Photo: ShabbirLakha

Before the 2011 Fixed Term Parliament Act was repealed in 2022, elections routinely took place in May. Under the FTPA, general elections were automatically scheduled for the first Thursday in May of the fifth year after the previous general election, or the fourth year if the date of the previous election was before the first Thursday in May. To align with the new fixed May election schedule, the government shifted the schedule so that parliamentary sessions voluntarily began and ended in May (Spring to Spring). And the monarch is the anachronism who is there to open the parliamentary session.

The speech by King Charles III reading the words of the Labour government presented an absurd and obscene spectacle, emphasising that the people have no role, and serving also to underline that Starmer's present mantra, that he was going to carry on with his programme of change, is meaningless, a complete fraud. It is equally absurd that this second session of parliament since the 2024 general election should be packed with a legislative programme when the whole cartel party system is in such crisis, and that everything Starmer is doing only serves to intensify the crisis. There is some irony in that the end of the first parliamentary session after the general election on what was touted as a "landslide" victory for Starmer should coincide with the crisis of his leadership, as well as the factionalism which no longer finds any resolution in Westminster.

It is deeply symbolic that King Charles, as the person of state, representing all that is rotten about the constitutional arrangements of the "United Kingdom", was reading words which promise "change" and a now "stronger, fairer Britain", when he himself is now acting as a block to progress and to the people gaining power! Here he was, all dressed up in ermine and expensive finery, sitting on his golden throne, talking about the "values" that everyone is meant to share. But there are no values that the people share with him, or his fictitious persona. He represents the epitome of class privilege, and as such stands for all that is holding back the movement for people's empowerment. The working class and people oppose everything he represents. Working people and people from all walks of life are bringing forward their own demands which require new arrangements suitable to the conditions today.

The British constitutional system is said to hinge upon the capacity of the Prime Minister to command the confidence of the House of Commons, the principle of "responsible government". The recent events have underlined that this conception of "responsible government" is outdated, representing a system of "representative democracy" which not only no longer is serving to sort out the factions of the bourgeoisie but in its crisis is exposing how far this exercise in government "responsibility" is keeping the people disempowered.

The working class and people have a mission of conceptualising a constitution and democratic process of their own making, throwing over the limitations imposed by the conception of rights and freedoms given rise to by a civil society based on the Victorian ideals of duty, order and civilisation.

That is the call of the present, a definition of contemporary organising. In the vernacular, it is embodied in the call that "Enough Is Enough!", not just a defensive call but one that has political meaning. No amount of deceptive down-sizing by the monarchy, or its utilisation as soft power by the narrow vested interests which control the state, can disguise that the monarchy has had its day and must go. The rights of the people must prevail and be granted a guarantee; new democratic forms must be brought into being guaranteeing the right of the people to rule in their own name.

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