Sunday, July 01, 2007
 From the London Times July 1, 2007: "GORDON BROWN is to break with centuries of tradition by surrendering historic powers delegated to previous prime ministers by the Queen.
The new prime minister will this week publish plans to give up some of the royal "prerogative powers" enjoyed by his predecessors including important public appointments, the right to recall parliament during holidays and sending troops to war.
It marks a significant break from the era of Tony Blair who, like previous prime ministers, had rejected calls to relinquish the powers.
Brown is hoping that the significance and ambitious nature of the constitutional reforms will be compared to his decision in 1997 to hand over power to set interest rates to the Bank of England.
The Queen is said to be content with the plans.
[...]
Prerogative powers have been handed down direct from monarchs to ministers over many years, allowing governments to go to war, deploy the armed forces on operations overseas, regulate the civil service, and grant honours without need for approval from parliament.
The range and scope of the ancient powers was shrouded in secrecy until 2002, when they were listed by the government for the first time after pressure from MPs.
Some of the powers, such as the right to force men to join the navy, have fallen out of use, but others are regularly exercised, particularly in the field of foreign affairs. Brown has been working on the plans for months, drafting in the Cabinet Office and Jack Straw, the new justice secretary, to help them push it forwards. In a pamphlet in 1994, Straw argued that the royal prerogative has "no place in a western democracy" claiming it had been used as "a smokescreen" by ministers to escape scrutiny for their decisions.
Brown's aides took the unusual step of telephoning the palace to inform them of every cabinet appointment before they were made public.[...]
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