Liz Truss is Britain’s third prime minister in just over three years. This degree of instability is the product of the modern Conservative party’s refusal to confess its mistakes and to correct them. Instead, the Tories appear obsessed with blaming opponents for their repeated failure to deliver on their promises. The death of Queen Elizabeth II is a chance for the prime minister to reset this attitude in a number of controversial and unresolved matters. The monarch’s passing – and the outpouring of affection for the late Queen – hints at a yearning for a more unifying public conversation. Ms Truss must also be aware that the evolving nature of monarchy, and the arrival of an opinionated King Charles III, sets the stage for possible public conflicts between ministers and the crown.
The first might come over Northern Ireland and Brexit. The King’s view that “no man is an island” in the run-up to Britain’s departure from the EU was interpreted as a rebuke to those who saw these islands’ destiny as independent from the continent. It was also widely remarked this week that the King seemed more at ease with Sinn Féin, which wants to remove Northern Ireland from his kingdom, than with the Democratic Unionist party, which is desperate to remain in it. This might be because of the rupture in the political settlement caused by the DUP’s boycott of the power-sharing pact following its rejection of the Northern Ireland protocol.
In June, to the delight of the DUP, Ms Truss introduced a bill that would give ministers the right in UK law to unilaterally rip up the protocol that they negotiated and eject Northern Ireland from the single market. The move has irritated Brussels, Washington and Dublin, where such parliamentary vandalism is seen as risking decades of peace. Britain’s friends hoped that Brexit’s divisions would be closed in time rather than widened. With the US president, Joe Biden, the Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, arriving for the Queen’s funeral, Ms Truss ought to be able to thrash out a workable solution. If she does not do a deal, she risks sowing division. Hardly anyone – including the King – would be happy with that.
It is often suggested that the monarch’s powers have waned over time since the 19th-century journalist Walter Bagehot first described the role of the sovereign in influencing, rather than making, the decisions of government. Bagehot wrote that the monarch had “the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn”. However, in 2012, a Conservative attorney general denied the Guardian further access to lobbying letters from the Prince of Wales to British ministers, saying that a monarch has not just a right but a “duty” to make his views known to the government.
This was a retrograde step for democracy. Even so, it may have unexpectedly welcome consequences. The coming weeks could see judges declare unlawful the deal reached by the former home secretary to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Would Ms Truss not think again – especially as the King has let it be known that he also disapproved of the policy? King Charles has said that he will abide by the “precious principles of constitutional government which lie at the heart of our nation”. That was read as a reassurance that he would not speak out when he disagrees with the government. But it may also be a threat that he would.
