It is an ancient maxim derived from Roman law and Edward I quoted it in 1295: ‘what touches all should be approved by all’ (ut quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur.) So was launched his Model Parliament that invited representatives of the Church, aristocracy and commoners. It was intended to get agreement for taxes to fund the King’s military adventures on the Continent.
However two years later Edward needed more resources. He tried to tax the clergy without Parliament’s say-so, press nobles into military service and seize England's wool exports. His barons ganged up and forced him not only to reconfirm Magna Carta but to add extra clauses specifying penalties for infringing it. These last he hived off into a separate document and eventually (1306) got the Pope to revoke it.
Nevertheless the ’Great Charter of Liberties’ was re-established as the foundation of the people’s relations with the monarch. It is something the ruling power has hated and struggled against ever since; something far more important than the right to informed consent: the right to informed dissent.
The would-be tyrant’s first point of attack is the public’s access to correct information and full understanding.
We saw this in the vexed story of our membership of the pan-European political project. Our entry into the ‘Common Market’ was validated by a 1970 Conservative General Election manifesto that promised ‘we can stand on our own if the price is too high’ - a price that Edward Heath accepted even when he realised belatedly that it would destroy our fishing industry.
Ten years earlier Lord Kilmuir had advised him on the potential subjugation of our laws to the Council of Ministers and of our courts to the European Court of Justice: ‘the surrenders of sovereignty involved are serious ones and […] should be brought out into the open now.’ On a matter of such import it was insufficient to play down the implications and smuggle the issue into a general manifesto like poisoned mushrooms into a stew; especially since according to a 2017 General Election survey “two-thirds of the UK public (67%) either don't read manifestos, or they don't know what they are.”
The February 1974 Labour manifesto said accordingly "The British people were never consulted about the Market.” When Harold Wilson came to power he submitted the issue to the public in a referendum boasting of his tough renegotiations with the Common Market in which his most important objectives had been “FOOD and MONEY and JOBS" (capitalisation sic); but not our power to say no, which the European citizens still do not have.
In the meantime there are to begin with two major issues on which majority consent has not been obtained and where informed dissent is being suppressed: the continued drive for mass immigration and our gradualist re-binding to the Europeanists’ empire.
The growing tensions have led commentators to speculate on a prediction by professor of war studies David Betz that we will see civil war in Britain within five years. This writer sees it as unlikely.
In the first place the threat to domestic peace is not a general uprising but sporadic unrest in areas particularly affected by social and economic tensions. There has also been conflict between minority groups as for example in Leicester in 2022. Anarchy may be more of a threat than revolution.
Secondly, a tyrannical regime can survive a long time with the use of propaganda, secret police and paramilitary law enforcement. Today the ruler’s grip can be even tighter and longer, because of the development and spread of personal communications technology. Within the last twenty years smartphones have appeared and (so Grok says) are now used by 98% of under-55s and 85% of over-65s in the UK. The liar, censor and police informer are in your pocket.
Our government spies at will on all our electronic communications, has legislated online information and discussion and could easily shut it off altogether. It has even shown it can ‘de-bank’ individuals whose opinions it dislikes - Canada did so on a large scale during the truckers’ protests.
In 1991 Tony Benn told Parliament “riot has historically played a much larger part in British politics than we are ever allowed to know.” In the past, public reactions have sometimes acted as a moderating system, like the ‘governor’ in an engine. But today’s State with its technology and vast publicly-funded manpower can control the masses in ways that the villainous despots of the twentieth century could hardly dream about. It is also poised to stamp out more organised pockets of resistance, as we saw in the brief appearance in 2020 of a stab-vested Black Lives Matter militia in Brixton; even the media coverage of this incident ceased very soon afterwards.
But when dissent is long and effectively suppressed the governorless machine may begin to ‘run hot’ and eventually break down. The longer the correction is delayed the greater the damage.
The problem is made more intractable because executive might is no longer centred either in the monarch or in his Prime Minister. If Dominic Cummings is right the seat of power is in the Cabinet Office which scripts not only Starmer’s responses in Prime Minister’s Questions but his and his ministers’ contributions in Cabinet meetings. Directy and indirectly the Office employs as many as 10,000 people - who can identify and call to account the prime movers in that morass?
If we cannot pull these threads together and place them in the hands of people who are directly answerable to the electorate we may become a fragmented and failed state.
*** Correction: the Fixed Term Parliament Act (2011) was repealed in 2022. Now, if the Government loses a vote of no confidence the Prime Minister will be 'expected' to resign or 'request' a dissolution of Parliament from the Monarch; otherwise the Government's term finishes five years after the previous General Election. What happens if the PM refuses to resign?
