1st June 2022
The greatest ongoing constitutional problem in the United Kingdom is not the lack of a written, codified constitution.
It it is the lack of constitutionalism among leading politicians.
This lack of constitutionalism is not a new thing, but under the current Prime Minister there would appear to be no constitutionalism whatsoever.
Constitutionalism is, in general, the notion that there are certain fundamental political rules with which one should comply, regardless of any personal or partisan advantage.
Some of these rules are legal, but many are conventions or norms.
Some of these rules are capable of some kind of enforcement, by law or otherwise, but generally their purchase comes mainly from self-restraint.
For, as the late Labour member of parliament Austin Mitchell once put it, the British constitution is whatever the government can get away with.
*
One index of the lack of constitutionalism in the United Kingdom is the various ways that governments – of various parties – have set up various gimmicks to make it look like constitutionalism is being taken seriously.
One such gimmick was the Committee on Standards in Public Life established in 1994 under the Conservative government of John Major when it was decided that something must be done.
That committee then gave us a list of seven principles of public life – which all sound impressive but in practice are so vague and vaporous that they really do not mean anything meaningful at all.
Aspirational, uplifting, comforting word bingo.
*
And, as the jurist Jimmy Cricket would say, there is more.
Under Tony Blair’s Labour government of 1997 we had the Ministerial Code.
Rarely has there ever been a more pointless constitutional document.
Nothing in constitutional terms changed – the Prime Minister still was the sole decision-maker about what happened to ministers and about whether any minister had done something wrong.
There was no real independence – the code had no autonomy, it offered no check or balance.
And nobody could decide whether the Prime Minister had broken the code other than the Prime Minister.
The code was metaphorical ornate wallpaper – to complement the actual ornate wallpaper of Blair’s first Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine.
The Ministerial Code is what you get when you just codify something about the constitution without any serious thought about its application, adjudication, and enforcement.
*
We now come to yesterday’s report by the “Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests” – Lord Geidt – whose role is to advise the Prime Minister on matters relating to the Ministerial Code.
The word “independent” here is misleading, if not false.
For example, let us look at this passage from the preface:
“In a letter of 23 December 2021 to the Prime Minister, I wrote that, ‘I would expect by the time of my next Annual Report in April to be able to describe the role of Independent Adviser in terms of considerably greater authority, independence and effect’.”
Greater?
Greater?
Any authority, independence and effect would be a fine thing – for one cannot logically have a greater amount of nothing.
Let us read on.
Here is another passage:
“Granting the Independent Adviser an independent right to initiate inquiries into ministerial conduct has been called for over many years. The changes now offered by the Government are at a low level of ambition.”
This can be re-worded as a call to grant to the “Independent” adviser, well, actual independence.
And so on.
There is nothing meaningfully independent about his role in any active sense.
And as this adviser cannot do anything active, the adviser – in the great tradition of British tuttery – is instead passive aggressive.
(Jacob Rees-Mogg putting “sorry to have missed you” notices on the seats of absent civil servants has nothing on the passive aggression in this report.)
See for example:
“For much of the year, the conduct of the Prime Minister himself has potentially been subject to consideration against the requirements of the Code. Accordingly, and whether unfairly or not, an impression has developed that the Prime Minister may be unwilling to have his own conduct judged against the Code’s obligations.”
That is weapons-grade tuttery.
Again:
“It may be especially difficult to inspire that trust in the Ministerial Code if any Prime Minister, whose code it is, declines to refer to it. In the case of the Fixed Penalty Notice recently issued to and paid by the Prime Minister, a legitimate question has arisen as to whether those facts alone might have constituted a breach of the overarching duty within the Ministerial Code of complying with the law.”
Tut, tut, tut.
The preface continues with an articulation by the adviser of his own constitutional impotence:
“In the present circumstances, I have attempted to avoid the Independent Adviser offering advice to a Prime Minister about a Prime Minister’s obligations under his own Ministerial Code.”
And then we have the immortal line:
“If a Prime Minister’s judgement is that there is nothing to investigate or no case to answer, he would be bound to reject any such advice, thus forcing the resignation of the Independent Adviser.
“Such a circular process could only risk placing the Ministerial Code in a place of ridicule.”
The problem here is that the Ministerial Code is already in a place of ridicule.
*
Lord Geidt is plainly doing the best he can with the remit he has got.
Other than to offer his resignation, tuttery is all he can do.
For the real issue is beyond what Lord Geidt can do with his report or otherwise.
The Ministerial Code is a nonsense.
It is no more than a thirty-six page statement of the obvious political and constitutional truth that a Prime Minister can hire and fire and retain ministers as he or she feels fit, on whatever basis he or she she wants to employ.
The nonsense of the code was made most stark when it was found recently that the Home Secretary was in breach, but the Home Secretary stayed in office and the then “independent” adviser resigned.
Last week, when it was revealed that some of the wording of the code had changed so that resignations were not necessarily expected, some pundits were concerned.
But it actually did not matter.
The textual changes may as well have been scribbles of a bored Boris Johnson, because the content of the Ministerial Code has no constitutional import outside of what a Prime Minister decides it has.
Which is to say it has no real constitutional import at all.
The only “independent” thing Lord Geidt can do, now that the tuttery has failed, is to resign.
And he should do so.
**
Please support this – ahem – independent law and policy blog so that it can continue with posts like this.
Do not assume this blog can continue without your help.
For more posts like this – both for the benefit of you and for the benefit of others – please support through the Paypal box above, or become a Patreon subscriber.
You can also become an email subscriber.
***
Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.
For more on this blog’s Comments Policy see this page.
If there’s no force of law behind it, just convention, then Lord Geidt may as well simply self-declare that he can self-initiate investigations… and then self-initiate an investigation into Boris Johnson. Of course, the Prime Minister will argue it goes beyond Lord Geidt’s remit, and order than people do not co-operate. Lord Geidt should press ahead anyway, and publish what he can (preferably in the most passive of aggressive terms). He should keep doing stuff like that until the PM is forced to abolish the office or fire Lord Geidt.
All this would be constitutionally meaningless of course. But it would serve to highlight that meaninglessness and our Prime Minister’s role in weakening the ‘norms’ upon which our system of government has hitherto relied.
This, Sir, is a truly excellent suggestion. Let’s see the PM – any PM – try and face down their own ethics chief.
It is a good suggestion, reminding me of a quote from Game of Thrones: “Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.” — Lord Varys.
I would still like somebody to suggest how the prime minister’s neglect of his duty to uphold the ministerial code fails to meet the parameters of misconduct in public office.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office#_Toc519523916
“The offence is committed when:
a public officer acting as such;
wilfully neglects to perform his duty to such a degree as to
amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder
without reasonable excuse or justification.”
The duty exists, and is justiceable: we found that in the Patel bullying case.
There is clearly no question over whether the prime minister was acting as prime minister, so that only leaves the question of whether it is an abuse of the public’s trust, or if he has a reasonable excuse.
The answers to those seem unambiguous to me.
So Geidt should resign.
What else has or will happen?
The Met have investigated, nothing more there.
Gray has reported, nothing more there either.
Parliamentary select Committee on Standards will investigate. Maybe some action there leading to suspension from parliament but not for some months.
Two by elections will be held, likely Government losses.
Steady drip of letters will finally reach 54.
VONC will be held and Johnson survives probably by a whisker.
Starmer and Rayner may even resign, we live in an unfair world.
Current rules protect Johnson from another leadership VONC.
Are we entering the world of fantasy politics?
Were there any doubt after what happened to Alex Allan that Geidt was taking on a non-job policing a toothless ‘code’, that is now clear. Geidt would compound the risk he took when he accepted the job by staying in post.
Scything comment “The Ministerial Code is what you get when you just codify something about the constitution without any serious thought about its application, adjudication, and enforcement.” is clearly justified. Such proper criticism falls on a fundamentally unwritten constitution, that many view, in its totality, to be completely unfit for modern government.
You have written about your distaste for such written constitution. Once Johnson is ousted, which seems not too distant, perhaps it is the time to consider how our constitution (a chimera, a gross impediment to reasoned governance by its variable substance and acidic absorption of reasoned change), should be reconstituted to provide a corpus of trust in government?
The US has a written constitution yet Trump’s wide-ranging refusal to behave in a constitutional fashion posed (and still poses) a grave danger to the Republic. When it comes to high politics and restraining the most powerful politician(s) in the land a written constitution can look better in theory than it turns out to be in practice. Every answer to the question, ‘to whom is an elected leader accountable for their conduct?’ is not without its flaws. I have wanted to see Johnson gone since the Paterson debacle, but I still wonder if there are many answers to the above question truly better than, ‘the confidence of Parliament daily and the voters at a GE.’
No constitution, codified or not, can prevent a politician determined to ignore it stay in power if they are popular enough to be elected.
However I would argue it was the strength of the US Constitution and the respect for it by all but the most deluded politicians and judges that prevented Trump’s attempts to get the 2020 election result overturned. Judges applied the law correctly, state officials did their duty and the Vice President did the right thing.
I am reluctant to offer this alternative view, but I have a horrible suspicion that we are witnessing a “turning of the tide” with respect to the US views of the Constitution.
The Republican Party are clearly and undeniably a minority party. They have a hold on power thanks to gerry-mandering at a state level, some significantly distorted senate rules (e.g. numerical majority for some decisions, two-thirds majority for others) that favour them. They also completely abused their authority over the last few years by refusing to confirm Obama’s nominee for SCOTUS and then rushing through confirmation of Amy Comey Barrett, who replaced Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
More and more, everywhere you look, the Republican party and their activities are looking like the minority white government in South Africa that gave the world apartheid.
I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not sure the US Constitution can withstand the sustained assault to which it is now being subjected. Oh, we might not see a “coup detat”, as such, but what we might see is the life being slowly choked out of a viable two-party state.
Don’t forget the fundamental mistake of giving each state the same degree of influence in government – 2 Senators from each. This makes the vote of a Californian or a New Yorker worth a fraction of the vote of someone from Idaho or Montana.
The Republicans would counter with arguments about the small New England states having disproportionate influence.
It was done by design. In the Senate the States are equal. In the House of Representatives the votes are much more proportionate to population.
If the only valid political
“punishment” or check on the PM is the threat of a general election, how does one engineer that? Extending or reviving the role of the Privy Council to include a constitutional committee with a prerogative power to recommend to the Monarch that an election be called, or take the initiative of calling an immediate election? Please ignore if irrelevant or ill-judged – Tax lawyers Eh?
The Human Rights Act requires elections at “Reasonable intervals”. It is not reasonable to make us wait after the prime minister has proven to be such a crook.
Alternatively, the Law of the Constitution says that “A dissolution is allowable, or necessary, whenever the wishes of the legislature are, or may fairly be presumed to be, different from the wishes of the nation.”
We might expect the Leader of the Opposition to put it to Her Majesty that that is where we are, or rather, the fact that he could ought to force the prime minister’s hand.
A thesis of mine: the act of having and teaching a codified (and readable!) constitution can strengthen constitutionalism by making it accessible to everyone and additionally instilling that it is not just the abstract and far removed realm of lawyers and clerks but that the constitution is in effect the rights of everyone. Having the simple option of reading and understanding it goes a long way.
In extremis that is of course seen in the United States of America with its very short 18th century constitution. But it still goes for more modern variants. Growing up in Germany: the Grundgesetz is taught in secondary schools, not every detail but definitely human rights and the basic structure and the checks and balances of the state. And of course you can order copies of the Grundgesetz for free. I was astonished to learn that for a long time Erskine/May was only available at a cost of over £ 300.
But then: I can’t imagine that it its current constitution the UK could even codify its constitution; the constitutional parties not having the constitution for such a constitutional undertaking.
Although this is mis-attributed to Einstein and I’m not sure to whom we owe our appreciation, someone gave us the truism that, “Insanity is repeating the same experiment and expecting different results…”
Here we have yet another in a long, long, *long* list of examples that show us that “self policing” (by the Cabinet, by the United States Supreme Court, etc.) is just fundamentally flawed.
Yet we continue to see examples where we put exactly this system of governance in place and then seem surprised when that governance process fails. My word! How unexpected! Snort.
How about – just a starter for 10 here – conduct of the Cabinet in General and Prime Minister in particular is awarded to a cross-chamber supervisory body, made up of, for example, three government MPs, three MPs from HM Opposition, three members of the House of Lords from the sitting government’s side of the chamber and *four* – including the chair, from the Opposition side of the chamber.
Give that body the power to demand on-oath testimony, give them a legal framework, give them the right to issue punishments (up to and including, say, the right to call a General Election if evidence of widespread cabinet misconduct can be established). Give them the power of sanction that will have an actual impact on the sitting PM and that person’s cabinet.
If we can’t have that, then we have created a despotic form of government.
I’m not a fan of the man’s politics, but I find myself reminded of Tony Benn’s “Five Essential Questions for Democracy”:-
1. What power have you got?
2. Where did you get it from?
3. In whose interests do you exercise it?
4. To whom are you accountable?
5. How do we get rid of you?
It was a very good Parthian shot, wasn’t it?
Indeed. I would liken it to a more eloquent, perhaps even erudite, “what-about-ism”…
How many of these essential questions does he broach with this man?
I don’t at all doubt your overall line of argument. One thing in favour of the Nolan Principles in a broader sense is that they have become reasonably well embedded as guiding principles for things like the conduct of governance of schools and colleges; and I guess for other parts of the “governed by lay people world”. For example, in a large college where I was chair of governors, governors were expected to acknowledge that they’d operate by the Nolan Principles, which fact would have given me or the board an “in”, to discuss an individual governor’s conduct. I can’t speak from practical experience of having had to do this; but maybe in this kind of setting, the Nolan Principles are a bit more than “aspirational, uplifting, comforting word bingo”. But only a bit more!
Any citizen of France, Germany, USA, etc can at least go to the local library and read a copy of their constitution, together with all sorts of erudite commentary on it. In most countries the citizens were taught about it and its history and importance in school. They will be aware where it is weak and where it is strong, and what are the loopholes in it, and whether this was deliberate or accidental. If they feel they have a strong enough case they can test aspects of it in court, or in politics, confident that everyone will be looking at the same text which doesn’t change that frequently, and is most unlikely to change on a whim of a individual politician.
In contrast any citizen of the UK, except for the Prime Minister can do no such thing. And the Prime Minister can change the amporphous constitution of the UK on a whim and get his lobby fodder to make it so, or maybe not even bother telling us about it. That makes citizens in the UK mere powerless subjects. Even powerful oficers such as Independent Advisers are found to be powerless. Heck, even the monarch was (herself) powerless when the Prime Minister tells porkies.
Given this I cannot understand why anybody can defend such a disgraceful situation in the UK, and keep on trotting out the line that an unwritten constitution (only capable of being discerned by the finest legal minds money can buy) remains the best way. I can accept that it may be difficult to get from here to there, and that the trying might even contribute to the break up of the UK (which is going on in any case), but the vast chasm between the defensible rights of citizens, and the scanty and indefensible and unknowable rights of subjects, surely makes the difficult worth trying. In the meantime all sorts of papering over the cracks like recommending that advisers resign is simply recommending putting lipstick on a pig. Currently a greased pig.
Whilst I find myself somewhat in agreement with your argument here, I’m also inclined to offer you a couple of counter arguments, for balance.
One curious challenge with a written constitution is that the harder the authors strive to write something that is perfect, then the result is that over time the document becomes venerated and seemingly sacrosanct, apparently beyond the touch of the editing pen of mortal man.
When the United States added the Second Amendment (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the secure of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”) the young nation had just fought a very costly war for Independence from Britain and had no standing only of it’s own. Now, more than two hundred years later, those twenty-seven words are responsible for more than 110 gun deaths every single day.
Yet such is the hold that the constitution has over a large sway of the country, the most powerful nation on Earth is apparently unable to address this issue.
The second observation concerns the passage of time. For example, Article 1, Section 3 of the US Constitution declares that, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State.” Seems harmless enough, right?
Well, except that California has approx 39.5 million residents, while Wyoming has about 580,000. The point? The “voices” – the amount of influence, those two Wyoming Senators have in the Senate is the exact same as that for their California colleagues. Yet each California Senator represents the views of nearly 20,000,000 Americans, while for Wyoming it’s 290,000. How’s that for proportional representation, eh?
On balance, I would say that it is particularly difficult for anyone wishing to sit down and write a constitution to be able to predict the challenges to which it will be asked to rise or the stresses placed on it during its lifetime. This is the scenario for which we were given the expression, “While the law may upset reason, reason may not upset the law…”, translated, “Even if it no longer makes sense, we must still follow the Constitution, because: reasons.”
Excellent analysis .
I would take a different view on the value of the Nolan Principles. Throughout my career they have been a consistent touch stone , or reference point, as to the values that underpin public service values .
The fatal deficiency – at the current time and in particular in relation to Johnson’s government- is the lack of effective accountability and the entire absence, as far as I can see, of any serious jeopardy when Johnson or his ministers transgress.
Thus Johnson’s lying at the Despatch Box has become routine, and we have the perverse spectacle of the Speaker being more active in sanctioning those who call out the PM for lying than addressing the lies themselves , and the person uttering them.
Turning to the Ministerial Code , it is self evidently ineffectual if it rests on the discretion of the PM.
Johnson, until explicitly prompted by Geidt, didn’t even see the need to consider publicly whether his having been criminally sanctioned breached his duty to uphold the law. When required to examine the issue he dismissed it in terms that Grieve rightly described as mealy mouthed and disingenuous.
The upshot is our system of accountability is utterly ineffectual in the face of a serial liar who has no scruples about corrupting the basis on which good government is conducted, as reflected in the Nolan Principles. As a nation we cannot afford to have the fundamentals of how decisions are made in the public interest destroyed .This is the project upon which Johnson is engaged .
We need a constitutional remedy that places effective checks and balances on those who exercise power to prevent the abuses and excesses to which we are currently being subjected
We need to clean up the Constitutional House
“We need a constitutional remedy that places effective checks and balances on those who exercise power to prevent the abuses and excesses to which we are currently being subjected.”
When you folks come up with a plan, could you send us here in the States a copy? We seem to be in dire need of some new ideas on the subject.
Resignation may be his only course, but I would bet a modest amount that he won’t. He’s an even more gold-plated member of the establishment than Alex Allan, and his CV suggests he is no upsetter of apple carts.
Our “good chaps” constitution is yet again failing to provide any real accountability for a rogue PM.
Probably our only short term hope lies with the electors of Wakefield and Tiverton.
Some parallels with the 1990s from Conor Gearty, writing in December 2021. https://conorgearty.co.uk/2021/12/mr-johnsons-calamitous-premiership/
Much to quote from six months ago that remains true today, perhaps more true as time passes, including Lord Geidt “considering his position”, but this will do:
“The current prime minister is himself an epitome of the moral emptiness that in that earlier era brought men down. And yet he remains in post. Here is surely a material break with the past. Wrong produces sniggering not the sack, contriteness merely simulated while the next ruse is pondered.”
“He wants to reshape public discourse in his own image, returning to a time when prime ministers enjoyed the fruits of office without the cares of accountability, a new Walpole perhaps (Robert, not Horace – you have to go back a long way to find a Prime Minister as willing as Johnson to trample on public rectitude for personal advantage).”
There is no evidence Boris has done anything wrong. Well not if you don a good blindfold, stop up ones ears and hide in a dark cupboard.
So, my client has done nothing wrong. And it would be frightfully inconvenient to find that he had – so we won’t look too hard. That is the long and short of it. I regret Lord Geidt may not be such a nice man as he makes out.
Anyway all this fuss over the shine on the Boris Bus bus driver’s buttons. Meanwhile, the tyres are bald, the engine clapped out, the seats slashed and the headlights have been nicked. But still it clanks along painfully slowly – until it doesn’t. There will be another one along in a ……
” Well not if you don a good blindfold, stop up ones ears and hide in a dark cupboard.”
If only we had one – just one – of the three wise monkeys!
Sadly, given the current competence of the political establishment, that sentiment would seem to be unduly optimistic.
Lord Geidt’s critical words will have no impact on someone like Boris Johnson and it’s unlikely the public will notice.
Lord Geidt is already a figure of ridicule. The only way to dispell the idea that he is merely a convenient purveyor of whitewash would be to resign his impossible position with an explicitly critical letter.
An honourable man would resign. An honest man would resign. A man of personal integrity would resign. But Lord Geidt is a spineless placeman. No more capable of independent action against the PM and Ministers than I am. Austin Mitchell was right. What we need is a couple of female primary school teachers on the job. They can spot a liar, a cheat and “wrong doing” at a mile and a half.
If you could also persuade them to assign homework and hand down detentions for bad behaviour, then I think you’ve got yourself a deal!
I think a lot of Ministers would find themselves spending a considerable amount of time on the naughty step.
Once again a delightful and concise, if somewhat depressing, assessment of how things stand. Even an aged engineer can understand.
Thank you, as ever.
I love a reason to pick up Peter Hennessy’s “The Hidden Wiring: Unearthing the British Constitution” (1995) from the bookshelf, recalling there being some interesting related points there.
In addition to establishing the Nolan committee, another innovation from John Major’s government which may be worthy of note was to declassify “Questions of Procedure for Ministers” (the predecessor to what would become the Ministerial Code) in May 1992. Before that, QPM was only publicly available under the 30-year rule, and Hennessy considered this to be a significant step forward.
Hennessy also discusses in that book the Nolan report (new at the time he was writing). The report noted that QPM (as it stood at that time) indicated that Ministers were individually responsible for acting in accordance with its standards of conduct, and that Ministers’ need to account to Parliament for their actions reinforces that responsibility. It didn’t specify the de facto principle they also need to maintain the confidence of the PM and that questions of conduct will involve the PM’s own judgement.
To recognise this, the Nolan report recommended that the first paragraph of QPM should be amended to say “It will be for the individual Ministers to judge the how best to act in order to uphold the highest standards. *It will be for the Prime Minister to determine whether or not they have done so in any particular circumstance.*” However, in a quick skim, I didn’t see anything attempting to address the question of what happens when a PM’s own conduct is questioned.
(The Nolan report also recommended “the production of a document drawing out from QPM the ethical principles and rules which it contains to form a free-standing code of conduct or a separate section within a new QPM” – I presume this was what became the Ministerial Code.)
That whole chapter on standards of conduct in public life (and indeed the whole book) is interesting to read with 30 years of hindsight…
I am not sure if it is related, but in my incomplete recollection of the time (I was not long out of formal education), this was also a time period which saw explosive growth in the number of Quangos in the UK.
That might have the effect of placing significant additional relevance on the QPM, since of course once they are set up, a Quango and it’s appointed leader is answerable only and directly to the minister within whose portfolio the organisation exists.
In specific reference, I note that you write, “The report noted that QPM (as it stood at that time) indicated that Ministers were individually responsible for acting in accordance with its standards of conduct, and that Ministers’ need to account to Parliament for their actions reinforces that responsibility.”
This was what prompts me to make the observation, from wondering “might there have been something in particular that would have prompted Nolan to have made the explicit references that he did. Of course, the language that you quote certainly applies directly to the conduct of minsters in their day-to-day actions, but it occurs to me that it might also be relevant with respect to their accountability for the operation of quangos that spend taxpayer funds under their direct supervision.
I don’t know to what extent the Nolan Report was specifically considering the interaction between QPM and responsibility for quangos in is recommendations. (This was all going on when I too was still in education – and in any case my knowledge of these matters is that of an interested layperson rather than the result of any formal study.)
However, I do see that the Report consists of four chapters: “Introduction”, “Members of Parliament”, “The Executive: Ministers and Civil Servants”, and “Quangos” – and it is the chapter on Quangos which has the largest number of pages devoted to it (including considerations of both appointments to them and standards of conduct) – which suggests that they were a topic of some interest at the time.
Two rather juvenile thoughts spring to mind.
The first is that, given we are (still) a Monarchy, shouldn’t it have been that the adviser was “king tutting”? Though perhaps that is what HMQ is doing.
The second is the nice description of the Ministerial Code as being “in a place of ridicule.” Not just the Ministerial Code, I might suggest. Indeed it sounds almost like something a French newspaper would say, jokily evoking Voltaire.
“Le Grand Bretagne se trouve, sous le gouvernement de M’sieu Johnson, dans un place publique de ridicule.”
So the Ministerial Code is…
Oh…
A dodo.
It seems to me that there is a more basic question, namely what checks and balances are required to prevent scoundrels from reaching such senior positions in the first place?
Once they are there, they can undermine the system, written or not, as your blog describes
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Or to put it another way, “Were you never so high, the Pope was above you.” Or to put it another way, when your temporal power is supreme, and the people over whom you wield it are so fragmented that they couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding, what a friend they have in Jesus’ Vicar on Earth, provided they happen to be living in an era in which the Vatican isn’t as corrupt as their own resident tyrant is tyrannical.
How does your Pope pull it off? By heading an organisation which has contrived, through expert salesmanship and, when necessary, with the inestimable help of its military wing, to own the souls of millions of people across Europe, high and low; and by convincing them that it can, by decree, consign those souls to eternal, incalculable (but only too imaginable) agony.
Things have changed a bit since — well, choose your own. Things change all the time, and mystery falls out of fashion, yielding place to, or at least being jostled by, other intellectual trends. But the comfort afforded by habit remains, wherever and whenever you happen to live.
Custom — “mos”, (genitive “moris”, plural “mores”; adjective “moralis”). Break with custom and you risk alienating yourself from your society. An Etonian doesn’t need to have that spelt out. The exclusiveness of Eton and the size of its pupil population give it similarities to the circumstances of a nomadic tribe numbering about 200, such as roamed this planet in past millennia. In such a group the power of social pressure to inhibit the sort of behaviour that jeopardises the group’s survival can be quite effective. In a larger, more complex, settled population these mechanisms sometimes fail, and rules expressed in a fixed form of words are needed to keep the machine running.
In about 1968 the philosopher Bryan Magee gave a talk on the radio entitled “Should tyrants be killed?”, in which he outlined the opinions of Thomas Aquinas. A tyrant is not the same as a king, in his view, for a king is an anointed agent of God. A tyrant is not merely a strict-bordering-on-harsh ruler, but one who promotes evil and endangers the fate of his subjects’ immortal souls by corrupting their consciences.
Magee’s closing words have stuck with me: “Tyrants must be carefully identified, and then killed.”
He wrote many years later that soon after the broadcast he had a visit from Special Branch.
The problem with accountability is that whoever has the power to fire the PM is the true ruler. Democracy works because those who choose the leadership suffer the consequences of chosing unwisely. If a few people can make that choice, then they can arrange things to benefit personally at the cost of everyone else.
Of course democracy is not perfect – the same effect allows 51% to benefit personally at the expense of 49%.