Labour killed the Constitution; time for a Restoration: David Starkey

[Music] ladies and gentlemen what I want to do today is and it would have been nice if William had explained in that flood of of carefully scripted eloquence uh that uh we we gave the title of my talk I seem to remember conservatism near-death experience a near-death experience uh and I think we need to begin with that idea I'd like to begin with something else uh whenever I do history I'm interested in things and places the great difference between myself and my very great teacher who was himself a student in this place Jeffrey Elton uh back in the 1950s is that we had a sense of the reality of the past the thiness of the past history is more than mere words far too much of the history we teach is merely playing with words and and a kind of a kind of verbal embroidery so what I want to begin with is what maybe some of you even watched it on television this morning late this morning The King's Speech the state opening of parliament what is it there why do we have it does it matter and the reason I want to talk about that is that it seems to me that what we have seen uh since since 1997 since the new labor government of 1997 right up to the present is effectively 25 years of quazi Revolution which has effectively demolished and deliberately disintegrated the historic constitution of Britain as it was reformulated first in 16 in in in 1660 with the restoration and again uh in in 1689 with the Glorious Revolution and in other words what I'm going to be suggesting is that we have had a period of overt Revolution under new labor and secondly we've had something much worse we've had a slinking Supple Michael goes prolongation of this thing under conservatism and that we are reaping the catastrophic consequences in other words as conservatives we should fundamentally be aware of the idea of a constitution this is something you will never ever hear from central office no conservative politician with the possible exception of someone like ree MOG has ever talked about it in the last 20 or 30 Years yet nevertheless it is Central why do I say it's Central Britain England is unique in one in many respects but I think in the most important respect Britain is the only country that consciously deliberately and without foreign intervention or direct military crisis reverses a revolution we have forgotten what happens in 1660 Britain the the the Kingdom of Great Britain the United which of course actually becomes the entire British Isles thanks to the conquest by Cromwell experiencing is in the 17th century a revolution as radical as that of France there is a more I took friends around Westminster Abbey last week there is a more radical destruction of the royal regalia in England in the 17th century than there was in France at the end of the 18th century partly of course it's because by the time you've got to the end of the 18th century you have a sense of the past you have a sense of History you have a desire to create a museum even if it's a past that's hated so the Mand of justi of Charlamagne and whatever and the the the elements of the great medieval regalia of France even survives the depredations of of a robp and the Committee of Public Safety and whatever not so in England so the Revolution in England is an astonishingly radical one it aspires not simply remember to cut the head off of the king which it does pioneering a public trial and a public execution of a king it aspires to remove the very name from The Language even the King's Highway whatever everything is renamed so it is of astonishing radicalness what's even more interesting of course is that the removal of the King was promptly followed by the removal of parliament you obliterate a pre-existing Constitution which remember had substantially continued with we do need to remember this ever since the 13th century um we have therefore what we inherited what Blair inherited in 19 in 1997 was Elements which remained unchanged from the high Middle Ages this seems to me to be absolutely fundamental and what we as conservatives should attach ourselves to basically what was it why did did they ReStore in uh 1660 why did they reer ReStore in 1689 why did we see this morning The Echoes of that now largely and empty shell the state opening of parliament looks exactly as it did at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth the First of Elizabeth inde Elizabeth the first but Elizabeth II but the substance has gone and it's that evacuation of substance that seems to me to be so disastrous and why I would what I would like to suggest the conservative party needs to do uh it will of course be demolished it will suffer much the same fate as the monarchy in 1649 I imagine at the next election um whether that involves the actual exec the beheading of Rishi who who knows um either either either by the opposition or maybe by his own by what's left of his own back Ventures but the the the there will be an astonishing change what should the aspiration be I think the aspiration should be for a new restoration a second restoration now let me try and explain why I think that's necessary what the old Constitution did the Constitution uh that essentially uh in in its essential aspects and if we if we go back to that Ceremony this morning uh there was the Monarch the there was the consult there were the uh the peers the judges and the Commons at the bar of the house the only thing that would have been different in the Middle Ages is that the Monarch would not have had the consort by him it would have always been a himym of course he would have had instead the Archbishop of Canterbury on his right hand and the Archbishop of York on his left hand with the Primacy of the church which is of course destroyed uh by Henry VII and the uh Parliament the act of presidency of of of 15394 um but what that Parliament represented and why it matters so much was described by the judges as early as the 14th century they say everybody is bound by an act of parliament because everybody is construed to be represented there either in person or by his representative that is in about 1340 this is long before for any concept of democracy but it is the highly developed sense of representative government and a government which finally some way is answerable that is not simply a government from above but is government that responds to those below and that government is a communal Enterprise and that the thing that as it were symbolizes that Enterprise is debate is debate discussion about the two vital aspects of government which is raising money on the one hand and passing laws on the other all the subject of debate all the subject of vote right now that is seems to me to be fundamentally how human Affairs should be conducted remember many of you I'm sure do papers on political thought um the two great opposed figures in the history of political thought are Plato on the one hand and Aristotle on the other Plato thinks that government is primar a matter of expertise it's primary a matter of knowledge and training Aristotle has got this wonderful phrase which I think should be pinned to all of us the badge on our jackets and the badge on our hearts and the badge on whatever is the female equivalent um and it is that the judge of a meal is not the cook it is the eater that seems to me to be the Central issue that we should have as it were were as a mirror of government as a mirror of how government should properly be conducted and that essentially it seems to me is how Britain was governed for hundreds and hundreds of years and the thing that's really striking is how that pattern is if you like modernized if you look at the processes of social change of the rise of different groups economically empowered or socially empowered or whatever it is in every other European country it requires to accommodate them some process or another of Revolution however violent after 1689 in Britain the story is a very different one whether you look at chartism in the 1830s whether you look at the broadening pressure to represent the male working class in the later 19th century whether you look at the struggle to accommodate women nobody is trying to bring the system down what they are trying to do is to become part of it to become part of that representative assembly to have the right to sit in it and have the right to vote for it in other words you're dealing not with if you like Revolution at all you're dealing with a broadening and incorporation and it seems to me that is why the scene that we saw this morning is still there why it's in a building which is deliberately built look where we are now we're in the Wilkins building do we all know who Wilkins is the greatest architects of the early 18 of the early 19th century this is a building constructed under the influence of Jeremy benam and the extraordinary Reform movement uh of the early 19th century which is designed to be clean modern structured designed okay um look at the building where the uh where the um State opening of parliament took place it is almost exactly contemporary with this but what does it look like it looks as near medieval as they could make it this is there because what they were doing consciously was to say that freedom that representative govern government that the rule of law that the security of property everything that made Britain England particularly the pioneering country in modernity and economic growth is not the creation of a specific moment is not the creation of a written Constitution it is good conservatives we know this good burans we know this it is the creation of the hand of time it is intrinsic it is is of historic growth what happens in 1997 is of course Tony Blair comes along and feels the hand of History upon his shoulder and I'm afraid it wasn't Cleo the Muse it was some fraudulent that touched him because what you do instead is decide that this is terribly old-fashioned it's deeply deeply boring and wouldn't it be nice if we invented Britain to look like a newly enfranchised ex satellite of the Soviet Union with a reach me down International Constitution complete with bills of Rights and other such nonsense the key issue is the idea of the separation of powers do we all know who invents the idea Montes um uh who is Montes he is a tarome French Aristocrat it is an absolute rule that all bad ideas are French um and monu is one of the clear de is one of the clearest examples of this Montes is supposed to have got the idea of separation of P from Britain and he spends indeed two years in Britain he never bothers to learn English he spends the whole of his time mingling in aristocratic circles that speak French and the only inkling that he has of anything uh going on in England is from strange people like Vicon bowling broke and the idea of the Patriot King where he lifts this extraordinary idea from if you actually look at what goes on and and this can be proved by the way this this is this is serious scholarship um if you actually look um at what what was AR raay before you um in the parliament chamber this morning there was never any separation of powers in Britain Parliament was the Supreme Court it exercised power over um over over judicature it exercised power over Finance it exercised power over religion it was both the executive and it was the legislative and if you look there there is the king there is there are the judges there are the Bishops um there's the aristocracy there's the House of Commons there was never any separation of powers and if you come to think about it how can there be a separation of powers in England when the Office of Prime Minister in other words the chief of the executive the person who is the sort of substitute monarch remember Japan had the system of a real Monarch and and an act of a nominal Monarch the madoo and the Shogun even with two completely separate capitals the equivalent of the Shogun uh in Britain is the prime minister and what does he do the head of the Executive actually sits in the legislative and has to manage it and this is of course the reason that Britain has been able to maintain a parliamentary system whereas virtually no other country can because through the prime minister you actually manage a representative chamber chambers of 600 people can't govern as we saw very clearly uh when burko tried to recreate the the role of speaker lenol um in the in the early stages of the Civil War in England in 1640 you cannot do it and and the instead the role of the Prime Minister is to manage the Monarch on on the on behalf of Parliament and Parliament on behalf of the monarch so you first of all the first disaster under new labor is you begin to introduce elements of a separation of powers you Hive off a supreme court and you immediately see the problem of this in which you refer a decision of the Prime Minister uh controlling a majority in the Commons or in that case a bare majority in the Commons to the Supreme Court so you actually have judges overruling the overruling uh the the the the chief the chief executive um who is in fact um a a product of of a general election and the support of a general election a disaster you do something else of course you separate out the ancient office of Lord Chancellor you decide you can't have the ancient office of Lord Chancellor because he's he was the head of the Judiciary but he was also a politician and he sat in the cabinet we say this is a terribly bad thing so we Dethrone the Lord Chancellor and semi abolish him do you think the current chaos of Justice the current fact that we we we we talk of you know increase sentences we don't actually have courts that can sentence we don't have prison we don't have have cells to put the prisoners in the disgraceful chaos of justice that we have at the moment would have been inconceivable in the days of the of the old Lord chancellors be it be it on the labor side and or somebody like m m of clashfern who is Thatcher's great Chancellor but much worse than this much worse than even the separation of powers is of course the fragmentation of the United Kingdom with Devolution remember the only point of Union between England and Scotland was Parliament there's no other point of Union the act of Union of 1707 leaves Scotland with all the lineaments of separate nationhood apart from the monarchy and parli Scotland was left is left with its own system of law its own religion the Monarch changes religion when they cross the border uh with with with its own system of heraldry with its own right to issue coinage why there are unusable Scottish notes which you get people turn their noses up at them at at them in London and so on and so an educational system universities which are entrenched by the act of Union and so on and so on um so you you actually fragment the union but the worst thing that happens and I think I will make this point and then we'll open this thing up what has happened and why so the fact that Parliament is now acutely dysfunctional for these reasons but the thing that is the most dysfunctional aspect of it all was were two one of them is the incorporation of the Human Rights Act and the convention on human rights into English law do we all understand that there is a fundamental contradiction between the notion of universal human rights and the sovereignty of the state these are absolute logical contradictories that cannot be held together which is why Jeremy benam who founds this Co this college describes doctrines of universal human rights as nonsense on stilts we can explore that but there is a total contradiction between the idea of a nation state and the notion of universal humanity and Universal human rights so you do that so you introduce a very powerful element which remember is a deeply destructive because it's also combined with the equality act one of the greatest principles of the Old English Constitution was equality before the law that all laws apply equally to everybody what we've done since the the labor government the new labor government is to introduce sectional laws that protect protect people by religion protect people by race that fragment and disintegrate this is catastrophic and finally the worst of them all and I can't I wish I could blame it entirely on new labor but I'm afraid the Tories have a terrible burden of responsibility since the 1960s we have fragmented government more and more into the quazi autonomous non-governmental organizations the quangos Parliament and the government decide almost nothing that matters interest rates are determined by the monetary policy of the bank of England the utterly fundamental business of climate change is decided by a collection of self-interested Maniacs most of whom have heav I'm now speaking deliberately have heavy investments in Renewables the policy of land use is determined by another bunch of Nutters in other words Tony Juniper and English nature we go on and on and on and what surely we learned with covid was that the absolutely worst way of conducting business is by a single issue expert committee they are only concerned with one matter good government depends on the balance of incommensurables of weighing things against each other and as we've learned the only thing that we've learned of any use from the co inquiry is that nobody bothered to count the cost of lockdown nobody bothered to ask the question what is the benefit kui Bono and until we do that we're lost and I think we are lost until this process this need for reconstruction this need for a re-engagement a reanimation a restoration of the past takes place [Music]

Channel: David Starkey Talks

Views: 93,640

Keywords: David Starkey, History

Id: G59FLLpz_bU

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 19 2023