I’ve always hated the fact that in the UK we’re subjects of the Queen and not citizens, when asked why? I often flounder around for a reason – to me it just isn’t right that anyone should be the subject of another and surely everybody can see that. Whatever peoples view of royalty fee see this distinction as important, however it affects our lives, our laws our government – Graham Smith’s article Civil liberties campaigners need to look at the bigger picture for Liberal Democracy shows our status as subjects is eroding our civil liberties.

Our constitution has enjoyed some superficial changes, certainly, particularly over the past eleven years, but it is essentially the same constitution we’ve had since the inglorious Glorious Revolution in the late 1680s. It is based on the sovereignty of Crown and parliament. The powers of the monarch – who for most of her reign is constitutionally pointless – now reside either in the Commons or in Number 10. Number 10 controls the Commons save for the occasional rebellion, and so unlimited power is granted to whomever occupies the office of Prime Minister.

Democracy is about ‘the people’ being the boss – an idea they understand in the US only too well. In the UK all we get is the chance, every four or five years, to influence who will be our boss. Lord Hailsham (not a typical republican radical) put it succinctly back in his 1976 Richard Dimbleby lecture:

The powers of our own Parliament are absolute and unlimited. And in this, we are almost alone. All other free nations impose limitations on their representative assemblies. We impose none on ours. Parliament can take away a man’s liberty or his life without a trial, and in past centuries, it has actually done so.

Hailsham famously added: “We live in an elective dictatorship, absolute in theory, if hitherto thought tolerable in practice.”

The source of this situation is the monarchy. Parliament gets its ‘absolute and unlimited’ power from the Crown. It is our status as subjects of the Crown (subjects still, despite various ‘citizenship’ Acts) which makes parliament our master, not our servant.

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It is in this context that our rights are being eroded while so many are willing to sit in silence, often applauding the attack on their own liberties.

Those in power will always seek to control and to manipulate those they govern. It is as inevitable as death and taxes. This is why written constitutions, based on sound democratic principles and containing strong defences against authoritarianism, are essential in any modern society.

There is no room for the Crown or for a sovereign parliament in such a constitution, only for the sovereignty of the people and the rights of the citizen. Source: Liberal Conspiracy.