Let's Parler Franglais
Procurators of the Fifth United Commonwealth
1959 - 1969:
Bernard L. Montgomery (Independent/Union of Patriots for the Commonwealth)
1969: Selwyn Lloyd (Constitutional Levellers)
1969 - 1974:
Iain Macleod† (Union of Patriots for the Commonwealth)
1974: Selwyn Lloyd (Constitutional Levellers)
1974 - 1981:
Francis Pym (Union for British Freedom)
1981 - 1995:
Anthony Wedgewood Benn (Syndicalist Party)
1995 - 2007:
John Moore (Commonwealth Array)
2007 - 2012:
Michael Portillo (Commonwealth Array)
2012 - 2017:
Dave Prentis (Syndicalist Party)
2017 - 2027:
Chuka Umunna (Commonwealth Unbowed!)
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Historians are in little doubt that the start of the Ireland Crisis in 1958 sealed the fate of the young and unloved Fourth Commonwealth. Just as with its pre-war successor, the state had been hampered by instability, a weak executive, and a lack of clear policy direction. Despite some progress in decolonisation, the United Commonwealth remained an Imperial Power, and although conflict and open revolt had begun the process of decolonisation, it was Gerald Templer's surrender at Penang that galvanised ultranationalist support to retain Ireland as a fundamental part of the British metropole. In a grim reversal of previous efforts, a motley assortment of dissident paramilitaries, ranging from respected (if erratic) military figures such as General Harding and Colonel Walter Walker, to dissident post-Rexists thinkers such as Jenks and Tolkien, that established the shadowy organisation that would launch the campaign of underground violence and bring mainland Britain to the brink of civil war. To that end, Procurator Hoare's appeal to
"that most illustrious of Britons" marked the last throw of the dice for the terrified establishment in London, and indeed, of the Commonwealth itself.
Until the crisis, Bernard Law Montgomery had been a man who everyone, bar himself, had assumed to have had his time been and gone. The man who had kept the kept the aspidistra flying during the État's occupation, headed the Provisional Government, and set out the principles of the Sovereign Economy had effectively taken himself out of the political mainstream by the time the barrels were rolling down the protesters outside the Temple Bar. Yet London, paralysed by fear, looked to him alone. With the swagger and self-assurance that only he was capable of, the coterie of middle-ranking civil servants and lawyers that drafted the Emergency Constitution during that long, hot, summer were left in little doubt as to who it was intended for.
Self-coup or not, the general election of November 1958 saw a comfortable majority for Montgomery's loose coalition known initially as the Alliance for a New Commonwealth. A hastily arranged sitting of the House of Commons and Councillors rubber-stamped his elevation to Procurator, which would be the last indirect election to date. With the crushing of the Dublin Putsch in 1961, and using his impeccable credentials as cover, it could only have been the Arch-Patriot Montgomery that could cut Ireland lose, set-up the directed economics that kick-started the so-called
Thirty Years Boom, and row-back on the security guarantees to America. His inherent distrust of both Washington and Paris would frustrate both nations (not least for withdrawing from OTAN and repeatedly rebutting Werner Dollinger's repeated efforts to join the Amsterdam Pact.)
Yet, of course, even the most glittering of careers - unless cut shot - ends at some unhappy juncture. A narrower than expected victory over Wedgewood Benn in the first direct Procurator election since Charles Mornington-Wesley's landslide in 1848 marked the start of his political decline, and his sudden resignation after the defeat of his referendum on regionalisation in 1969 have remained a source of controversy ever since, as well as a blemish on his reputation. Regardless, it is impossible to think of modern Britain without The General, and all subsequent statesmen have harkened back to the legacy of Montgomeryism in some form or another.
After the first interim Procuratorship of Selwyn Lloyd, the former Finance Minister and Speaker of the House of Councillors, the office would pass on a permanent basis to Iain Macleod. Although very much a protégé of The General, Macleod's term in office was marked by a more open and consolatory attitude in foreign policy, with warmer relations to both the United States of America and to the German Federation, which finally had a non-vetoed effort to join the Assembly of Europe. His death, often attributed to years of overwork as Montgomery's long-suffering Prime Minister, was met with genuine sadness by the British public, who had taken to the avuncular Macleod in a way that they had never quite managed with his stubborn and inscrutable predecessor. Today, he is immortalised in the vast Ministerial Complex of buildings along the Strand, and the eponymous modern art complex that bares his name on the site of the former Bankside Power Station.
Francis Pym is a man who - by his own admission - should perhaps have remained in the civil service. The characteristics that made him a well-respected Minister for the Exchequer, a solid understanding of detail, an inherent Germanophilia, and an inherent willingness to compromise, did not suit the demands of being the Chief of State. Pym was always inherently somewhat of a snob (his constant harkening back to his revolutionary ancestor of the same name, despite having only the most tenuous of familial connections) irked the public, whilst his record for political slipperiness (he had broken with the UPC after being dismissed from the Cabinet) found him few allies on the Montgomeryist Right. His backing as the consensus candidate in the 1974 election was largely due being seen as the most likely bloc on the resurgent Syndicalists, led by the increasingly fiery Wedgewood Benn, rather than widespread like or approval from his more conservative rivals.
By 1981, with the economy entering the doldrums from the late-1970s inflation shock, and with the atomkraft revolution not yet able to combat the challenges of spiralling energy costs, there was little doubt that Pym would face challenges for re-election. John Moore, elected as the first Mayor of Paris since the New Digger Uprising that accompanied the end of the Anglo-French War a century prior, stood for the Ultras, brushing his credentials for the future. He nevertheless expected to hold on for reflected, and was shell-shocked at the result.
Prior to his election as the first left-wing Procurator since the establishment of the Fifth Commonwealth, Anthony Wedgewood Benn had had a political career that had boarded on the quixotic. Originally cutting his teeth as an active member of the non-Rexist Far-Right (at times experimenting with Monarchism), he had served briefly in the army before being captured in one of the great encirclements during the État's
guerre éclair of 1940. Languishing in a prison camp, and after making several failed attempts to flee to the relative freedom of the Buxton Government, he served as an effective member of Alan Brooke's Most Loyal Residence, one of the chief rivals to Montgomery's Free British Army. In the first post-war elections, Wedgewood Benn had already begun a turn towards the left, initially sitting for the Commonwealth Broad Left Union, which later merged into as the broad anti-Montgommaryist alliance known as the Citizen's Freedom Movement.
Wedgewood Benn's ultimate skill during his long time in opposition was to undercut the more radical elements of the Commonwealth. Even his campaign posters were aimed at downplaying the more vocal elements of his electoral coalition to prevent a last-minute bolt to Pym by wavering centrists. The posters, baring the slogan,
A Calming Force with a side-view of the placid, pipe-smoking figure in front of that most English of images, the Seven Sisters on the Sussex coastline, have become a much imitated staple of all subsequent elections (a notorious parody, showing Wedgewood Benn wearing the uniform of the Mistery Guard, the far-right movement he had associated with during his youth, with dissidents being thrown off the cliffs behind him, saw
Private Eye briefly banned from publication for a few months after his election).
However, there was little sign of such conciliation after Wedgewood Benn's surprisingly strong second-round victory. Eschewing the State Bentley on the walk to his inauguration, his first address as Procurator set out an aggressive, syndicalist vision for the future of the Commonwealth. Immediate efforts were made for the full nationalisation of industry, a solidarity tax on wealth, and swinging defence cuts. At a time when the Cold War was reaching new heights as the United States brought itself out of the Malay-aise under President Connally, such rhetoric sat ill in the other capitals of the western alliance.
Such fears of a red tendril flung far from Moscow, however, proved unwarranted. Within two years, as the initial manifesto had failed to bring in the expected resurgence in living standards, Wedgewood Benn had moved towards more conciliatory syndicalism. A withdrawal of a bill to nationalise the great Public Schools resulted in the withdrawal of the Rodney Bickerstaffe's Worker's Party from the government. At the time seen as a mortal blow to Wedgewood Benn's re-election chances, it afforded him the ability to reinvigorate his administration, whilst continuing to pursue broad efforts to unite the fractious British left. By 1988, few doubted that Wedgewood Benn would be elected for a second term. After a comfortable victory against John Moore, he led the European Response to the final collapse of the Soviet Union, and played a key role in convincing Chancellor Strauß to accept the reality of French Reunification.
As the Commonwealth entered the 1990s, however, it was clear Wedgewood Benn was fading, physically at least. Decades of smoking, as well as heavy drinking picked up during his time in the Resistance, had robbed him of much of his strength, and it is now a matter of public record that he concealed the extent of his declining health from the public ahead of the 1988 election. A number of domestic scandals saw Shirley Williams fall to a landslide Parliamentary defeat to the resurgent right in the elections of 1993, forcing an awkward duopoly as Moore was appointed Premier. Moore would subsequently succeed Wedgewood Benn two years later, and he died a matter of months after leaving office. Nevertheless, he currently stands second only to Montgomery as the most influential Procurator of the post-war era.
Prior to his election, John Moore was always seen as the almost-man of British politics. His pretty boy, transatlantic swagger as Mayor of London and unofficial leader of the right had been much mocked in the media of the time, including a thinly-veiled cameo of Cassius Neoliberalus, the Latin School of Economics graduate in the pages of 0 AD. However, the years as the main thorn in the side of Wedgewood Benn had matured him, and by the time he was sworn into office after a comfortable, if not exactly vast margin over Bernard Donoughue, his motto of "Bring the Commonwealth Together" had gone someway to shedding his reputation as a conservative Rottweiler.
Moore's legacy, however, is mixed. His aloof and at times contradictory personality made him a respected but usually disliked Procurator, was brought up against a desire to reform the creaking British economy. Oftentimes accused of representing a pro-American, supply-side attitude to economics, Moore was unable to bring about the wide-spread reforms to the British state that he had once espoused as Mayor of London. As the promise of a calmer post-Cold War period gave way to the growing thread of civil conflict in India, the Balkans, and elsewhere, Moore soon found himself falling back on the trope much beloved of the British left, right, and centre, "blame it all on Mont Pelerin". The French-based international centre for classical liberalism had always been a useful scapegoat for Procurators of all parties, and Moore made heavy use of it whilst trying to force his own, even tepid, reforms to pensions and trades unions through the legislature. Indeed, it was this, just as much as Donoughue's own ineptness as leader of the Syndicalists, that led to what at the time was the most shocking election in the history of the Fifth Commonwealth.
The history of the far-right in British politics goes back to the first Revolution, and the beheading of Charles Stuart. However, whilst monarchists of the Stuart, Hanoverian, and Wellesleyan tendencies have all jostled for attention since the fall of the Second Empire, the tendency in recent years has been towards the populist, nativist end of the spectrum. Nevertheless, no one seemed as shocked as the man himself when Alan K. M. Clark snuck over the line in second place. The son of a semi-aristocratic family of Scottish-Irish descent, Clark had fallen upon hard times after the death of his father during the War. After a spell in the armed forces and a failed attempt as a military historian, Clark embraced the growing tendency of the
New Right, aimed at breaking with the monarchist-leanings of the traditional extremes of British politics in favour of a more populist, worker focused tendency. Cutting his teeth as Arthur Chesterton's campaign manager in the 1965 election (during which the Rexist received a not-insignificant 5 percent of the vote), Clark became as an increasingly prominent figure on as both an intellectual thuggish figure for what would grow into the British Front, and now the National Rally (although he has subsequently broken with his former heir and ally, Anne-Marie Morris). However, prior to 2002, few, if any, thought that the man would be anything more than a fringe figure.
The shock of the first-round brought reports of a permanent fracturing of the "Commonwealth Front" into sharp focus. Syndicalists, Communists, Radicals and Ecologists alike, stung by the result, turned out in force as Moore faced Clark in the second round. With the world's media watching, the result was a foregone conclusion well before election day, and Moore was re-elected with what remains the largest landslide in British history - ahead of even Mornington-Wesley's victory as Prince-Procurator over a hundred and fifty years prior.
Yet, it was a victory that was certainly more anti-Clark as it was pro-Moore, and the latter's second term in office was marked by further antipathy and distrust, not least as the Head of State faced increasingly prominent corruption allegations. Increasingly in the shadow of his popular Interior Minister, he left office in 2007.
Michael Portillo's victory over Frances O'Grady was seen as a generational and social change in Commonwealth politics - with both candidates born after the War, and both representing a first for second round candidates, Portillo, the son of an exiled Spanish republican, and O'Grady, the first mainstream female candidate in an historically macho landscape. However, the campaign was marked by an increasingly bitter contest, with Portillo in particular moving towards increasingly hard-right policy positions on immigration and culture, in part to stave off a repeat of the previous election. His victory over O'Grady brought with it the usual riots and demonstrations from the left, but ominously, very little in the way of an active rally from the right. His election, coinciding as it did with the start of the Asian Currency Crisis and the Great Recession, was followed by a flashy but unpopular term in office - during which he did little to impress an increasingly irritated electorate by wearing colourful and unpresidential suits and spending more time travelling around on
InterCityExpress for photo-ops, rather than dealing with the cost of living crisis. His defeat to the veteran backroom operator and General Secretary of the Syndicalist Party, David Prentis, surprised little but himself.
The one thing that Portillo could take solace in, perhaps, was that his hapless predecessor proved even more unpopular than he did. Taking office as the Commonwealth slowly emerged from the worst economic slump in forty years, Prentis soon found himself embittered as he haemorrhaged support from both right and left. Unpopular (if arguably necessary) labour reforms drew the ire of the Syndicalist base, whilst efforts to bring in further social reforms turned him into a figure of much distrust from the formally safe, if socially conservative voters in Yorkshire, the Midlands and elsewhere in Pink Wall that had previously served as the left's heartlands. As the British Front made inroads in the former heartlands, and the country was hit by a wave of terrorist attacks, Prentis soon found himself with the unenviable epitaph as the most unpopular Procurator in history.
Yet, in time, Prentis may be seen as being a more successful Head of State than many let on. Much of the policy framework of his successor was begun by him, especially on pensions and tax reform, whilst the ambitious reorganisation of the Commonwealth's administrative regions (including the merger of the hodgepodge of 24 regions into 12) will take years before it can be judged a failure or not. However, there is little doubt that the old power of the Syndicalist Party is but a shadow of what it was barely a few years ago. With approval figures reaching single-figures, Prentis became the first Procurator since the formation of the Fifth Commonwealth to forgo re-election.
Chuka Umunna's meteoric rise to the Whitehall could have been stopped by any number of things. Had he not chosen
exactly the right moment to resign as Economy Minister, he may have been shackled with the aura of failure than doomed Prentis. Had The Constitutionalists selected anyone other than Christopher Grayling to be the standard bearer of the traditional right, there is little chance that his reformist, egocentric coalition would have been able to draw sufficient numbers of suburban voters to take him to the second round. Had he faced anyone other than Anne-Marie Morris - a figure still too far for the Commonwealth Front to take to heart, he would have cracked under the pressure of a more experienced rival. However, all is speculation. As it was - the fresh-faced, polyglot, Europhile, liberal entered office in 2017 as the first Procurator in the history of the Commonwealth to have not belong to either of the two main power blocks.
Umunna's legacy will take much to measure, even as he recovered from a more stressful than expected contest against Morris in last-week's rematch. With neither Morris, nor George Galloway's rag-tag
Britain Arise expected to stand again in 2027, the future of the Commonwealth looks as unpredictable as it has ever done. Constitutionally illegible for a third term, Umunna may yet move to the realm of European supranational politics, leaving his movement to find another to rally around (or perhaps splinter). Much has been made of his former Prime Minister, Nicholas Clegg, who serves as both a more personable and liked candidate than his former boss, but whether the former liberal-conservative Mayor of Brighton can maintain his grip on the broad centre (perhaps remained
New Commonwealth) in quite the same way, remains to be seen.