Queen's Role In P.M. Choice Criticised

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30348, 25 January 1964, Page 19

Queen 's Role In P.M. Choice Criticised

(N.Z.P.A.-Reut LONDON, January 23. The Queen was party to "a conspiracy to foist Lord Home on the nation” as Prime Minister, a leading British political commentator, Paul Johnson, says in the “New Statesman.”

Johnson said: “The right of the Monarch to select and appoint the Prime Minister is the one unqualified executive privilege still enjoyed by the Crown.

“If Lord Home was an unsuitable choice as Prime Minister—and Mr MacLeod the former Conservative Party chairman) claims he was—then the Monarch was at fault. To adopt the anguished cry of Laertes, the Queen, the Queen’s to blame’,” Johnson said.

He was examining the events in October which led to Lord Home (now Sir Alec Douglas-Home) becoming Prime Minister, and the recent disclosures by Mr MacLeod.

He said the only limitation on the Monarch's unrestricted choice was that the person selected as Prime Minister should be able to command a majority of the House of Commons and so carry on tlie business of government.

As a rule, after a General Election, the choice of a Prime Minister was automatic. When there was already a clearly-designated successor to replace a retiring prime minister the Monarch was not called on to exercise a choice.

But in the absence in a party of a precise and constitutional procedure for electing its leader the onus of choice fell squarely on the Monarch's shoulders. “What is more,” Johnson

'.er—Copyright) said, “though the Monarch is clearly prudent to take advice before designating a new prime minister there is no obligation to do so, still less to seek it from any particular quarter. “Mr MacLeod Is anxious to protect the Queen and to lay the blame fairly on Mr Macmillan for presenting as the collective view of a party, what was in fact the view of one man,” he said. 'The Queen was under no obligation to follow such advice however presented—or indeed to ask for it in the first place.”

Mr Johnson said it would seem both Mr Macmillan and the Queen were aware of the substantial opposition to Lord Home among senior Cabinet Ministers. They had laid themselves open to the interpretation that both “wanted Lord Home and were determined to have him.

“In short, if the salient facts are as Mr MacLeod has stated them, and there was indeed a conspiracy to foist Lord Home on the nation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the palace was a party to it,” Johnson said.