Bagehot famously made a distinction between the ‘dignified’ and ‘efficient’ parts of the Constitution (Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: Henry S. King and Company 1867)). The former were those which ‘excite and preserve the reverence of the population’, and were epitomised by the grandeur and splendour of the monarchy. The latter were those by which the Constitution in fact ‘works and rules’, and were epitomised by cabinet government.
Broadly speaking, the relationship between monarchy and constitution ‘is the same’ in Canada as it is in the UK (David E. Smith, ‘The Crown in Canada Today: How Dignified, How Efficient?’ in Michael Jackson and Philippe Lagasse (eds), Canada and the Crown: Essays in Constitutional Monarchy (Queen’s University, 2014), 125). Just as the monarch’s role in the British Constitution is a largely dignified one, so too his role in Canada has largely been ‘reduced to theatre and ceremony’ (Warren J. Newman, ‘Some Observations on the Queen, the Crown, the Constitution, and the Courts’ (Review of Constitutional Studies, 2017), 64). A good example is the Speech from the Throne, which has long epitomised the Crown’s dignified role in Canada. A grand display of pomp and circumstance and one of the ‘nice and pretty events’ to which Bagehot alludes (Bagehot, above, 64), it sees the monarch (or, more commonly, the Governor General, who is the monarch’s formal representative in Canada) entering a packed Senate in a lavish procession to the sound of trumpets, before reading the Speech from an elaborate throne made of finest Windsor oak.
Dignity also permeates the Speech itself. In order to perform its dignified role, the Crown must be seen to be politically neutral. Therefore, to avoid being seen as a ‘political manifesto’ which would risk ‘infringing upon the dignity of the Crown’, historically the Speech from the Throne has been deliberately written as a brief, factual, and uncontroversial description of upcoming policies and legislation, which ‘totally avoids the political issues of the day’ (Richard Berthelsen, ‘The Speech from the Throne and the Dignity of the Crown’ in Michael Jackson and Philippe Lagasse (eds), Canada and the Crown: Essays in Constitutional Monarchy (Queen’s University, 2014), 205). It is typically comprised of ‘simply constructed sentences’ (Ibid, 206), which the reader delivers ‘with as little emotion as possible’ in order to further preserve the Crown’s political neutrality (Mitchell Sharp, ‘Depoliticizing the Speech from the Throne’, Parliamentary Government 8, no. 4 (1989), 16-18).
These features were exemplified in 1957, when the Queen recited a short, descriptive, non-partisan throne speech simply outlining the government’s upcoming legislative agenda. Lasting less than ten minutes, its plain and anodyne lines included:
My Ministers will place before you a measure to ensure that those working in industries under federal jurisdiction will receive annual vacations with pay. You will be asked to approve bills relating to certain railway branch lines, amendments to the Canadian and British Insurance Companies Act, and, insofar as the other business before you permits, to several other statutes.
In this way, the Speech from the Throne somewhat resembled the King’s Speech, delivered each year during the State Opening of the UK Parliament. This similarly brief, non-partisan speech usually lasting around ten minutes sees the monarch list upcoming legislation through neutral declarations, such as those in the 2024 Speech that:
My Government is committed to making work pay and will legislate to introduce a new deal for working people to ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights.
The ‘minimalist’ nature of the Speech from the Throne had led some to claim that it lacked ‘any inspirational impact’ and was very ‘quickly forgotten’ (Sharp, above).
But the same cannot be said of the Speech from the Throne delivered by Charles last month at the State Opening of Parliament in Ottawa. For nearly half an hour the King spoke in a much more personal and emotional tone of ambitious ideals to ‘protect Canadians and their sovereign rights’, uphold the values of ‘democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, self-determination and freedom’, and guard ‘fundamental rights and freedoms’ during a ‘critical moment’ for the country. The King called on Canadians to ‘come together in a renewed sense of national pride, unity and hope’, and drew rousing applause when, quoting the national anthem, he reaffirmed that ‘the True North is indeed strong and free.’ Further breaking with convention, the Speech also used personal pronouns. According to Berthelsen, ‘drafters of the Throne Speech should steer clear of “we”’, as it can seemingly involve the Crown in government action’ (Berthelsen (above), 215). Yet Charles declared that, inter alia, ‘together we will…deliver free trade’, ‘we will unleash a new era of growth’ and ‘we (will not) just survive ongoing trade wars, but emerge from them stronger than ever.’
This speech was arguably much more ‘efficient’ than that delivered by his late mother nearly 70 years ago – the last time a monarch delivered the Speech from the Throne during the State Opening of Canada’s Parliament. Amidst vociferous threats made by President Trump to make Canada the 51st US state, there were no prizes for guessing who Charles thought Canadians, their rights and values needed ‘protecting’ from. As a (supposedly) neutral actor in the Canadian Constitution, the King could never have directly referenced Trump, but as remarks go these could hardly have been more pointed. Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal government – elected on a largely anti-Trump mandate – wanted to assert Canada’s sovereignty very publicly and if, as Professor Smith argues, the definition of ‘efficient’ as intended by Bagehot is to ‘produce an effect’ beyond a purely visual one, it certainly achieved that (David E Smith, The Invisible Crown: The First Principles of Canadian Government (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 1995, at xix-xv).
Of course, the Speech from the Throne is written by ministers: just as the monarch acts on the advice of the UK government when discharging constitutional duties in the UK, so too he acts on the advice of the Canadian government when doing so in Canada, in accordance with the Cardinal Convention. But it is telling that the Prime Minister’s Office has confirmed that this particular Speech was written ‘in collaboration with the Palace’. This royal touch can arguably be seen in the very personal tone it struck. For example, Charles expressed that with every visit to the country, ‘a little more of Canada seeps into my bloodstream – and from there straight to my heart’ – a far cry from the very formal and formulaic words prosaically delivered by Queen Elizabeth 68 years earlier. This Speech was ‘a willed act by the king’ rather than the passive one that previous throne speeches and the King’s Speech – both written ‘entirely by the government’ and simply read by the monarch – are.
One cannot help but wonder what the UK Prime Minister made of the Speech. In relation to outgoing state visits, a key constitutional principle is that it is the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth Realm that has the right of direct access to the monarch; the British Prime Minister is not competent to advise the King on visits to his Realms (Philip Murphy, ‘State Visits Made and Received by the British and Other European Monarchial Heads of State’ in Robert Hazell and Bob Morris, The Role of Monarchy in Modern Democracy: European Monarchies Compared (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020), 168). But, at a time when the UK government is looking to boost ties with the US in order to avoid trade tariffs, one questions whether, had it been left to him, Keir Starmer would have allowed Charles to make such a strong and vocal show of support for a country currently at loggerheads with the Trump administration. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that there was no sign of the British Foreign Secretary during Charles’ Canadian state visit. As a matter of constitutional convention, on outward state visits the monarch should be accompanied by the British Foreign Secretary, or if this is not possible, another minister from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (Ibid). For example, then-Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd accompanied Queen Elizabeth when she delivered the Throne Speech during her state visit to Canada in 1957. But current Foreign Secretary David Lammy – who has previously accompanied the King on state visits to Italy and Samoa – was conspicuous by his absence, and no other Foreign Office minister travelled with the King.
Of course, Bagehot did ascribe to the monarch some limited influence over matters of policy, famously declaring that the monarch had a trio of rights to be consulted, to encourage and to warn, known as the Tripartite Convention. In his Speech Charles certainly did warn Canadians that, for example, ‘the world is a more dangerous and uncertain place than at any point since the Second World War’ and that their country is facing ‘unprecedented challenges’ in a ‘drastically changing world’. He also encouraged them to ‘think big and to act bigger’ and ‘stay true to Canadian values (in order to) build new alliances and a new economy’. But the Speech can hardly be said to have been an exercise of the Tripartite Convention, since this Convention only operates during the monarch’s private and confidential audience with the Prime Minister, when no notes are taken and no record is published, preserving (at least the perception of) the monarch’s political neutrality.
Rather, this throne speech was arguably an example of Charles making a very public political statement – one which seemingly throws into question his political neutrality. Bagehot strongly warned against a politically-assertive monarch: ‘it is easy to imagine, upon a constitutional throne, an active and meddling fool who always acts when he should not… constitutional royalty under an active king is one of the worst of Governments’ (Bagehot, above, 88). For centuries, therefore, the monarch has been under an ‘essential’ duty to be politically neutral in public (Asif Hameed, ‘The monarchy and politics’ (Public Law, 2016), 403). According to Hazell, there is value in a political system of a constitutional monarch acting as a ‘pouvoir neutre: someone above the political fray, with a legitimising role, whose legitimacy derives precisely from their complete neutrality’ which enables them to carry out their dignified role (Robert Hazell, ‘Conclusions’ in Robert Hazell and Bob Morris, The Role of Monarchy in Modern Democracy: European Monarchies Compared (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020), 92). When it comes to the Speech from the Throne specifically, Berthelsen has argued that absolute neutrality is necessary in order to lift the Crown above politics, and that partisan speeches infringe on the dignity of the Crown in Canada (Philippe Lagasse, ‘Conclusion: the Contentious Canadian Crown’ in Michael Jackson and Philippe Lagasse (eds), Canada and the Crown: Essays in Constitutional Monarchy (Queen’s University, 2014), 328).
While, in this case, there may not be an issue of neutrality as between domestic political positions (all of Canada’s main political parties are opposed to Trump’s threats), arguably there is an issue of neutrality as between international political positions – and there appears little doubt as to where Charles’ allegiances lie after this Speech. As Newsnight later reported, one leading US newspaper’s headline the next day was ‘Push off Donald I’m the King’, while another noted that the Speech had pitted ‘the King vs the President’ and sent a ‘very clear message from the King to Trump of “hands off Canada”’. Writing in The Guardian, Kettle has also described the Speech as an ‘audacious event’ that ‘pushed the boundaries of politics’ and in which the ‘words (were) not neutral’.
Arguably, therefore, the Speech did compromise the hallowed constitutional principle of political neutrality. However, maybe this was an ‘efficient’ function that it was intended on this occasion to perform. I have written on this blog of the increasingly efficient role that Charles is playing in the UK constitution. For example, the Palace appears to be increasingly collaborating with the Labour Government to promote policies which the King and Prime Minister jointly support, including in contested political areas like housing and knife crime. This seemingly threatens the perception of the monarch’s political neutrality in the UK. Yet, it is interesting that a poll has found that 43% of people want the monarchy to take a more active (or efficient) role in tackling the ‘biggest social issues and challenges facing the country’, despite the fact that they can be politically contentious. The same appears to be true in Canada too. For example, speaking to BBC News ahead of the Speech, Catherine Cullen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation stated that ‘the more overt he can be (against Trump), the better it will be received by Canadians’. This view appears to be reflected in polls, with Charles enjoying growing popularity since Trump’s ‘51st State’ threats as Canadians increasingly see the King as a symbol of national pride. Moreover, Prime Minister Mark Carney, on the day he announced the royal visit, proudly stated that ‘Canada has a steadfast defender in our sovereign’. Therefore, perhaps both he and Canadians are wanting Charles to take a more active political role in the Constitution through asserting the nation’s sovereignty in the face of US annexationist ambitions.
In summary, by shifting the Speech from the Throne from a purely dignified exercise to a much more efficient one in which he warned, in veiled yet unambiguous terms, of the need to uphold Canada’s sovereignty in the face of Trump’s threats, Charles arguably expressed a view on global politics in a way which necessarily compromises his political neutrality. However, monarchy ultimately only survives by the consent of its subjects. It may well be that, as politics become more volatile, what a society expects of its monarch changes. If so, foundational constitutional principles which emerged 150 years ago, such as the monarch playing a purely dignified role and remaining politically neutral at all times, may need to be reconsidered – one wonders quite what Bagehot would have made to it all.
I am grateful to the editors of the UKCLA Blog for their helpful and incisive comments on an earlier draft. Any errors or omissions are my own.
Francesca Jackson is a PhD student at Lancaster University.
(Suggested citation: F. Jackson, ‘King Charles, the Speech from the Throne and the Constitutional Shift from the ‘Dignified’ to the ‘Efficient’: A Challenge to the Doctrine of Political Neutrality?’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (25th June 2025) (available at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/))
