What if the Queen says NO?
This question posed by an American in our office. Tony Blair will today go to the Queen and ask her to dissolve, etc etc. Of course this is a ‘formality’. “There would be a constitutional crisis,” I replied rather lamely. I suggested that emergency legislation would remove the formality PDQ, but I have no idea if this is the correct answer or not. For all I know Tony would nut the Queen and walk off laughing.
When I sat down to write this entry I was a bit embarrassed - this is one more weird constitutional accretion that comes from having a residual monarchy. But actually you do need some way of formalising important things like calling an election and forming a government, and having it based on a particular conversation between two people seems a less loophole-baiting method than some.
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