Who Needs the House of Commons?

Thus asks the High Tory Gerald Warner of Scotland on Sunday.

For generations, British schoolchildren were educated – or brainwashed – into an exaggerated respect for parliament and its associated institutions. Even as the British Empire went into receivership, imitation chambers emerged in former colonies, with Speakers and clerks decked out in the horsehair wigs that replicated the supposed gravitas of the circus on the Thames. Reinforcing this spurious deference was the Whig interpretation of history, which attempted to imbue an infamous gang of self-serving bandits and tyrants with a "democratic" veneer and an invented romance.

Mr. Warner concludes:

Now, the challenge is to explore all our existing resources, as is the British way, to replace this failed legislature. We must be the only tribe in the world to have a council of elders that we relegate to ceremonial duties: time to make more use of the Privy Council. An executive monarch, too, curbing the power of a prime minister, was until recently unthinkable; but, considering the record of recent prime ministers, it now seems a positive alternative. Undemocratic? Technically, yes – but how far have our pseudo-democratic institutions recently reflected the public will, whether on war in Iraq or any other topic? Think about it.

Wrote Gerald Warner eight months ago:

The constitutional principle is this: dismissal of a government by Royal prerogative is not undemocratic, provided it is immediately followed by a general election, giving the electorate the right to choose the government it wants. In the present circumstances, with a revolving-door Cabinet, more and more unelected ministers being drafted in via the House of Lords and election results pouring in that show the electorate's overwhelming rejection of the government, a compulsory dissolution would be perfectly justified.