This article was inspired by a clip I came across on Instagram of Labour MP Clive Lewis being sworn in, where he noted that he made the oath under protest, in the hope that one day people would live in a Republic. This reinforced to me the idea that our Members of Parliament swear an oath not to their constituents or the people who elected them, but instead to the Monarch and his heirs. My distaste for the Monarchy as an institution is well known to those around me, but I think that regardless of your opinion of the institution as a whole, you can concur that our MPs’ oath should focus more on their role as representatives of the people, as opposed to their status as servants of the King.
Our Constitutional settlement is messy and complicated, but in the modern day we accept our Monarch as a figurehead, and the actions of the State are conducted almost entirely through HM Government – who must command the support of the House of Commons. I don’t like it, but it does work.
What many people don’t realise however is that our Ministers don’t rule in conjunction with the Monarch, but rather through their authority. Each law must gain Royal Assent, each Secretary of State derives their authority from the King. Indeed, in the brief window between Rishi Sunak resigning and Sir Keir Starmer arriving at Buckingham Palace; all executive power rested with King Charles III. Our Monarchy is fundamental to our political system, engrained into every element of our governance.
Our democracy exists at the will of the King, evidenced so clearly by the words all our MPs spoke over the last week. To me, this is symbolic of a broken political order- where we continue to value fealty to the Crown over service to the people. Monarchy is an old, outdated and undemocratic concept – predicated on the idea that some people are just better than you and deserving of more than you – simply due to the circumstance of their birth. If you’re a monarchist, you at least need to accept that to be true. I believe myself to be a Citizen, not a subject.
To me, the Oath our MPs swear should focus on the fact that they have been elected to represent their people – to raise their concerns and fight for their needs. They should affirm their commitment to serving their people to the best of their ability, and to defend the values of democracy and equality that underpin modern Britain. There are so many better ways for a Member of Parliament, a servant of the British people, to enter the Chamber than by swearing allegiance to the least democratic element of our Constitutional order.
Somewhere between a quarter and a third of people now believe in the abolition of the monarchy, and what this oath also does is suggest that Republicanism of any variety is simply not welcome in the House of Commons. Even if you’re the most ardent of Monarchists, if you also consider yourself a proponent of free speech and democracy, you must accept that people should be allow to express dissent and fight for change at every step of the political process. Forcing MPs who don’t believe in Monarchy to swear allegiance to the Crown is outdated, undemocratic and just plain inconsiderate to the simple fact that there is a diversity of views on the subject of Monarchy.
We’ve spoken a lot recently about restoring faith in our politics – Sir Keir Starmer always tells us that this new era is about service. If that is the case, the changing the oath would be one way to show that our politics is now about the ordinary British people, not the King. Monarchist or not, I’m sure every supporter of free speech and representative democracy can agree that there are better ways to swear our MPs in.
This is the text of the Affirmation, there is also the option to do the religious ‘Swearing In’ which references God as well:
I do solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm, that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law.
* Zagham Farhan the 'President Emeritus' of the Oxford Students Liberal Association, and Secretary-Elect of the Liberal Democrat Friends of the Armed Forces
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26 Comments
If you want to lose at least half those seats you just won then carry on. Messing with the Monarchy is a very big vote loser.
I’m not anti-monarchy – just indifferent to it. I can’t visualise it being abolished any time soon.
I agree that our MPs shoudl swear allegiance to the people, not the monarch
There was a time when you swore allegiance to God and the monarch, and the very idea of something different was considered distasteful. Nowadays, people don’t think twice about MPs swearing or affirming as appropriate, allowing people such as atheists and Quakers to be sworn into Parliament. We can’t be far off the introduction of a choice between swearing allegiance to the monarchy or to the people (or both!).
Given Charles seems to be continuing the work to modernise the monarchy, and open to new ideas, I can’t see him being opposed to revising this tradition from another era.
(And yes, I’m indifferent to the monarchy as well)
I’m no Royal groupie but changing things is emphatically not a priority for me. Would we elect a President? How does President Farage or Boris Johnson grab you? Be careful what you wish for!
Swearing, or affirming, allegiance to the monarch is symbolic, and I think it’s a waste of energy, and IMO comes across as out of touch, to put any energy into changing it. There’s the caveat about ‘in accordance with law’ (or similar), just in case Princess Charlotte gets any mad ideas about using MPs to get up to no good.
Swearing allegiance to the people would open up a whole new can of worms. If MPs have allegiance to me, what if we disagree? How do we work out what having allegiance to a group of people involves?
‘Somewhere between a quarter and a third of people now believe in the abolition of the monarchy’
Which means somewhere between 3/4 and 2/3 don’t. Should the majority accept the wishes of the minority?
I would venture that apart from those with an active ‘distaste for the monarchy’ most people couldn’t give a bean about this issue. It’s not like MPs are actually expected to do the King’s personal bidding, or that ‘Royal Assent’ is anything more than a rubber stamp.
And it’s not like our democracy is in any danger from the Crown.
Democracy elswhere in danger from a would-be president, on the other hand…
A great article from the current President of my old university Liberal club (we had over 1000 members in the late ’60s). Does the oath/affirmation carry any legal weight over and above the ordinary law? If it is symbolic only, then perhaps it’s still appropriate to make it to the King as the symbolic embodiment of those nebulous concepts “the people” and “the nation”.
In the USA, the President at his inauguration swears the following oath:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
It doesn’t seem to have worked well recently.
The wording of the oath refers to the monarch and his or her successors. If the constitution is changed so that the head of state is other than an hereditary monarch that person would be the successor.
The old Parliament of Scotland, which ended after the Treaty of Union was put into effect in 1707 and the Parliament of England expanded to become the Parliament of Great Britain, had oaths to be taken by both members of the parliament as well as by the Monarch. Perhaps the House of Commons, as a successor to that parliament, should adopt a similar approach?
It is only symbolic nothing else. Not something to get concerned with. I am a Republican but taking the oath no problem, it is all part of life “in this great country of hours”!
@Leekliberal. I’ve heard this old canard many times, that if we didn’t have a monarch we’d have President Johnson/Blair/Farage, but the Irish seem to have it sorted. Having an octogenarian poet as your head of state is, imho, a very positive statement. Or you could have an hereditary multi millionaire instead, which is also a statement.
The argument about presidents here seems to be missing something.
In many countries – USA, France etc. the president has a powerful political role.
In UK the monarchy operates effectively as a non-political head of state – yes the monarch grants Royak Assent when a bill becomes an Act of Parliament but that’s all. In other respects the monarch is just doing the ceremonial stuff.
As I understand it the president of Ireland is also there to do the ceremonial stuff but not the political stuff.
Personally I’m not keen on political presidents – my concerns being around giving so much power to one person.
It seems reasonable to me to have a ceremonial head of state, elected by the people. The hereditary system can give us an entirely unsuitable person for the role. e.g. Edward VIII. An elected president could be someone who is highly thought of by the people but who has not held any major political position.
I’m not against an elected, ceremonial head of state as such. But I am currently against the rigmarole of trying to find a system that would would make most people happy and be as effective as the one we’ve got.
I take the point that we could end up with a deeply unsuitable monarch, but I’m not convinced the sort of person willing to put themselves forward to be the ceremonial, ribbon cutting head of state would be without flaws. They’d need to be famous enough to make it worth while and for it to be a special occasion when someone sees or meets them, but how they get that famous in advance, or after the event without annoying half the country and/or becoming competition for the political leaders is another thing.
I suggest we campaign for a way of writing a constitution for our country. We need to consider the best way of involving our fellow citizens in this. What exactly is the influence of our monarch in government is a mystery to me. However we need to have a means of looking at the many problems that the present system might have caused.
The prospect of a political head of stare would be truly frightening. The constitutional monarchy is there to provide ceremony and tradition and long may it continue.
@Christopher Haigh
“The constitutional monarchy is there to provide ceremony and tradition and long may it continue.”
So what happens if the person who inherits the job via an accident of birth isn’t capable of doing the job properly?
Whichever way this happens or doesn’t happen, what difference does it make. I love our traditions and there’s a lot to be lost, including votes, if we ditch them.
It should be an oath to honesty and dignity, and to good service or something like that. Not to any particular person or people.
I have always been a republican. However the majority of Britons are monarchists, and we will have a monarchy as long as that continues to be the case.
While we have a monarchy, I think the oath of office is acceptable. When I took my citizenship oath back in 1974 I regarded it as a way of pledging allegiance to the state, which is also how I think of the Parliamentary oath.
You chaps need to recognise one of the reasons you have 70-odd MPs is that the Tories utterly failed to do basic research, find articles like this and put it on leaflets to their voters in Tory-Lib Dem marginals in the Home Counties, instead putting all their effort into the already-failed project to demonise Starmer as a Corbynite fifth columnnist. (Obviously that’s their fault, not yours).
I have no objection to Lib Dems wanting to be a liberal, reformist party. But what many people think they have elected is a centrist, consensualist party. Whilst the Lib Dems are centrist (with occasional twitches slightly leftward) on economics, they are not centrist or consensualist (which are different things) on social issues.
Ultimately the question is one about the source of power. Does it lie with the sovereign rights of the monarch, ultimately attributed to the backing of divine providence? Or does it lie with the body of the people, as expressed through voting and political dialogue?
If the ultimate basis for governmental authority lies with the support of the people, not delegation from the monarch, then such oaths as are taken (if they are needed at all) should reflect that fact. But note that the further implication of that is that the monarchy is also an office, held at the will and pleasure of the people, and not a sacred obligation vested by Heaven in one man.
@ David “the monarchy is also an office, held at the will and pleasure of the people, and not a sacred obligation vested by Heaven in one man”.
I think, when you come to check the facts, David, you’ll find that for more than 134 of the 187 years since 1837, it’s actually been vested in one woman (two women in total). They seem to have a bit more stamina.
Party politics, as so often, fails us here. The monarchy is the embodiment of privilege, gross social inequality, and resistance to change. It is a weapon wielded to great effect by Conservative forces in defence of privilege. And yet, the pragmatic response from centre and left Parties is to shy away from the issue, because opposing the monarchy is a vote-loser.
Well, keep quiet, then. Leave it to Republic to fight against hereditary privilege.
Why do MPs need to swear an oath at all? Allegiance to the state is assumed as one of the basic duties of British citizenship – those acquiring citizenship as an adult take an oath of allegiance. Okay there does seem to be an anomaly in that a citizen of the Republic of Ireland can stand for Parliament, ditto Commonwealth citizens with residence rights. Why allow a citizen of the Irish or Indian Republic to stand for Parliament only to tell them they can only take their seat if they swear allegiance to the British Crown?
One small point – don’t spell ‘republican’ with a capital ‘R’ – it equates it with the US political party. As it happens, the Australian Republican Movement has since changed its name to the Australian Republic Movement, possibly because Donald Trump was giving ‘Republican’ a bad name.
Peter, you are right to question the need to have an oath of allegiance for MPs – in Ireland, TDs, or members of Dáil Éireann, sign the roll of members.
However, I don’t think Irish or qualifying Commonwealth citizens elected to the House of Commons should be exempt from taking the Oath of Allegiance – ironically, Sinn Fein has been an abstentionist party for longer than it has been a republican one, as when it was first founded, it envisaged Ireland sharing a monarchy with Britain without sharing a parliament, similar to the relationship of Hungary with Austria at the time.
Even if the UK became a republic, their MPs in Northern Ireland still wouldn’t take an oath to a British republican constitution because they reject the British presence in Ireland in any shape or form, monarchical or republican.