Talk:Reserve power

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Contents 1 Japan 2 United Kingdom 3 Dissolution of Parliament 4 United States 5 Royal Prerogative 6 UK (again)

[edit] Japan

This section seems to be anti-US when referring to the end of WWII, the Japanese Surrender, and Japan's new constitution. The part in question: This is because after the Nuclear Bomb (Atomic Bombs) drop on japan in World War 2. The Japanese Empire surrender to the United State and was forced to sign the Constitution of Japan isn't grammatically correct either. This section should be reworded, and changed to a neutral point of view. --Msl5046 12:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] United Kingdom

- Re: 2) The refusal to dissolve Parliament when requested by the Prime Minister. This was last reputedly done in 1910 (but George V later changed his mind), but certainly not within the past century. If you mean the past century to be the twentieth, 1910 was in the past century. If you mean the past century to be the last hundred years, everything after 1905 (including the year 1910) is within the past century. This statement is self-contradictory, and should be reworded.

The change has now been made.

- Re: 1) The appointment of a prime minister. This was last done in 1974 when Parliament was hung and the Queen appointed Harold Wilson as prime minister. As far as I am aware, the reigning monarch uses this reserve power following each and every election: by convention he or she invites the leader of the party winning the most seats to Buckingham Palace and asks him or her to become Prime Minister of the new government. If this is correct then this section of the article is inaccurate. Can someone confirm this and make the edit if necessary? - Hux 12:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dissolution of Parliament

I propose to remove the statement that the Queen or a Governor-General can dissolve Parliament against the advice of his/her ministers. The Proclamation for Dissolving the present Parliament and Declaring the Calling of Another is always issued "by and with the Advice of Our Privy Council" [1] [2], and similarly art. 32 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia provides that writs for elections have to be issued by the Governor-General in Council. These cannot therefore be reserve powers. The Queen / Governor-General can refuse to dissolve Parliament, but the only way the Queen or a Governor-General can force the dissolution of Parliament and call another against the advice of ministers is by dismissing the Government and appointing a caretaker Prime Minister who promises to advise such a proclamation, as Malcolm Fraser did in 1975. Andrew Yong 17:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] United States

I think the US section should be deleted. The American president doesn't really have "reserve powers" in the sense of this article; powers such as the veto, which are reserve powers in a parliamentary system, are just regular old powers of office in the American system. In particular, the president is free to veto legislation simply because he does not agree with it; it doesn't have to be because he's defending the constitution.

The president also has emergency powers, such as declaring martial law. That's similar to the notion of a reserve power, but not in my estimation quite the same thing. --Trovatore 19:33, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

The United States section has been deleted.

[edit] Royal Prerogative

This article is written in a very confusing way. Are the enumerated powers supposed to be reserve powers? If so, some of this is clearly wrong as the royal prerogative is not in any sense a reserve power. --Daniel C. Boyer 17:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UK (again)

To appoint a Prime Minister of her own choosing. This was last done in Britain in 1963 when Elizabeth II appointed Sir Alec Douglas-Home as Prime Minister.

I thought she appointed him because Harold Macmillan, by the outgoing Prime Minister, formally recommended that she send for him. There may not have been a formal process for selecting a leader but there were certainly soundings and the "customary process".

(1974) The Queen then asked Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour Party, which had the largest number of seats in the Commons but not a majority, to attempt to form a government with the support of the Liberals). Wilson agreed, on condition that, if the arrangement with the Liberals broke down, the Queen would dissolve parliament and call a new election, rather than give the Liberals the opportunity to offer their support to, or even form a coalition government with, the Conservatives.

I don't think there was ever any formal agreement between Labour & Liberals - indeed I recall reading that Wilson told Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe quite clearly that they were not needed. The bit about a new election seems to be a mangling of the story Wilson's press secretary Joe Haine recalled to Alan Clark (reproduced in a letter in the paperback edition of Clark's The Tories: Conservatives and the nation state 1922-1997) that the government discretely asked the Palace if a dissolution of Parliament and a general election would be granted in the event of a defeat on the initial Queen's Speech. This was in turn conveyed to the Conservatives who subsequently did not force a division on the speech at all. But this was after Wilson had accepted office and was also a means to stop the Conservatives forcing the issue, not to keep the Liberals in toe. Indeed given Labour's historic scepticism about coalitionism (MacDonald left deep scars), it would be very odd for Labour to seek formal agreements at first - rather they would try to govern alone and seek a majority at the first opportunity. (The later Lib-Lab pact was negotiated after some years in office to overcome existing difficulties once governing alone had been shown to be so difficult in practice.) Timrollpickering 06:04, 16 July 2007 (UTC)