Professor John Griffith in a public lecture given in 1978 said: “The constitution ‘is no more and no less than what happens’. As an aphorism, it sums up quite well the state of constitutional law in the UK.

Our constitution is a complex and contingent relationship between law and politics. But it is politics in the wider sense, so including the views generally held by electors as to what is acceptable and how we want to be governed. It therefore also includes the shifts in those views, generally over lengthy periods of time but, sometimes, suddenly.

The argument for a written constitution of course is that a potential dictator is more constrained in his actions than if there were no written constitution. But. We see the various dictatorships or quasi-dictatorships where the constitution has quite easily been gradually altered or weakened by attacks on the judiciary and the media and of course...there is Trump.

Our unwritten constitutional ‘rules’, however, seem to be in some disarray at the moment. My feeling is that it is better to suffer the possibility of such disarray than having all those rules set in legislative stone and so unable to change as need arises. It means that traditional ways of doing things can respond to the realities of political life. This creates, in time, new traditions which will persist until they too are shown to be beyond their use-by date.

So then, it seems that whether written or unwritten, a constitution is indeed ‘no more and no less than what happens’.

But what is happening tells us that we are at an inflection point, a time when what we all take to be the established way of doing things will need to alter. In this country it is clear that the deference to the royal family will have to be replaced with something less vague.

At the moment Parliament’s rulebook prevents overt criticism of the royal family within its hallowed walls. Outside, we can say anything we like, but when considering the laws of the land, those who represent us in the ‘Mother of Parliaments’ cannot speak against the monarchy. And so he is indeed monarch of all he surveys.

That rule, however, like the other parliamentary rules, has no legislative foundation. Of course, our love of convention means that it takes something of an earthquake to persuade us to make any significant change. Thomas Erskine May produced his ‘Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament’ in 1844. Although then an assistant in the House of Commons library, he later became the Clerk of the House. And so ‘Erskine May’, is the most authoritative and influential work on parliamentary procedure and constitutional conventions affecting Parliament. What it says goes.

It purports though not to be a set of rules, but instead is a description of how procedure in the House of Commons and House of Lords has evolved and the conventions that apply. In other words, it tells us what the rules are without being a rule-book. A distinction without a difference.

So then the parliamentary rules are similar to the rules of any club or association. They are adopted by the members and can be changed by the members.

As we saw with the supposed difficulty in removing titles and honours from the now ex-prince, which evaporated when there was a will to do something urgently, so the commons and the lords could change their rules now by simple resolution.

But to what? In all the publicity surrounding the former prince, there has been much use of the word ‘deference’: we have tended to allow the monarch and his family to decide what rules will apply to them and the way they live their lives. We are expected to bow before them and call the king ‘your majesty’ or ‘your highness’, all reflective of an age long gone by.

Does Charles look majestic; how are they higher than their ‘subjects’? Do citizens in republics bow before their presidents? So should all this flummery be dispensed with? Should we follow the slimmed-down Nordic model of monarchy instead or perhaps abolish the whole nonsense altogether?

The danger of abolishing the monarchy is said to be that we may get a Trump instead. But that of course presumes that we would have an executive president. Many countries do not. Instead, they have a titular president with very limited powers. And he or she is elected for 4 or 5 years and generally with a limit on the number of terms which can be served. So then, such a president even if he were to go rogue would cause very limited damage.

The difficulty with a royal family is in the name - a family, and so with children inheriting the role from their forebears. The children may be absolutely fitted for the role or, alternatively thick, avaricious or promiscuous and unsuited to presenting the sort of image we would want.

There are a number of unfortunate examples. Without going back too far, we see that James II, a keen catholic in a protestant land and believer in the divine right of kings was forced out and replaced with a Dutch couple as joint sovereign, William & Mary. George III spent part of his reign in a straight-jacket and Queen Victoria retreated from public life once her beloved Albert had died, spending the next 40 years in mourning. Then there was Edward 8th, the one with Nazi sympathies and the American divorcee he wanted to marry.

But as against that, we know that all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the monarchy attracts the tourists. Which means that, as a country, we make money out of having our existing system. Does that in itself justify retaining our political system?

And I suppose that the answer is that there is no right answer. All the systems have their weaknesses. An elected non-executive president is unlikely to become very well known around the world and so a draw for tourists. It may therefore be better to stick with what we’ve got, but put express rules in place regarding the conduct of the royals: we should create a system which can limit the excesses.

In other words we go back to what I said at the outset, that we need to rid ourselves of the idea of deference to the royal family. We need rules of conduct and transparency in their affairs insofar as they are funded by the tax-payer.

We also need to define what expenses can be claimed and with what limits – so acting as any properly-run business would do. No more royal massages, staying in the best hotels where embassy accommodation would be appropriate, being surrounded by flunkeys dealing with the royal teddy bear collection or squeezing out the royal toothpaste. I don’t suggest travelling Ryanair, but private jets owned by dubious billionaires are not a good look.

And so we get to their property holdings.

Founded in the 13th century, the Duchy of Lancaster “is a unique portfolio of land, property and assets held in trust for the Sovereign in His or Her role as Duke of Lancaster” The duchy is worth about £652.8 million and yields about £27 million to the sovereign yearly. In addition, Charles has other assets worth an estimated £600 million.

The heir to the throne gets his income from the Duchy of Cornwall. Established in 1337, it is worth over a billion pounds and provides about £21 million annually to the Prince of Wales.

There is a third category: ‘The Crown Estate’ is the property of the sitting king or queen. Its holdings are vast, worth around £15 billion, including the seabed around the UK, and so receiving the income from leases for wind farms and mineral extraction. It has other holdings and 10 million square feet of property in London’s West End.

All profits from the Crown estate are paid to the treasury but, in return, a percentage of that is paid as a ‘sovereign grant’ to the crown (£127 million last year) for its expenses, including its staff and hangers-on. So then quite high on the rich list.

All three categories of ownership are though simply the result of land grabs by the royal family’s predecessors. So then, in lawyer-speak – ‘unjust enrichment’.

Perhaps we could start by taking the seabed out of the equation and sack the royal spreader of the marmalade?

Paul Buckingham

23 January 2026