Supreme Court owes its existence to the American Constitution, the ECB to the European Community Maastricht Treaty, which is an intrastate constitution in all but name. It is this constitutional basis that ensures longevity and the authority that goes with it. Sometimes government bodies that lack constitutional status have their positions granted by statute. This will be true, for example, of the United Kingdom "Supreme Court" when it comes into existence in April 2009. (Incidentally, this is not a constitutional court; it is simply taking over the judicial function of the House of Lords.) A statutory basis is better than nothing but it does not grant the authority that a constitutional basis does for it can be readily reversed by a future statute.* The Monetary Policy Committee, however, has neither constitutional nor statutory basis and depends for its day to day existence on the Prime Minister's say so. So what exactly is it if it lacks constitutional or statutory authority? It is just a quango. Quangos are bodies created by the Executive to perform certain functions but are given a notional independence from the Executive. What is of interest here is not the proliferation of quangos under all recent British administrations (and New Labour has been a prize performer in this respect) and the fiction of the independence that they enjoy, but the fact that the idea of separating out the functions of government and assigning to "independent" bodies the task of administering them is very much part of current thinking on the running of democratic governments. The fact that these Functions in the Kingdom go mainly to quangos is a feature typical of a monarchical state. The reason for this is that within a monarchy there is no conception of the kind of constitutionally based institutions that are necessary to ensure a real independence and a real Separation of Powers. The result is, at best, an Institution created by legislation (like the new British Supreme Court) but, far more likely, is an improvised quango. It is only with a Republican Constitution that the entirely respectable idea of having bodies, independent of the Executive, able to make decisions, independent of the Executive, can be properly realised. Within the myriad quangos of the Kingdom, independence is nowhere serious. * * * Thus, the idea of having organisations within government that function independently of the political process is commonly accepted, even if in the Kingdom its realisation in practice is a long way from ideal. But what is the principle underlying this idea? Why is it favoured for certain jobs the Government has to do? It is important to note that the kind of independent organisations we are talking about here are not democratic. That is to say, their membership is not subject to a popular vote: it may be subject to a narrow committee vote, but that is not democracy. This distance from the democratic arena is usually cited as a prime benefit resulting from independence. For instance, again, in the case of the Monetary Policy Committee, it is said that, because of it, decisions on interest rates are taken out of the hands of elected politicians and so are no longer influenced by the need to gain popularity at the ballot box. As a result the decisions are more likely to be wisely taken in the interests of long term stability. Crucially, it is also argued, the "markets" will recognise this and so the perception of economic stability governed by sound, objective decision making will be reinforced. Furthermore, the members of the committee will be there only by virtue of an established, proven professional competence and so the decisions will be of the highest caliber. There is an anti-democratic drift in this line of reasoning that, curiously, in the democracy obsessed polity that we enjoy, is seldom recognised. Now integral to any argument for democracy is that it is necessary to achieve accountability. An elected politician has to represent the wishes of their electorate for otherwise they can be removed at the next election. However, with the concept of the highly praised MPC goes the belief that professionalism is more important here than accountability and so the democratic element in this vital area of government decision making is better to be done away with. But, on the other hand, there is an important limitation to the MPC's remit and this has already been referred to. In spite of its name it does not make policy. Its job is to adjust interest rates to achieve the policy objective laid down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. So you could say it is only concerned with the mechanism whereby interest rate decisions translate into effects on shopping basket inflation, and this is not a political matter. This limited role is characteristic of the British politic where the Executive is very reluctant to give away any real power. But the parallel body in the United States, the Federal Reserve, has a much greater scope for action and has to have regard to factors beyond the narrow one of shopping basket inflation in taking its decisions. It has to be a custodian of the economy as a whole and looks to employment, productivity, and so on, in taking its decisions. The European Central Bank has also become a political player in the way the MPC hardly has done. However, the important general point for Republicans in this discussion is that, even within our political climate where there is usually a strong knee-jerk reaction in favour of democracy, it is a commonplace that there are areas where professionalism should be valued above democratic representation and accountability. It is not that Republics are not democratic in certain respects. They invariably have democratic institutions. The Roman Republic certainly did and the only significant historical exception to this rule is the Venetian Republic which in spite of a lack of any kind of popular suffrage lasted 500 years - no small achievement. The point is that the principles of Republicanism are themselves not democratic. Neither or they anti-democratic. Republican and democratic principles go hand in hand in a well constituted republican state, but they are not the same thing. Once we accept republican principles, we accept that is not a good idea to have democracy everywhere and in everything and that certain government institutions benefit from not being democratic. The central banks, that have been referred to, point towards the non-democratic, but republican, principle of founding a government agency on the professional sense of accountability rather that the democratic one. There is much more to say about the nature of non-democratic, republican institutions (which here will be called Civil Institutions) but for now the position of the MPC (in spite of its glaring inadequacies) stands as one example that demonstrates that their advantages have already been widely accepted * * * There is good reason for starting to view the operation of a Central Bank in controlling interest rates as a separate arm or function of government and as one that seems to incorporate something of Montesquieu's principle of Separation of Powers, whereby it is given a degree of independence. The enlarged role of central banks is but just one example of how government has changed radically since Montesquieu's time in the eighteenth century. In his time there were no nationalised central banks and the private ones enjoyed a lesser standing, often a suspect one. But now there are whole areas into which government has expanded, driven by the needs of the modern state, modern technology and modern standards of welfare and doubtless other factors. As well as the politics end of government that attracts all the limelight with its endless tiffs, disputes, personalities, high principles, glories and downfalls, there is a far less spectacular underbelly of government that, in contrast to the political side of things, is professional, non-publicity seeking, non-partisan and, above all, permanent - the Civil Service. It is a sad reflection on the political life of this country that the popular view of our Civil Service seems to have been so conditioned by a 1980s TV sitcom that (perhaps unintentionally) served as highly effective Thatcherite propaganda. Margaret Thatcher as a populist leader resented the Civil Service, just as she resented any form of unelected body that had authority and influence. The "Yes, Minister" portrayal of the Civil Service as a conniving, avaricious, manipulative, domineering club of entrenched individuals whose only purpose is to perpetuate their own privileges and inefficiencies created a few laughs, but it is a pity if many beyond the Thatcherite circle took its message seriously. (A funnier, more incisive portrayal of the Civil Service was Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks.) In spite of this recent ridiculing at home, the British Civil Service has always enjoyed an enviable reputation internationally. It was one of the first modern Civil Services and in many way invented what a Civil Service should be - impartial, reliable, responsible, effective and continuous. During the nineteenth century it was considered in many countries to be the finest Civil Service in the world (bearing in mind it had to provide government for not only the homeland but one of the largest Empires the world has ever known) the only serious competitor being the Prussian Civil Service. As nations in the nineteenth century needed to build their own Civil Services, they would inevitably look to Britain and Prussia for their models. Of course, part of the suspicion that may form around the Civil Service is the very fact that it does have a degree of independence from the rest of government. Moreover, it has one big advantage over elected parties, that some see as unfair - it knows it will always be there. Elected governments seldom last more than a decade - a short interim in the working life of a career civil servant. So we might ask whether the Civil Service starts to assume, albeit creeping in by the back door without constitutional blessing, the aspect of one of Montesquieu's functions of government, with the accompanying principle of Separation of Powers fully operative? The short answer to this is no. And for the reason for this we have to understand the essential nature of the Civil Service which has never changed and which shows no real sign of changing - it is an arm of the Executive. Its historical origins are in service to the Executive (originally in the form of the Monarch), and that is how it has remained. To ask if the Civil Service is becoming a law unto itself is rather like asking if we are being taking over by computers. Computers started out as our servants and as they become more and more a part of our lives and become ever more powerful we may start to imagine that they will eventually control us, not the other way around. Whereas this is good stuff for fiction writers, the idea is pure fancy. So it is with the Civil Service. It may shape our lives. It is to be hoped that it does and does for the better. But the political machinery is so powerful that ultimately it can only follow the will of the Executive. It has no real purchase on the government centres of power where decisions are actually made. It is an aid to Executive power and is there to advise, inform and sometimes influence but it cannot exercise Executive power. It more likely to be bullied and abused by the Executive. The basic reason for this is that it is not in itself a government institution as the Executive in the form of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet are. It is subordinate to the Executive and, in spite of fanciful imaginings cannot insinuate itself into the primary decision-making machinery. With that in mind we should concentrate on the Civil Service as one of the great assets that a Modern state can possess. It cannot itself make good government but it can enable it if the leadership is good. Stories of British civil servants preparing two draft Queen's speeches ahead of a general election to cater for two alternative electoral outcomes are not fiction. This is how the Service works. Although a rather obvious point, it is often forgotten that the Civil Service, far from being a threat to democracy, is vital to the existence of democracy. Democracy means a changes of leadership, often within quite short periods of time. If there were no base of government to provide continuity between changes at the top, the whole system would be unworkable. But in the world of the post-Thatcher Consensus that we inhabit, solidity, permanence, loyalty and experience are not values that command much respect. The result is that the Civil Service is constantly being abused and downgraded in importance and its reservoir of competence casually dispensed with. A shocking example of this occurred when Gordon Brown took over the Treasury in 1997. The post of Chief Economic Adviser to the Chancellor was a longstanding appointment that had always gone to a career civil servant so that whatever politically-based initiatives might be proposed by the incoming Executive these at least could be weighed against the professional point of view based on long experience. Brown immediately sacked the incumbent civil servant and parachuted in his unelected sidekick, Ed Balls, a young man at the time with no experience of this kind of office, as a replacement. The result was and is that the whole ethos of service in the Treasury changed. Key employees left and the Treasury lost a great deal of its reputation. This is, of course, but a single instance whereby New Labour has diminished the authority of the Civil Service. A very common technique that governments have used for the same purpose goes back, like so many evils that have entrenched themselves in the polity, to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Its name is a word whose very uttering spells gloom and despondency within all ranks of government employees - reorganisation. Of course, sometimes organisational changes will sometimes be necessary, but with the sweeping powers that the British Executive commands absolute nothing stands in the way of instantaneous, radical upheavals and these can and are made. A recent example is the Home Office being split into two departments - the Justice Department and the newly briefed Home Office. There may possibly be advantages in the split but these need to be properly evaluated and introduced in a non-disruptive way not introduced overnight without notice as they were. Ironically this kind of impetuousness is only made possible because of the quality and loyalty of the Civil Service we still have, who have to be flexible enough and resilient enough to accommodate the changes whatever they think of them. We, of course, do not know what they think of them (although we may guess) because they were given no chance to comment. What New Labour does not consider in such changes is the disruption that is caused to career paths in the Civil Service so that someone who has carefully cultivated a competence and an understanding with colleagues that might lead to merited promotion sees all the goalposts suddenly moved. The damage this might do to individual lives is not something that would appear on the New Labour radar. The undermining of the independence and authority of the Civil Service has gone along with what has been termed the "politicisation" of the Service. This is a highly dangerous path that New Labour has done more than any government to advance. The opposition parties have no understanding of the implications of it and anyway know they would have done the same thing, so dominant is the post-Thatcherite Consensus and so pathetic any putative alternative to New Labour. * * * In this exercise of attempting to suggest whether in a Modern Republic we should identify more than the Three Functions of Government that Montesquieu did, it is perhaps worth recapping where we have got to. The three original Functions of Executive, Legislature and Judiciary remain solid but to these we have added a definite Fourth Function that already exists in most Modern Republics - Protector of the Constitution. The idea of a separate Function to deal with monetary policy, and/or the administration thereof, crept in during the last century and is now widely accepted. Even if this drift is not usually explicitly and consciously linked to the Republican notion of Separation of Powers, the admission and exercising of this principle is certainly what is going on here. This suggests a possible Fifth Function even if its precise remit has not yet been set out. The role of the Civil Service we have concluded does not correspond to a separate function or power even if those who would seek to undermine it like to suggest that it is. The Civil Service remains what it always has been - an arm of the Executive. With some important qualifications that will be made in a moment, under the Second Republic's Constitution this is essentially what it must remain. In order to try to decide whether a Sixth Function should be identified we first need some more clarity about the Functions we already have particularly with regard to the Executive. The Legislature and the Judiciary are defined principally in relation to the making and exercising of the law of the land (always allowing for the Checks and Balances which give them a wider role, as, we saw, for instance, in the Parliamentary committees). The Executive covers, as of now, pretty well everything else except for monetary control which seems to be moving outside its remit. So what exactly are we talking about with this "everything else"? In general, somewhat simplifying, the Executive Function can be broken down according into the following. Although this does not correspond in all cases to the current organisation of departments and ministries in the Kingdom, the essential Functions are in there somewhere.
The above list of activities by the Executive has not yet mentioned a whole range that our Prime Minister and the Cabinet feel make up an important area of their control. These are collectively the Public Services. They make up a whole separate list of their own:
It is an outstanding feature of all Modern nations that this last area, that of the Public Services, has ballooned fantastically since, let us say, the middle of the nineteenth century. From that time on, we have seen a relentless expansion of the Public Services pushed by the enabling fact of enormous technological developments in medicine, transport, communications, information processing and media and pulled by the increasing social demands and expectations of an expanding and wealthier population. If our proverbial Martian were to compare our present nation and the way it operates with how it was in the eighteenth century or before, this would probably be the single most salient factor they would observe. The Public Services represent not only a huge amount in terms of provision but also consume a corresponding amount of the national employment, resources and finance. In this respect, above all, we live in world that Montesquieu would hardly recognise. And correspondingly we have a government apparatus that he would hardly recognise. This fact might lead us to question whether the overridingly important part, that the provision of Public Services has assumed in the activity of the state, might have suggested to him that the necessary division of Powers of Government that he identified should now be played differently. Should the Public Services be considered a Function of Government, the control and administration of which, should be separated from the others, just as the Executive are separated from the Judiciary and the Legislature? The view taken here is that the answer to this question is yes. * * * This is not the view of any recent ruling party and certainly not of New Labour under Prime Ministers Blair or Brown. Neither could contemplate giving up control of any area that they already had under their remit. It is not that the repetitive day to day provision of services (which is what after all what the Public Services do) that interests them much but the use they have for grabbing headlines and as a means for presenting a certain face to the electorate. Under New Labour, it seem that practically every month there is some new initiative in the Public Services, a new Fix-It concoction, issued from Downing Street. A recent example was the call by Prime Minister Brown to clean all the hospitals top to toe to attempt to eradicate MRSC virus. Superficially this may seem a good thing, but it is insulting to medical staff to suggest that they are not already addressing the problem in their own way, and even if they are not, would it not be better to proceed with some kind of consultation on the matter to decide the best way forward? The method the Prime Minister chose was clearly just to hit the headlines to show he was concerned about a problem and had the will and the power to act. The metaphor of the "political football" was surely invented with the Public Services in mind. When Tony Blair appeared in a BBC series following his stepping down as Prime Minister, he made it clear that the achievement he wished to be remembered for above all were his reforms of the Public Services. We may regard this as a forlorn hope for other "achievements" of his term in office will surely overshadow these reforms. And there is also the problem that few people in the country will have a specific idea of what he is supposed to have done that is positive. It is clear that the Public Services were a preoccupation of Tony Blair during his years in office. Although he would no doubt see this as a positive aspect of his rule it seems to be characterised by a worried, burdensome attitude towards this aspect of Government. He wants to get hold of it but at the same time he does not regard dealing with it as natural to his political temperament or philosophy. Back in 2001 he gave four reasons "why our public services need radical improvement" [my italics]: "First, expectations have risen enormously yet public services designed for a previous age find it difficult to respond. Unlike 1945, people don't put up with the basics. In a consumer age, they expect quality, choice and standards and too often don't experience them. "Secondly, the demands on the systems have risen: more people live longer; more diseases are treatable; more go to nursery and to university; more people use public transport. "Thirdly, there has been chronic under-investment that has run down the essential infrastructure, buildings, equipment, track and trains in transport. "Fourth, staff recruitment is so much harder with employment at record levels and the spectrum of private sector jobs, many with higher pay, is so much greater; and where in many key public service jobs, there is real and growing stress." Problems of "expectation and people not putting up with the basics", problems of "demands and people living longer", problems of "under-investment and run down infrastructure" and problems of "recruitment being so much harder" and there being "real and growing stress". Phew! You feel whacked out before you start. However, by 2006 the then Prime Minister was able to clearly state what his "radical improvements" would be. Predictably his reforms were Thatcherite to the core: "I am passionate about changing public services, making changes that are difficult and challenging, including learning from business and the voluntary sector "Because [in the Public Services] the market doesn't force such change, Governments look for alternative ways of replicating that pressure for change." [my italics] In other words, the all-virtuous profit motive does not exist in the Public Services and so its effect on working practice somehow has to be "replicated" within them. Some might argue that the whole ethos of the Public Services is so different from the private sector that you cannot import what is an alien motivation in this way, but Blair was undaunted by the challenge he set himself. He set out four ways of "replicating" conditions in the private sector within the Public Services: "First, we focus on certain minimum standards of output, set centrally and driven across the system. Central targets "Second, we are creating mechanisms of user choice and power in health; in extending choice in schools; in direct voice in community policing.
"Third, providers must be allowed to contest provision and commission from different sources
"Fourth, the traditional patterns of working and demarcation between professions need to be broken down"
The old Thatcherite instruments for dealing with the Public Services: targets, consumer choice, outsourcing and job insecurity.
The same product of the Thatcherite Consensus is fully on display in a recent statement by Prime Minister Brown:
The next stage of improving our public services is personalised services tailored to people's needs. Just as in industry and what we receive from what's produced by industry, people want goods and services tailored to their needs, so too that's the lesson for the future of public services." As hundreds of more Post Offices are to close, as energy prices go through the roof, as the London Underground falls apart, as industry complains about the quality of school leavers education, as rail services deteriorate, as prisons reach bursting point, as demoralised teachers leave the job, as military personnel die because of lack of equipment, as the BBC is progressively dumbed down, as playing fields are dug up, as homeless people lie in doorways, as people die in dirty hospitals, as policeman march for a fair deal.
As all these things happen there will always be those who see the solution in yet more form filling to show targets have been met; or giving a bit more choice to some privileged families; or privatising this or that contract; or making a public servant's life yet more stressful by forcing them to accommodate the latest faddish government initiative.
This is the New Labour New Model Army of clip board holders checking, checking, checking public servants who just want to get on with their job.
Listen to the voice of Gordon Brown's voice droning on again:
"Developing a service that's personalised to the citizen's needs and wishes will take us into exciting new and inventive areas where there will be greater choice, greater competition, greater local accountability."
The Executive should not have direct control of the Public Services. It is not its natural territory. To be fair, part of the problem is that because it is responsible for the Public Services it feels it has to do something. It has to take action and reform and reorganise. If the Public Services could be put at least at arm's length from the Prime Minister's office the holder of that office could concentrate on those things that are natural to it.
Fifty or a hundred years ago the Public Services were created and developed by enlightened administrations but the burden of them has become too great for the head of government in our times. Everything now is too complex and too huge. We need a separate government machinery to cope with the Public Services that can recognise their real nature, can run them efficiently and that will not try to make them into something they are not and can never be.
* * * In Britain we make the perfectly valid and natural distinction between Civil Service and Public Service, between Civil Servants and Public Servants. The Civil Service is there to serve, in the first place, the Government. The Public Services are there to serve the Public in the first place. Ultimately you could argue that the Government and the Public (or the People) are the same thing, but if you ask who the respective Services are immediately there to serve the answer is not the same. The Civil Service works in the areas above that were identified as coming within the remit of the Executive:
The Public Services, which it is suggested here should not come directly under the Executive, comprise:
If the Public Services should be considered a quite separate Function of Government, there must correspond a quite separate, and new, Government Institution to administer them.
Before describing how this might be set up, an essential further distinction needs to be established. This is between policy and provision. The appreciation of this distinction will enable a proper system of Checks and Balances to be put in place for new Institution.
Provision is the day to day task of the services, and with a professional management team at the helm this is something they should be able to deal with without interference. There is nothing worse than having some outside person who has no expertise within your field coming in and telling you how to do your job. This is a sure way to undermine moral and quality of service. And, as we know, it happens as a daily occurrence in the Kingdom's Public Services.
Policy on the other hand deals with the overall governmental context within which the Services work. The much sought after, but seldom achieved, goal of "joined-up thinking" is a task that policy making sets for itself. Policy above all concerns itself with the capital side of the services - of planning new roads and hospitals, or of deciding the weaponry that the military will need for the future, and so on.
But in describing what is meant by policy let us be absolutely clear about what it does not and must not ever include. It must never be about targets, it must never be about performance and it must, please, never be about reorganisation. These parameters must lie firmly within the realms of provision by the professionals.
But in any case, whereas performance monitoring has to be part of any working operation, targets, it must be said, are a very suspect tool of management in any but the simplest of productive tasks. Where provision is a complex matter, as it is almost certain to be in the Public Services, the straightforward use of output as the measure of success is always going to having a distorting influence. Good professional companies of whatever sort do not use it. As for the dreaded question of reorganisation, enough has already been said.
In devising a new Institution to run the Public Services a democratic one should not be contemplated. The arguments referred to above for assigning Monetary Control to professions apply equally to controlling Public Services. The task is too demanding to be left to unskilled, elected politicians and in any case that would leave the Services still being kicked about as the political football as they currently are. This is not to say that the Public Services should be untouched by the political arena, but that that process should occur within the workings of the Checks and Balances not in the primary make up of the Institution.
If we are not talking about a Democratic Institution, then we are talking about a Civil Institution, that is to say, one whose members are chosen according to merit, qualification or achievement. But here we need to pause again to emphasise a point. The new body absolutely must have constitutional sanction and in this sense be a true Government Institution. If it is not this, it is simply a quango (as the Monetary Policy Committee now is) and can revert back to impure, pliable type as quickly as a mix of pedigree dogs will revert back to mongrels if allowed to breed unchecked.
Thus the new body must be enshrined in the Constitution. In doing this the Checks and Balances to which it is subject are vital. Its Checks and Balances cover two areas: Appointment and Policy. But before going any further, let us give our new Civil Institution a name, say, the Public Services Board - the PSB.
It is only right that the Executive should be involved in setting Policy, for it alone has the resources and it alone is in a position to shape overall government direction. This is not to say it should dictate policy (as at present) for any proposals that it makes will have to be filtered through the Public Services Board itself. Neither is it to say that Policy (as well as Provision) will not be a part of the Board's job, but it will need to run its own policy ideas past the Executive. In this way we can have a Democratic input through the elected Executive but fully examined by the more professional PSB.
Although this reduces the power that the Executive has over the Public Services, there is every reason why the Executive would benefit from the arrangement. Having relinquished ultimate responsibility for the Public Services it is also liberated from such responsibility. It can evolve policies still, but these will have to get past the Board. If the Board makes a mistake in accepting or not accepting an Executive initiative, it will be the Board will carry the can not the politicians.
What of Appointment? In order to achieve a further level of Checks and Balances it would be constitutionally sound, from the Republican point of view, to have the Appointment approved, but not necessary decided, by a separate Government Institution. The Lower House of the Legislature (which again is democratic), the House of Commons, would suggest itself for this task.
So we have a constitutionally established, independent Public Services Board whose authority cannot be usurped, but whose policy is subject to approval by the Executive and whose appointment is subject to approval by the Legislature.
* * *
This brings us to the vital and vexed question that always surrounds any discussion of the Public Services: how to pay for it all?
At present it is the Treasury, i.e. the Executive, that decides what resources to give to the Public Services and it also crucially decides how those resources should be allocated between the different Public Services. You cannot do much without money and, as the Public Services in most cases are not profit making, this gives the Executive a stranglehold on them.
You might say that is fair enough. It is public money collected in taxes that is being used and the elected Executive, which will be under the Second Republic a President, should be able to decide the level and nature of the expenditure. This is a point and it would be unthinkable to take the Executive out of this particular equation altogether. However, we need much more in the way of Checks and Balances in deciding expenditure than we have at present.
This takes the discussion back to the subject of monetary control that has already been talked about. It was pointed out that the idea of having an independent body that decides on monetary policy has taken root in America and the Eurozone and in the Kingdom at least the seeds of the idea have been planted in the form of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee.
In Britain, under the regime created by Gordon Brown, monetary policy has in fact remained within the realm of the Executive, the MPC being responsible only for what can be reasonably termed "monetary control". The monetary policy that the Treasury decided upon is that the Bank interest rate should be set at a level to guarantee a shopping basket inflation rate of 2%. This is not a minimum or a maximum but a target to be hit as near as possible.
But this does not give the whole picture. Monetary policy means not just the setting of interest rates, it also includes the control of the money supply. We have dealt with the former, so what of the latter: setting the money supply - that is, how much new money should be injected into the economy each year, or, as it is sometimes put, how much new money should be "printed" each year. The current government policy on the money supply is easily stated: there is no policy. Money supply is not controlled, or, to put it rather more unkindly, it is out of control.
The Government does print some of its own notes and mint some new coins that add to the money supply but the vast proportion of the new money supply under New Labour, as under previous governments, has been created by the private banks. Theoretically they are regulated in this function by Gordon Brown's creation, the Financial Services Authority. But in the City the FSA is almost a standing joke. The reality is that the banks have been left largely to their own devices in delivering new money into the economy and, in their wisdom, they have put a large proportion of this into inflating house prices.
The terrible consequences of this policy, or lack of it, will unravel over the next years, but, here, what is of concern is to decide what sensible solution can be found to controlling the money supply. As a preliminary to this, it must be recognised at the outset that the private banks have proved themselves totally irresponsible agents in the creation of new money supply. As a side issue to this discussion, there is the not small matter that bank created money comes with debt attached to it that creates an immense burden on individuals and companies that happen not, themselves, to be banks. Money creation must become, under the new Constitution, mostly the preserve of Government. Experience has taught us that any money created outside of Government, in the new economic world we will enter, will have to be controlled by an iron regime of regulation.
This being the case, the other aspect of monetary policy, the setting of interest rates can not remain separate. We need the two aspects of monetary policy decided firmly under the same roof by the same arm of Government, so that we can have an orderly monetary regime. But it would be a backwards move if decisions on interest rates winged their way back under Executive control directly.
The bold decision should be taken to recognise the need for defining a further separate Function of Government that controls not only interest rates but the overall money supply as well. This Function should be incorporated into a Civil Institution on the same model that was established by the Public Services Board, that is to say, its policy has to be approved by the Executive whilst its appointment is down to the Legislature.
We can call it here: the Monetary Policy Board, the MPB. And this term is considered because it really will be responsible for policy.
Because the vast majority of money creation will now be in the hands of the Government, or more precisely the Government Institution, the Monetary Policy Board, this money will enter the economy mainly by being spent directly through the Public Services. And so the MPB and the PSB will work closely together to achieve this end. The MPB, as a professional body will decide with the elected body, the Executive, the formulation of monetary policy just as public services policy will be decided by the PSB working with the same Executive. The MPB will allow finance, raised from taxes and increases in the money supply, to flow to the PSB which will have to account for its expenditure to the MPB. Thus a Republican system of Separation of Powers, operating with Checks and Balances will operate.
* * *
The conclusion of the above is that the original three Functions of Government should be extended now to six. Indeed, governments have already started, as we have seen, to move towards a greater separation of power and it is this movement that in part forms the basis for proposing and defining the six.
The Six Functions of Government are as follows
It will be the task of the Constitution of the Second Republic to define the form of the Institutions of Government that embody these Functions, maintaining a due Separation of Powers and an adequate system of Checks and Balances.
* * * Republican political theory cannot stand still. Since the great days of advancement of Humanist Political Philosophy in the eighteenth century Enlightenment, the world has changed. With this the nature of Government has changed and responded. Above all, Government has expanded and even the most ardent New Right thinker would accept that it has had to.
The above arguments for extending the three Functions of Government identified by Montesquieu to six is an attempt to reflect the inevitable changes in government, economies and society that have taken place. If we do not chop up the government pie rather more than at present there can be only one result. More and more power will flow to the Executive and this is what Republican thinkers have always sought to guard against.
Six Functions rather than three does not mean more government. It should mean less as the system will be more efficient.
As discussed, the principle of allocating certain decisions to separate independent bodies is already fully accepted as a part of modern government even if it is usually imperfectly realised. But where it is imperfectly realised it is always for the same reason - there is a lack of constitutional solidity to guarantee the independence. And in the absence of a formal system of Checks and Balances, we find the Executive assuming control, poking its nose in all the time, undermining and demoralising the authority of those working at the sharp end who actually have to deliver.
By detaching the two big areas of Monetary Policy and Public Services Control from the Executive we can free the Executive up for what it should be doing - being a leader and an inspiration to the nation.
We need leadership and inspiration on the big issues - world affairs, a transport policy for the future, shaping industrial performance, creating quality of life for all, ensuring an equitable tax system, caring for the environment, ensuring the regions are developed, ensuring that every individual has the best chance in life and celebrating the meaning of nationhood.
Of course, everyone would say they sign up to these ideas. But in the pettifogging, money obsessed political climate of the all-pervading post-Thatcherite Consensus, politics has lost sight of the bigger, human picture to concentrate on blame games that tear society apart and quick fix economic binges that produce devastating hangovers.
We need a radical shake up. That is for sure. The purpose of the Republican Constitution, and the Six Functions of Government it will enshrine, is to make sure all the pieces fall back together in sound, workable form, to enable Britain to move on with certainty, purpose and prosperity.
* * *
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*The Wilson government of 1975 was an interim
*An exception amongst Modern Republics is in the Constitution of the Republic of Russia, adopted after the break up of the Soviet Union where this Function is expressly retained by the President's office. During 2007, it was pointed out that if President Putin wanted to continue in office for a third term, this may be forbidden under the Constitution as it stands, but that it would be a simple matter for him to modify the Constitution to allow him to stand for a third term in 2008. In the event, he did not take up this option preferring to take the office of Prime Minister. However, the problem of not having the Function of Protector of the Constitution embodied in a separate Institution is clear. This omission poses dangers for Russia.
*It is perfectly tenable to say that in the UK nothing has a constitutional basis except the monarch for every goes back to that; Her Majesty's Government, Her Majesty's Prisons etc. Even now the Monarch is above the law, can do no wrong and is head of practically everything!!! Some might find a security in that but Republicans do not.
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