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The events, as I remember them (I was very young) were??

Liz was not happy about the candidates being put forward to replace Macmillan.

Home was a part of her social circle and a very good friend.

She had a quiet word in Home?s ear to the effect that she thought he would be the man for the job.

Guess who ends up as PM?

There was a scandal about it at the time and most impartial reviews of her reign specifically refer to this as one of the biggest mistakes she ever made.

Here is a quote from the UK Gov Website.

"The Queen has two prerogatives, to choose, or now to confirm, a new Prime Minister in office and to grant a dissolution of Parliament, triggering a general election. The first prerogative was exercised in 1957 and in 1963 when the leadership of the Conservative party became vacant between general elections. After taking advice from senior Conservatives, the Queen invited Harold Macmillan to become her third Prime Minister, a process repeated in October 1963 when Sir Alec Douglas-Home was appointed."

Well, I wasn't born but I think you're misreading the facts.

The scandal about Home was that he was a peer becoming PM and a member of the House of Commons. It would be the same today if Lord Mandelson was asked to become PM.

You seem to be taking no notice of this bit: "After taking advice from senior Conservatives".

In May 1997, the Queen invited Tony Blair to become PM and in 2007 she invited Gordon Brown to do the job. It is a form of words ? it doesn't mean that she picked them personally.

"most impartial reviews" ? where are these reviews?

I wasn't aware of the Queen meddling in the matter of Alec Douglas Home becoming PM. It sounds interesting and I intend reading up on it more. As Ken Livingstone once said "if voting changed anything they'd abolish it". We don't live in a democracy. Boris Johnson is about to prove that even further by possibility becoming the first PM in generations to not be elected for a seat in the House of Commons - assuming this talk of him becoming PM is correct. The press mention it for a short while, then it dies down, then it appears in the press again. If he had to be an MP though they'd just arrange for him to do so by putting him forward for a safe seat. His brother is an MP, and he used to be an MP. It's not hard to arrange.

"The Queen has two prerogatives, to choose, or now to confirm, a new Prime Minister in office and to grant a dissolution of Parliament, triggering a general election. The first prerogative was exercised in 1957 and in 1963"

Where am I misreading what the Government website says?

The "After taking advice from senior Conservatives" is irrelevant surely.

That's the thing about the monarchy they never have to take responsibility for anything, they can say ?we were following protocol?, or ?we were taking advice?.

The "unwritten constitution" changed in 1965 after the Home debacle and the process changed from ?choose? to ?confirm? whatever that means. Does Liz have to sit in an office with a rubber stamp which says ?Confirmed??

The Government website clearly states that Quennie chose Alec Douglas-Home to be PM in 1963.

Home wasn't a peer anyway, he used the Peerage Act 1963 (an act resulting largely from the protests of Tony Benn) which changed the law to allow individuals to disclaim peerages. This then allowed him to stand for election in a safe Tory seat and become a Member of the House of Commons, and subsequently the Prime Minister after Lizzie gave him the nod.

A more sanitised version of the events that led Home to be PM.

"When she came to the throne, Elizabeth II could have had an influence on the choice of Prime Minister, particularly in mid-Parliament when a Conservative government was in power, since that party had no mechanism for electing its own leader until 1965. She appointed Anthony Eden on Churchill?s resignation in 1955, Harold Macmillan to replace Eden in 1957, and, most controversially, Sir Alec Douglas-Home to replace Macmillan in 1963 (many had expected R.A.B. Butler, sometimes called ?the best Prime Minister we never had?). However, in practice, the appointments followed consultations amongst the grandees of the Conservative Party, after which the outgoing Prime Minister recommended a successor to the Queen."



How the "official website of the British Monarchy" spins it this way?

"When a potential Prime Minister is called to Buckingham Palace, The Queen will ask him or her whether he or she will form a government.

To this question, two responses are realistically possible. The most usual is acceptance.

If the situation is uncertain, as it was with Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1963, a potential Prime Minister can accept an exploratory commission, returning later to report either failure or, as occurred in 1963, success."



And in reality we ended-up with a PM who wasn?t a member of either the House of Commons OR the House of Lords.

Douglas-Home?s emergence as the new leader of the Conservative Party attracted some claims that Macmillan had worked to make sure ?The Magic Circle? deny Rab Butler the leadership, but Reginald Maudling had also been a strong candidate. Even so, he rejected his peerage on 23 October 1963 and became Sir Alec Douglas-Home. On 7 November he contested and won the constituency of Kinross and West Perthshire ? but for the 2 weeks in between he was a Prime Minister who belonged to neither the House of Commons nor the House of Lords.

spider wrote:

> "The Queen has two prerogatives, to choose, or now to confirm,
> a new Prime Minister in office and to grant a dissolution of
> Parliament, triggering a general election. The first
> prerogative was exercised in 1957 and in 1963"
>
> Where am I misreading what the Government website says?

Because the Queen did not choose Home to be PM. She invited him to try to form an administration.
>
> The "After taking advice from senior Conservatives" is
> irrelevant surely.

No because that's what it means.

>
> That's the thing about the monarchy they never have to take
> responsibility for anything, they can say ?we were following
> protocol?, or ?we were taking advice?.

Irrelevant.

>
> The "unwritten constitution" changed in 1965 after the Home
> debacle and the process changed from ?choose? to ?confirm?
> whatever that means. Does Liz have to sit in an office with a
> rubber stamp which says ?Confirmed??
>
> The Government website clearly states that Quennie chose Alec
> Douglas-Home to be PM in 1963.

Not "chose" in the way that you mean, any more than she chose Tony Blair in 97 or Cameron in 2010.
>
> Home wasn't a peer anyway, he used the Peerage Act 1963 (an act
> resulting largely from the protests of Tony Benn) which changed
> the law to allow individuals to disclaim peerages. This then
> allowed him to stand for election in a safe Tory seat and
> become a Member of the House of Commons, and subsequently the
> Prime Minister after Lizzie gave him the nod.

You are still misunderstanding the whole situation.

1) Why would the Queen choose the Tory leader and not the Labour one or the Liberal one or the Ulster Unionist one? Don't you think someone like Tony Benn would have kicked up a stink at that time had the Queen chosen Home to be PM? It would be totally unconstitutional.

2) "Within hours of the news of Macmillan's illness the battle for the Tory leadership was underway." (From Alec Douglas-Home by D R Thorpe, p268 - Chatto & Windus, 1997).
If the Queen was just going to pick Home why would there be a battle?

3) Home was a peer (and Foreign Secretary). He was the 14th Earl of Home and later become a life peer.

4) The official note at the time says: "The Queen has received the Earl of Home in audience and invited him to form an administration." (ibid)
Note Home did not kiss hands; he would first see IF he could form an administration. Home then saw his Cabinet colleagues to see if they would serve under him. He later said he could have formed an administration without Rab Butler but not without Reggie Maudling. Only Iain McLeod and Enoch Powell refused to serve.
Again, if the Queen had decided Home would be PM, why would he bother seeking the approval of his colleagues?

5) Lord Hailsham also renounced his peerage to run for party leader?
Why do that if Home was a shoo-in?

6) Benn said he was disturbed that his battle should have paved the way for a Conservative peer to become PM.
Wouldn't have have been more disturbed had the Queen chosen Home?

7) Lord Dilhorne, the Lord Chancellor, sounded out the Cabinet before Home asked them to serve and found ten supported Home, four Maudling, three Butler and two Hailsham. (Douglas-Home by David Dutton, pp54-55, Haus 2006)
Again, if the Queen had decided Home would be PM, why would Dilhorne bother seeking the approval of his colleagues?

8) "The biggest political misjudgement of her reign" was accepting Macmillan's advice that Home could unite the party NOT in choosing him herself. (ibid) In addition, Ben Pimlott writes: The most astringent analysis of the way Lord Home "emerged" was written by a Conservative Iain McLeod in the Spectator in January 1964. This identified a "magic circle" of Old Etonians whom it accused of fixing the succession.
So someone intimately involved in the process says that Home was picked by Old Etonians (the Queen did not go to Eton). Elizabeth - Ben Pimlott (p334)

9) When news of an impending by-election became known, Macmillan urged the Queen to send for Home immediately. At the End of the Day - Harold Macmillan, p515 Macmillan, 1973).

10) On 10 October [1963] Lord Home read from the platform a letter from the Prime Minister announcing his retirement and asking that the "customary process of consultation" about his successor should begin. Wilson ? Ben Pimlott, p305, Harper Collins 1994).

11) Following his appointment Home renounced his peerage and returned to the Commons at an arranged by-election. (Pimlott p306)

12) Randolph Churchill wrote a book in 1964 about the leadership. Must have been a short book if the Queen had just decided to appoint Home.

You keep mentioning things that happened after 1965 (Tony Blair and David Cameron).

The subject was Sir Alec Douglas Home who became Prime Minister in 1963.

The ?unwritten constitution? changed after the Home debacle.

After 1963 the party with the most seats in the House of Commons present their leader as the man/woman to form the next Government and Queenie gets her little rubber stamp out and ?confirms? him/her as Prime Minister.

There hasn?t been a problem post 1965 for Labour and Conservative governments.

It?s only Labour and Conservatives that that matter because they have been the only parties capable of forming Governments - with Liberal party collaboration on a couple of occasions I grant you.

It?s not been a problem because since the Home debacle both Labour and Conservative Parties have had a defined and ?transparent? process for selecting their leader.

Pre Home the Conservatives had their ?magic circle? process for selecting a leader.

Post 1965 the leader of the party with the most seats goes to Buck House say ?I want to form the next Government with me as PM, is that OK love?, she says ?that?s OK with me duck? and gets her little rubber stamp out ?confirming? him / her as PM.

In 1963, there was no clear choice who was going to be leader of the Conservative Party.

Home was presented to Queenie as the man to be the next leader of the Conservative Party and consequently the next Prime Minister.

The fact that he wasn?t a member of the House of Commons, and if he took-up the job was going to have to give up his peerage until the Conservative?s could slot him into a Parliamentary seat didn?t seem to bother her.

Then again when you have been brought up with the concept that you rule by divine-right I suppose something as piffling as the democratic process is not a consideration.

Anyway, there hadn?t been a problem in 1955 and 1957 had there?

Home was one of Queenie?s social circle and their families had known each other going back generations. They had been shooting grouse together last year don?t you know.

No doubt she was quite happy to give him a tick in the box.

That was the problem in 1963. A clear and transparent procedure had been followed. There was no ?this is the leader of the party with the most seats in parliament, get your stamp out?.

After the blow-back from that debacle similar circumstances couldn?t be allowed to happen again and that?s why the Conservative Party had to implement a proper selection process for their leadership.

I guess that?s one of the contributing factors that resulted in why they say ?the age of deference ended in 1963?.

The most amazing aspect I find in all the above is that not only could the Tories find a seat in Scotland to slot Home into but they could find a SAFE SEAT in Scotland to slot him into.

There are more pandas in Scotland than there are Conservative MPs today.

spider wrote:



>
> Anyway, there hadn?t been a problem in 1955 and 1957 had there?
>
Actually yes, there was a similar problem in 1957 when Eden resigned over "ill-health". i suppose you think the Queen picked him then too...

"The Queen has two prerogatives, to choose, or now to confirm, a new Prime Minister in office and to grant a dissolution of Parliament, triggering a general election. The first prerogative was exercised in 1957 and in 1963"

Not for me to argue with the Governemnt website.

Sigh ? it doesn't mean it was her personal choice.