Tag: Prime Minister
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Stephanie Reynolds: Elon Musk: Stretching or Snapping an Elastic Constitution?
Elon Musk has recently utilised his extensive platform as owner of social media site X to intervene in British politics. He has labelled the UK Prime Minister ‘two-tier Keir’ in relation to allegations of police bias against white protestors during the 2024 riots, and after the Government announced changes to inheritance tax, declared that ‘Britain…
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Alyssa Nathanson-Tanner: The Irresistible Temptations of Patronage: Prime Ministerial Appointment of Crossbenchers
Among the many questions raised by the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury in November 2024, the peerage which has customarily been awarded by the Prime Minister hangs in the balance. The Prime Minister enjoys an unlimited discretion to appoint new peers, and since the Life Peerages Act 1958 has granted a life peerage on…
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Mike Gordon: Labour’s Ministerial Code and Political Standards Reform
On 6th November, Prime Minister Keir Starmer published his (long awaited) revised version of the Ministerial Code. A written statement in Parliament by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, accompanying the release of the updated text suggested that ‘[t]he new code will be instrumental in setting out the high standards that the…
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Daniella Lock: UK Government Assessments of Risk to Refugees and ECHR Constraints on UK Immigration Policy in the Rwanda Ruling
This post examines the High Court’s December ruling on the lawfulness of the UK Government’s Rwanda scheme. The Rwanda scheme allows people to be removed to Rwanda to have their asylum claims determined, where that claim is considered inadmissible in the UK. The lawfulness of the scheme partly turned on its compatibility with the UK’s…
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Michael Foran: Prime Ministers, Party Members, and the Efficient Secret
The office of Prime Minister is a creature entirely of constitutional convention. While legislation references the office itself, setting out pay for example, this is only statutory recognition of the existence of an office which arises purely by virtue of convention. It is by convention that the Monarch appoints as Prime Minister someone who is…
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Steven Chaplin: There’s a time and place for prorogation — and this is it
As I sit and watch the turmoil at Westminster on the morning (afternoon in London) that Liz Truss announced her resignation; the morning that the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers scramble to find a leader in a week’s time; a seemingly firm date of October 31 for a budget statement from a recently appointed Chancellor…
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Alexander Latham-Gambi: How Should We Teach the Johnson Government? (Possible) Pedagogical Shortcomings in the Face of (Arguable) Constitutional Vandalism
It may reasonably be argued that the Johnson Government launched a determined assault upon the UK constitutional settlement. We are failing in our duty as teachers of constitutional law if we do not equip our students with the tools to appraise this argument. Some of the features of the way in which public law is…
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Rodney Brazier: No Way to Pick a PM
And so the United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister, replacing one who, having besmirched the office, had been forced out. The Conservatives took almost eight weeks to choose Liz Truss. That saga resembled a presidential election, not least in the televised debates that were occasionally as unedifying as they were uninformative, and notoriously in…
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David Howarth: Who Monitors Donations to Ministers – Parliament, the Prime Minister, or the Electoral Commission?
Does the jurisdiction of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over donations to Members of Parliament extend to members who are ministers? The current Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, seems to have decided that it does not, a situation she agreed is ‘bonkers’. The problem is that the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament says that ‘Members…
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Chris Monaghan: Party-gate as a Ground for Impeachment? Perhaps, But We Need to Modernise Impeachment Before It Is Fit For Purpose
In a recent post published on the UKCLA blog, I argued that impeachment could serve a purpose in the contemporary United Kingdom. The key points were that a modernised impeachment process could buttress the existing political accountability mechanisms. This would support the ability of the House of Commons to hold the government to account and…