What does the Opposition oppose?

We sometimes use certain phrases by rote simply because they naturally roll off the tongue. Some such phrases are meaningless, some are hackneyed, but some are worth pondering.

The term ‘His Majesty’s Opposition’ is one such. It conveys a universe of constitutional meaning, with the question in the title offering a clue.

For the party with the second largest number of parliamentary seats is the opposition of His Majesty, not to His Majesty. Its full name, His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, makes this abundantly clear.

The opposition party fights political squabbles with the ruling one. The former is there to bring the latter to account, to keep it on the straight and narrow, preventing it from doing too much damage to His Majesty’s realm.

Yet both parties, or any others, remain equally loyal to the monarch who stands above partisan rough-and-tumble. That loyalty brings all parties – and all subjects – into a single entity, which makes the monarch a vital and constant presence as the lynchpin of Britain’s constitution.

If the Commons derives its legitimacy from the current generation of voters, the legitimacy of the Crown goes back so far that it disappears in the haze of time. Since we can’t pinpoint its origin to a single historical event, we might as well follow Burke’s and de Maistre’s recommendation and assume that the monarch’s remit comes from God.

Even if a single monarch may accede to the throne in the wake of a political upheaval, the institution itself sits above politics, as does the House of Lords (you realise of course that I’m talking about those institutions as they are supposed to be, not as what they’ve become as a result of perverse, often subversive, pressures).

This arrangement has been developed over many centuries by many sage men who understood what a true balance of power really means. It should suspend in equilibrium the interests of all classes, with none finding itself in a dominant position and all having their interests, if not necessarily their wishes, adequately protected and represented.

No republic, including the USA, can boast the same balance, although the term has much currency in America.

There it means the harmony of the three branches of government, executive, judiciary and legislative. However, two of those branches are elected and the third one is appointed and approved by the other two. None derives its power from birthright, which puts all three – indeed the whole state – at the mercy of political vicissitudes.

The balance of power in the American Republic is thus transient, constantly in a state of flux. Those manning the three branches are drawn from the same social and cultural pool of humanity, where the same interests are widely shared across the board.

They are even similar educationally: for example, more than half of US senators are lawyers by trade. There is nothing wrong with this in principle: it stands to reason that many of the people trusted to pass just laws should have a professional understanding of justice and legality. But it’s not the same balance of power that exists in our constitutional monarchy.

Both the ruling party and the opposition have an adversarial relationship with each other but not with the state, as headed and personified by the monarch. Such is the political atmosphere of our United Kingdom, and it can be poisoned by the toxic whiff of republicanism.

I haven’t had the fortune or misfortune of going through the system of British education, but the impression I get is that people who do haven’t been properly enlightened in the essence of our government.

Last summer I played a doubles match at my tennis club, followed by the ritual of a chat over a beer. Painfully aware as I am that I must keep my views to myself if I can ever hope to have doubles partners, I did more listening than talking.

Such uncharacteristic passivity helped me find out that all three of my fellow players were “against the monarchy”, as they put it. All three are middle-aged, middle-class gentlemen whose accents suggest minor public schools or at least comprehensives in upmarket neighbourhoods. Yet none of them realised that the phrase “against the monarchy” is fully synonymous with “against the British state”.

They seemed to think that the country would be better off if the head of state and both Houses of Parliament were elected. That way things would proceed as they always have, but better.

Unfortunately, such views seem to be shared by many members of the ruling party and, I suspect, even by some members of His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, which makes it rather disloyal. A republican Britain wouldn’t be Britain.

Socialists of course hate any form of dynastic continuity, which is why they are so fanatically devoted to exorbitant inheritance taxation. They justify such subversion by dire fiscal shortage, but such feelings have more to do with visceral animus than any economic considerations.

It springs from the same anti-monarchy sentiments as those evinced by my tennis partners, who are fortunately in no position to act accordingly – unless of course republicanism reaches a certain critical mass in the country.

I doubt that will happen in my lifetime, although I’ve been unpleasantly surprised before. My hope is that Britons haven’t yet been so thoroughly corrupted that they’ll welcome opposition to, rather than of, His Majesty. Yet I am aware of powerful forces pulling in that direction.