Letter to Daily Telegraph published on 10th August 2019 under the title “Recent history shows that royal powers could stop an anti-Brexit bill”.

Beside advising the Queen to withhold assent to a bill which has passed all stages in the Houses of Commons and Lords, as mentioned by Andrew Roberts (Comment, August 8), the Prime Minister can advise the Queen to withhold her consent to a bill proceeding beyond second reading where it touches on any of the 14 royal prerogative powers, which include the making of international treaties and declarations of war.

Such consent has been withheld three times in the United Kingdom during the present Queen’s reign, the most recent being in 1999, on the advice of Tony Blair.

This was in respect of a bill introduced by the late Sir Tam Dalyell, intended to make military action against Iraq contingent on approval by a majority vote in the House of Commons. Second reading was postponed and the bill fell because the Queen’s consent for it to be debated was withheld.

There are, therefore, recent precedents for stopping an anti-Brexit bill in its tracks between September 3 and October 31, so long as the Prime Minister tenders the relevant advice to the Queen.

A letter to the Sunday Times, the first paragraph of which was published on 1st May 2011.

Rather than barring Catholics specifically from the throne, the 1701 Act of Settlement stipulates British sovereigns be “heirs of the body of the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover, being Protestant” (“Race is on to change law of succession”, News, April 17).  The act thus excludes all those who are not of the Protestant faith, not just Catholics.  This is consistent with the requirement that the sovereign is also the supreme governor of the Church of England.

It is also not the case as stated in the article that “endorsement” is required from the Commonwealth of any changes in the succession law.  It is entirely a matter for the 16 realms which retain the British monarch as their Head of State to decide individually.  This is because Headship of the Commonwealth itself is a quite separate matter: there is no formal provision for that post to be filled by the British monarch after the present Queen.

A letter to the Times which was published on 31st March 2009.

William Rees-Mogg (Comment, Mar. 30th) perpetuates two common errors about the Act of Settlement and its possible amendment.  The Act stipulates that British sovereigns shall be “heirs of the body of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, being Protestant”.  The Act thus excludes from the throne all those who are not of the Protestant (Christian) religion, not just Roman Catholics.

If any amendment of the Act were seriously contemplated, it would not require “the whole of the Commonwealth to agree”.  It would require the agreement of only those countries which retained the British monarch as their head of state at the time of the change (16 at present).

Headship of the Commonwealth itself is a quite separate matter; there is no formal provision for that post to be filled by the British monarch after the present Queen.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published around 7th April 2001.

It is surprising that Don McKinnon, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, should give credence (report, April 5th) to the absurd notion that anyone but the British monarch could be Head of that organisation.

In so far as there is any legal basis for the Commonwealth it is to be found in the Statute of Westminster (1931) which defined it as a “free association of autonomous countries . . . united by a common allegiance to the (British) Crown”.

When India renounced its allegiance to the Crown in 1950 it accepted the King (not simply King George VI) as Head of the Commonwealth.  The Royal Style and Titles Act (1953) gave legal effect to this development by adding “Head of the Commonwealth” to the British monarch’s titles.  All former parts of the British Empire which have become republics have consequently had to apply, as India did, to remain in the Commonwealth when they assumed republican status.

In essence the Commonwealth is defined by the British monarch’s being Head of it.  Remove that residual link and the Commonwealth will disappear with it.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 1st June 2000.

The European Commission’s alleged competition objective in breaking up national post offices’ monopoly of postal deliveries (report 31 May) is nothing of the sort.  If they were really interested in competition they would have a go at France Telecom, French electricity, German coal mines, nationalised airlines, and so on.

The real EU target is the system of stamps bearing national insignia – in our case the Queen’s head without any country name.  The EU objective is an EU stamp which would be the only legally valid mark of postage paid – on the grounds of course that it would “improve the transparency” or whatever vogue phrase was in fashion at the time.  After all if you have a single market, a single currency, a single driving licence, why should you not have a single stamp?

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 30th September 1997.

Your report (Sept. 27th) that the Government has more or less decided not to refurbish or commission a replacement for Britannia brings up the point as to why this cannot be an initiative entirely paid for by private individuals.

If the issue is the £12 million a year running costs, can we not find 120,000 individuals willing to covenant, say £100 a year each?  I certainly would be prepared to do so.  Are there not enough patriotic individuals in the City, say, to support financially the refurbishment/replacement cost of around £60 million from their own pockets?

The Government is now in the hands of those whose main preoccupation is demolishing the Britain that most of us love and respect, and reconstructing it more to the taste of Islington café society.  Offering a new Britannia to the Queen as an entirely private initiative would be a signal to Mr Blair and ministers that they are only part of the state.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 8th September 1997.

That Earl Spencer should use this solemn occasion to lecture the Royal family on the upbringing of Princes William and Harry is deplorable.  He needs to be reminded that their upbringing is the sole responsibility, in law as in fact, of the Prince of Wales (to whom he did not once refer) and the Queen.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 28th November 1995.

One of the most depressing features of the discussion unleashed by the Princess of Wales’s interview is the extraordinary gullibility of a large proportion of the British public as evidenced by the Gallup Poll (report, Nov. 25th).

There was a time not long ago when British people, of all classes, would look askance at someone parading their good works and would look behind a flashing smile and “caring” countenance to see what actually was being achieved.  Still less would the British have been inclined to believe without corroboration allegations against her husband and his family of someone who denied to Sir Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary and her own brother-in-law, that she had anything to do with the Morton Book.

Following the disclosures in her interview, the Princess is now the subject abroad of coarse jokes and advertisements.  Her undermining of Prince Charles’s position as heir to the Throne is seen by many at home and abroad as a calculated affront to the Queen for whom there is huge respect.

For such senior politicians as Douglas Hurd to support the Princess’s desire to be some sort of roving ambassador for Britain, a kind of alternative monarchy, is the purest folly.  Besides the Crown itself, which represents other countries besides Britain, the best ambassadors for Britain are British goods and British soldiers.  The British people need to put aside the type of self-deluding sentimentality the Princess represents and concentrate, as Prince Charles does, on what will secure our future as a serious nation.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 21st May 1990.

Few readers will, I suspect be convinced by Ferdinand Mount’s assurances (article, May 18) that European Union would not affect the position of the Monarchy.

Nor do bland assurances along the same lines from such as Mr Edward Heath and Mr Gerald Kaufman at the time of the Dublin summit carry conviction.  Nobody of course is suggesting that the Queen will simply disappear if Mr Heath’s passionate desire to convert this country into a province of Franco-German Europe is fulfilled.

Nor is it supposed that the Prince of Wales will stop making speeches.  What people see is that the essence of the Queen’s role as Head of State will evaporate as she is replaced in that role by a President of Europe.

In fact the first unification of Germany, after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, provides an exact illustration.  Bavaria Wurtemberg and Baden were kingdoms which were incorporated into the new Germany.  Their monarchs, while continuing on their thrones until 1918, became of vastly diminished significance.  Today these states are simply provinces of the German Federal Republic.

In Britain the queen symbolises the freedom of the British people alone to make their own laws and employ their armed forces to defend that freedom, as they alone see fit – arguably the essential freedm contained within clause 39 of Magna Carta itself.  When that freedom is abolished the single most important aspect of the Queen’s role is abolished with it.

A letter to the Times which was published on 28th April 1990.

Ronald Butt said (article, April 25th) that it is inconceivable that Britain should leave the EC.  But why is it inconceivable?  Politicians in the original EC Six have repeatedly said they want plitical union – a United States of Europe.  Why not believe they mean what they say, rather than keep asking what they really mean?

What they mean is a sovereign republican Government to which national governments would be subordinate and to which foreign countries such as the USSR and USA would accredit their diplomatic representatives.  The Queen, while remaining the supreme symbol of law-making and parliamentary sovereignty in 10 other Commonwealth countries, would no longer have that role in Britain, her native land.

It is perfectly pointless therefore for the British Government to join in talks on political union, if it is determined, as the Prime Minister and Mr Hurd have repeatedly said, to uphold the sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament – an undertaking incidentally which every MP swears to uphold.

Instead of a futile effort to deflect the deep-felt wish of many Continental countries to unite, the Government would better spend its effort in thinking through Commissioner Andriessen’s proposal last year that Britain and Denmark should resume membership of a European Free Trade Association, enlarged to take in the countries of Eastern Europe and linked to the EC in a wider European Economic Space (EES) as he suggested.

This proposal offers us: retention of our independence; free trade and technical co-operation with the whole of Europe; removal of the huge drain on our balance of payments represented by the European Community charge (£4.5 billion last year); escape from the common agricultural policy; freedom to make our own trade agreements with our historic trading partners in the rest of the world; relief from the everlasting EC wrangles.  What more could we possibly want?