Utopia, you are standing in it!

Three Ways of Dissolving Parliament

In his famous treatise Commentaries on the Laws of England, Blackstone identified that dissolution can occur through one of three ways:

“1. By the king’s will […];
2. By a demise of the crown […];
3. By length of time.”[1]

Under Responsible Government, where Ministers of the Crown take responsibility for all acts of the Crown and the Crown acts on ministerial advice, dissolution by “the king’s will” now means dissolution by the prime minister’s or premier’s will. All dissolutions of the Parliament of Canada since 1867 have occurred under this method, and based on what I’ve seen in the last ten years of researching this field, the premiers have effected all dissolutions of the provincial legislatures since 1867 as well. (But if someone can find a contrary example, please do let me know – because that would prove most interesting). The first minister…

Talk is cheap. Governments, particularly wealthy, western ones, have been quick to make promises on climate change. They swear blind that they understand the threat the world faces, and that they will implement a policy response commensurate with it.Few nations have adopted this rhetoric as determinedly as the UK, with the British government promising to transform the UK into a net-zero country by 2050, an oath enshrined in law through the passing of the Climate Change Act 2008 (Order 2019) by Parliament in the summer of 2019.

Yet for all this hot air, whether in the form of domestic legislation like the above or international treaties like the Paris Agreement, even those wearing the most rose-tinted spectacles will see only incremental progress.Reporting last year, the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) concluded that ‘this [2020] was not the year of policy progress that the Committee called for in 2019’, while…

The turbulent eleven years known as the “Interregnum” (from the Latin for inter “between” and regnum “reign”) was the only period in English history to not have a ruling monarch. It was an age of suspicion and paranoia. A king had been executed, Parliament and the New Model Army jockeyed for power, and Puritanical fanaticism took hold. The Interregnum took place in two effective periods: the Commonwealth (1649-1653) wherein power was largely concentrated in the hands of Parliament, and the Protectorate (153-1659) wherein Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard took power with the support of the military as the Lords Protectorate.

After the shocking beheading of Charles I, England became a nominal republic. Abroad on the Continent, the monarchs of Europe looked on in horror as England committed regicide, but not a single European monarch offered military support to Charles. In London, a statue of Charles was cast down with…

Most of us probably think of pubs as informal spaces for leisure and socialising. In the period we research for the House of Commons 1832-1868 project, however, things were rather different. Public houses played a central role in many of the formal routines of public life, providing meeting places and temporary offices for a range of civic and commercial activities. These more formal functions were especially apparent when it came to the business of organising and running election campaigns. The idea of the pub as a suitable venue for electioneering might seem rather alien to us today, but our research shows that they continued to play a significant part in British political life well beyond the 1832 Reform Act.

Unused ‘refreshment’ ticket, 1841

The traditional view of the pub in early Victorian elections, of course, is as providers of drink. Vast quantities of alcohol were often given away in the…

When James VI left Edinburgh to become King James I of England, his frail younger son, Charles, was left behind in Scotland. “Baby Charles” was a sickly child who had unfortunately inherited his father’s lack of confidence. He was never supposed to be king. That honor was conferred upon Charles’s elder brother, Prince Henry, a vigorous and confident young man who many embraced as successor to the crown. However, he tragically died of an illness early in 1612. Charles was further isolated when his older sister, Elizabeth, departed to marry the King of Bohemia in 1613. At that point all eyes turned toward Charles for the succession of the crown. To fulfill his solemn duty, Charles grew into a proud, pious, and ultimately pathetic figure. He continued his father’s delusions about the “divine right of kings” and exacerbated hostilities between King and Parliament, and Church and State. His failures and…