COPY OF ARTICLE ON GUARDIAN ONLINE
You might find this interesting
Queen should call snap election over MPs’ expenses, campaigner says. Malcolm Blair-Robinson has written to three party leaders plus the palace warning next week’s state opening of parliament may be unconstitutional
Constitutional campaigner Malcolm Blair-Robinson has written to each of the three party leaders and the palace warning that it might be unconstitutional for the Queen to press ahead with the state opening of a “disgraced and rotten parliament” next week.
“The situation which arises as a consequence of the scandal of MPs’ expenses is without precedent in our long history,” he writes, in a letter addressed to the prime minister, Gordon Brown, the Conservative leader, David Cameron, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg.
Blair-Robinson, who has written a book entitled 2010: A Blueprint for Change: Bold Ideas for Voters, said he had taken legal advice and sought the opinion of the Ministry of Justice and had been informed by the department that while it “would not necessarily agree with the conclusions” he draws, his “interpretation of the constitution is basically sound” and his analysis “arguably, fair”.
This year the state opening of parliament is due to take place on Wednesday 18 November, but Blair-Robinson claims that if parliament was allowed to “stumble into another session” then “constitutional issues may arise”.
“The national situation, which grows more uncomfortable as each week passes, demands that the issue be put to the people in a general election so that her majesty can summon a new parliament to tackle the challenges before us all,” he said in his letter to the three party leaders.
And he reminds them that the “reserve power to act in defence and protection of the democratic rights and freedoms of her people rests with Her Majesty as head of state”.
“It is her custom to act only on the advice of her prime minister, on the matter of dissolution, but she can act on her own in the public interest and there is no law to prevent this,” he wrote.
In a separate letter to the Queen’s private secretary, Christopher Geidt, Blair-Robinson says that if the three party leaders fail in their duty to request the dissolution of parliament then “the responsibility must fall directly upon Her Majesty, as head of state.”
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said the palace would not comment on individual letters but added: “All correspondence receives a response. If it is about a constitutional issue it will be forwarded to the relevant government.”
A spokesman for Clegg said: “We have been calling for a general election for some time now to give the people the right to have their say, so on that basis we would support the call for a general election as soon as possible.”
A Downing Street spokeswoman said it had not yet received the letter, but the prime minister had made his position on MPs’ expenses “very clear”.
Cameron’s office has also been contacted for comment.
