John Colville's The Fringers of Power is great for bizarre suggestions about the British Constitution. First he got all excited about the last-minute suggestion that France merge with Great Britain to avoid total defeat by the Germans. Now he's suggesting that the South African Jan Smuts be made Prime Minister (p. 271):
As I was sitting at the C. W. R, drinking lager with Tony Bevir, I said what a remarkable man Smuts was and how shrewd in the comments he sends from thousands of miles away. Tony suggested he might be Prime Minister if anything happened to Winston (which God forbid). This seemed to me a great Imperial idea: to have a Dominion politician as Prime Minister of England would be a living proof of the solidarity of the Commonwealth; and Smuts, a member of the Imperial War Cabinet in the last war, the man whose tact broke the Welsh coal strike at a critical moment, has the experience, the wisdom, the drive and the reputation to prove himself a worthy successor to Winston. There would, of course, be difficulties: the jealousy of the other Dominions, the strength of opposition and division of opinion in South Africa; but the idea seems to me so grandiose that I wrote to Mother and proposed that she should put it to Queen Mary with the idea of its filtering through to the King. The King chooses the Prime Minister and can send for whomsoever he wishes.
Perhaps someone who knows more about British history can enlighten me: would this have been constitutional? Would it be now?
Posted by Ben Brumfield at June 13, 2006 10:15 AM