HH09: Why did the Queen not...

At the end of HH09, Queen Elizabeth decided to allow the new government to accept the ceasefire proposal, because it would cause a constitutional crisis to reject something that ALL members of the government insist on.

But if I were in her place, I would probably make a passionate speech (and if it is improper for a monarch to do it, I would ask a prominent politican to do it) to the House of Lords: "Consider how disastrous it will be if we accept this unsincere ceasefire and give Haven time to rearm and to research how to counter our LAC, SD(P) and MDM. If you agree that it would be bad, then either recall (cancel, revoke) your support for this government or tell them you will recall it if they do insist on accepting the ceasefire."

If I understand it right, less than 50% of the Lords wanted Will Alexander as the new Prime Minister, but less than 50% supported Conservatives&Liberals&Progressivists, and the rest were unaligned peers, of which Cromarty was (but Alexander was not) able to win the support of a sufficient number to get the needed 50.001 % majority. Am I right here?

How probable is it that the number of Lords who do see the ceasefire as very wrong exceeds 50%? I would be surprised if the number was lower. Now a second question imho is how many of them will see it as a disaster so big that they are willing to let this government fall if it is the only way to prevent the ceasefire.

What would probably happen here? I imagine that a majority of the Lords would be willing to let this government down, but would they be willing to support a centrist government for this reason? They probably would not - although I wish they did, because the great stupidity of High Ridge (i.e. the intention to accept the ceasefire) might be richly enough (or at least: barely sufficient) to outweight the fact the Cromarty was able to win (convince) more unaligned Lords than W. Alexander was. In other words: Cromarty's death decreased the support for a centrist government a bit (a decisive bit), but wouldn't be High Ridge's willingness to accept this dishonest ceasefire significantly increase this support?

Or is the support for a centristic government, on the contrary, lower now that was before the HH09 military breakthough when all except the most idiotic (see HH04) politicians felt, at least to some degree, that they must put aside their political preferences and support a government which is trying to win a war?

I will write the rest in another post to make quotations more convenient.

So suppose that more than 50% in the Lords are willing to let the government down (because they see the ceasefire as disastrous), but NOT to confirm (vote confidence to) a centrist government. I think that there might be a discussion about some kind of neutral government, for example a government of non-aligned experts, or of a wide coalition (which High Ridge asked the Queen for at the end of HH10). But I assume that all these choices are unrealistic to win a sufficient support.

So what would happen then? A majority of the Lords would vote no confidence for High Ridge government, but there would not be a majority for any other government. I think that in most modern pre-diaspora democratic countries (in the last few centuries before diaspora), the government would be allowed to rule provisionally until a new government is found and confirmed (gained confidence). And even worse, in some of these democracies it is not allowed to initiate a vote of no confidence without specifying which government should rule after the demise of the current one. I find it likely that the former (if not both) would be valid in Mantichore.

I think this would be bad, because the High Ridge government would still be there to accept the ceasefire. But on the other hand, this acceptance needed Queen's approval - and if 51% of the Lords (and much more than 70% of the Commons) voted against the government in this, the Queen would imho NOT risk a constitutional crisis here at all by rejecting the ceasefire. Am I wrong here?

And how improbable is that there would NOT be a sufficient support in the Lords for the following suggestion of a centric politician: We should replace the current High Ridge government with a very similar government, just with a reasonable Foreign minister (and maybe a responsible Defense minister). Let's enforce a change on very few government posts: Just enough to reject extremely wrong proposals of Haven (and maybe to prevent the worst scenarios of letting the quality of our army greatly decrease under an incompetent defense minister) -- but small enough that you can still accept the suggested government because it is so similar to the government which you voted for. So you, supporters of the current government, can now have both: keeping your preferred governemnt almost unchanged, and yet prevent the worst mistakes in the foreign policy and the navy.

So to sum it up, my question is:

• Is there an error in my reasoning?
• Is it improbable that there would be as much resistance against the unsincere ceasefire as I write?
• Am I wrong that this would help and the ceasefire would NOT be accepted?
• Should the Queen not have at least tried it?

Am I right that David deliberately dropped (left out) these considerations because creating a wonderful plot and a sad (yes, heartbreaking) twist was more important here than realism? This is NOT the case if you show me a flaw in my reasoning, proving that David's version of events is NOT unrealistic at all. That it is absolutely believable that these (suggested here by me) efforts would NOT succeed.

Well, we know that two members of the House of Lords died in the assassination attempt - Lord Allen Summervale Duke of Cromarty himself and Lord Edward Henke Earl Gold Peak.
I don't believe we know who inherited Summervale's seat, and though we do know that Michelle Henke inherited her father's seat; but we don't know how soon those heir were seated in the House of Lords. (Michelle at least would have presumably been at the front with 8th fleet and not in a possition to return home to be seated in Lords -- but until she has been formally seated I don't think she can designate a proxy to vote on her behalf)

And rereading HH9's relevant chapter it doesn't appear that High Ridge's government had to take the ceasefire to a vote in Lords. Accepting a peace treaty would presumably have required ratification; but accepting a temporary ceasefire to negotiate appears to have been within the power of the Prime Minister. So to reject it you'd seemingly need to convince sufficient Lords to make a no-confidence vote and bring down High Ridge's government. Even Peers which don't really favor a ceasefire probably are reluctant to go that far.

And, as we don't know who Summervale's heir is we've no idea whether they'd be for or against a ceasefire to negotiate peace terms. Even if they've already been seated (and unless they were also deployed somewhere they probably had been - it's clearly been a month or more between forming High Ridge's government and the ceasefire offer) they might wish to vote out High Ridge.

But Lords missing even just Michelle's vote might be enough to prevent a no confidence vote from succeeding. Enough of the non-aligned peers might well be willing to accept what they see as a nearly non-existent military risk in order to explore peace. (After all White Haven's fleet had been steamrolling Haven's; in preposterously one-sided victories -- and I don't think anyone could have contemplated High Ridge holding things in limbo the years it would take for Haven to catch up); especially when there was domestic political gains to be had from doing so. (And since they would, presumably, get to vote on whether to accept any peace treaty they probably figured that worst case they'd reject one that was too favorable to Haven and outright military victory would still be there for the taking)

Jonathan_S wrote:Well, we know that two members of the House of Lords died in the assassination attempt - Lord Allen Summervale Duke of Cromarty himself and Lord Edward Henke Earl Gold Peak.
I don't believe we know who inherited Summervale's seat, and though we do know that Michelle Henke inherited her father's seat; but we don't know how soon those heir were seated in the House of Lords. (Michelle at least would have presumably been at the front with 8th fleet and not in a possition to return home to be seated in Lords -- but until she has been formally seated I don't think she can designate a proxy to vote on her behalf)

And rereading HH9's relevant chapter it doesn't appear that High Ridge's government had to take the ceasefire to a vote in Lords. Accepting a peace treaty would presumably have required ratification; but accepting a temporary ceasefire to negotiate appears to have been within the power of the Prime Minister. So to reject it you'd seemingly need to convince sufficient Lords to make a no-confidence vote and bring down High Ridge's government. Even Peers which don't really favor a ceasefire probably are reluctant to go that far.

And, as we don't know who Summervale's heir is we've no idea whether they'd be for or against a ceasefire to negotiate peace terms. Even if they've already been seated (and unless they were also deployed somewhere they probably had been - it's clearly been a month or more between forming High Ridge's government and the ceasefire offer) they might wish to vote out High Ridge.

But Lords missing even just Michelle's vote might be enough to prevent a no confidence vote from succeeding. Enough of the non-aligned peers might well be willing to accept what they see as a nearly non-existent military risk in order to explore peace. (After all White Haven's fleet had been steamrolling Haven's; in preposterously one-sided victories -- and I don't think anyone could have contemplated High Ridge holding things in limbo the years it would take for Haven to catch up); especially when there was domestic political gains to be had from doing so. (And since they would, presumably, get to vote on whether to accept any peace treaty they probably figured that worst case they'd reject one that was too favorable to Haven and outright military victory would still be there for the taking)

High Ridge kept the war going to maintain the war emergency tax spigot, but used the ceasefire to justify not spending those funds on the military, Instead, he funded the social programs the Liberals wanted, with some percentage (10%?) siphoned off to fund the personal and party projects of the members of the government and their supporters. It also allowed him to postpone new elections (There's a war on, don'tcha know?!), which kept the war taxes flowing, while preventing the new members of the Lords and Commons appointed by San Martino and Lynx (both of which had joined the Star Kingdom, not the Star Empire) from being seated. Who would presumably have joined the Centrist/Crown Loyalist bloc in opposing High Ridge.

Reflame wrote:At the end of HH09, Queen Elizabeth decided to allow the new government to accept the ceasefire proposal, because it would cause a constitutional crisis to reject something that ALL members of the government insist on.

But if I were in her place, I would probably make a passionate speech (and if it is improper for a monarch to do it, I would ask a prominent politican to do it) to the House of Lords: "Consider how disastrous it will be if we accept this unsincere ceasefire and give Haven time to rearm and to research how to counter our LAC, SD(P) and MDM. If you agree that it would be bad, then either recall (cancel, revoke) your support for this government or tell them you will recall it if they do insist on accepting the ceasefire."

Well, this pretty much did happen, with such Lords as Duchess Harrington and Earl White Haven. In fact, that's the whole next book!

So we know it didn't work.

If I understand it right, less than 50% of the Lords wanted Will Alexander as the new Prime Minister, but less than 50% supported Conservatives&Liberals&Progressivists, and the rest were unaligned peers, of which Cromarty was (but Alexander was not) able to win the support of a sufficient number to get the needed 50.001 % majority. Am I right here?

How probable is it that the number of Lords who do see the ceasefire as very wrong exceeds 50%? I would be surprised if the number was lower. Now a second question imho is how many of them will see it as a disaster so big that they are willing to let this government fall if it is the only way to prevent the ceasefire.

What would probably happen here? I imagine that a majority of the Lords would be willing to let this government down, but would they be willing to support a centrist government for this reason? They probably would not - although I wish they did, because the great stupidity of High Ridge (i.e. the intention to accept the ceasefire) might be richly enough (or at least: barely sufficient) to outweight the fact the Cromarty was able to win (convince) more unaligned Lords than W. Alexander was. In other words: Cromarty's death decreased the support for a centrist government a bit (a decisive bit), but wouldn't be High Ridge's willingness to accept this dishonest ceasefire significantly increase this support?

I don't think the math works quite that well. The Cromarty government was held by an alliance of the Centrists and the Crown Loyalists, but by this time the population was war-weary. The fact that High Ridge did get appointed PM and managed to form a government means that he had the necessary votes at the time. I don't think you could manage to break those numbers in the short time between his appointment and the cease-fire.

As others have said above, this was not a peace treaty; this was just a temporary cease fire, so probably not subject to a House vote (either house). In turn, that means the only way to get that changed would have been a vote of no-confidence to bring down the entire government, a much more radical request, only a couple of months after voting the government in.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Reflame wrote:At the end of HH09, Queen Elizabeth decided to allow the new government to accept the ceasefire proposal, because it would cause a constitutional crisis to reject something that ALL members of the government insist on.

But if I were in her place, I would probably make a passionate speech (and if it is improper for a monarch to do it, I would ask a prominent politican to do it) to the House of Lords: "Consider how disastrous it will be if we accept this unsincere ceasefire and give Haven time to rearm and to research how to counter our LAC, SD(P) and MDM. If you agree that it would be bad, then either recall (cancel, revoke) your support for this government or tell them you will recall it if they do insist on accepting the ceasefire."

Well, this pretty much did happen, with such Lords as Duchess Harrington and Earl White Haven. In fact, that's the whole next book!

So we know it didn't work.

If I understand it right, less than 50% of the Lords wanted Will Alexander as the new Prime Minister, but less than 50% supported Conservatives&Liberals&Progressivists, and the rest were unaligned peers, of which Cromarty was (but Alexander was not) able to win the support of a sufficient number to get the needed 50.001 % majority. Am I right here?

How probable is it that the number of Lords who do see the ceasefire as very wrong exceeds 50%? I would be surprised if the number was lower. Now a second question imho is how many of them will see it as a disaster so big that they are willing to let this government fall if it is the only way to prevent the ceasefire.

What would probably happen here? I imagine that a majority of the Lords would be willing to let this government down, but would they be willing to support a centrist government for this reason? They probably would not - although I wish they did, because the great stupidity of High Ridge (i.e. the intention to accept the ceasefire) might be richly enough (or at least: barely sufficient) to outweight the fact the Cromarty was able to win (convince) more unaligned Lords than W. Alexander was. In other words: Cromarty's death decreased the support for a centrist government a bit (a decisive bit), but wouldn't be High Ridge's willingness to accept this dishonest ceasefire significantly increase this support?

I don't think the math works quite that well. The Cromarty government was held by an alliance of the Centrists and the Crown Loyalists, but by this time the population was war-weary. The fact that High Ridge did get appointed PM and managed to form a government means that he had the necessary votes at the time. I don't think you could manage to break those numbers in the short time between his appointment and the cease-fire.

As others have said above, this was not a peace treaty; this was just a temporary cease fire, so probably not subject to a House vote (either house). In turn, that means the only way to get that changed would have been a vote of no-confidence to bring down the entire government, a much more radical request, only a couple of months after voting the government in.

Let's also not forget, this wasn't black and white politics - as mentioned above, High Ridge's programs benefitted groups and individuals that normally would not be in his corner, siphoning off votes from any opposition movement with payback schemes. Also, High Ridge had the North Hollow Files on his side - an accounting of thousands of dirty deeds done by current and former prominent citizens and lords. The Youngs use that dirt held on so many to paralyze any opposition to High Ridge. And if you read further, notice how quickly High Ridge's base melts away once the North Hollow Files disappeared.

What happened in Manty Politics at the end of the war had nothing to do with black and white patriotism - it was fueled by cronyism, greed, fear and self-interest.

HoS wrote:For example, the Constitution grants the monarch the power to function as both head of state and head of government. Although the written Constitution enshrines a cabinet form of government, headed by a Prime Minister, the unwritten portion of the Constitution established during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign (1489–1521 PD) holds that the Cabinet is the monarch’s servant and serves at his or her pleasure. The written Constitution provided her with several weapons which aided significantly in her ability to establish that point. Among those weapons, the Constitution specifically provides that when Parliament is hung and no party in the House of Lords can form a majority or coalition government, the monarch may choose the Prime Minister and instruct him to form a minority government. In fact, under a strict interpretation of the written Constitution, the Monarch is not required to accept a Prime Minister even if he commands a majority in the Lords. In practice, that majority could refuse to support any other candidate for the office, creating an impasse which would paralyze government completely.

The supreme legislative body of the Star Empire will be the Imperial Parliament, which will meet in a new Imperial Hall of Parliament in Landing on Manticore. Based closely on the structure of the original Parliament of the Star Kingdom, but with membership drawn from the entire Empire, the Imperial Parliament is still in the early stages of formation. In the meantime, the Parliament of the Old Star Kingdom continues to act in a caretaker role for the Empire as a whole.

Parliament is bicameral, with an upper house (the House of Lords) and a lower house (the House of Commons). The Constitution requires the Prime Minister be a member of the House of Lords (and hence a Peer) who must receive the endorsement of a majority of his fellow Peers to hold the office. This provides him with a base of political power which a wise Monarch does not challenge, since the Crown can accomplish little without the support of Parliament. As a consequence, despite the Monarch’s status as head of government and despite the Crown’s power to dismiss a Prime Minister at will, successful governance requires a partnership between Monarch and Prime Minister. The consequences when the Crown finds itself at odds with a Prime Minister not of its choosing, backed by a powerful majority in the Lords, can be disastrous, as demonstrated by the recent High Ridge Government.

That suggests to me that High Ridge had indeed assembled a working majority of the House of Lords behind him.

The reason he was able to do that, IIRC, is that a number of those non-aligned peers who flipped from Cromarty to High Ridge were afraid of what might happen when those new San Martin(Lynx hadn't been found yet) peers were seated - the exact thing which happened when they were later seated: the House of Lords lost its exclusive power of the purse and probably created a comfortable majority between the Centrist and Loyalist parties.

HoS wrote:The House of Lord was intended by the framers of the Constitution to be the most powerful organ of government in the Star Kingdom. While it has been the scene of many bitter factional fights over the centuries, historically it was not marked by the creation of formal political parties, although that has been gradually changing for some time now. Most (though by no means all) Manticoran aristocrats have possessed a fairly strong sense of nobless oblige; those who have not, as exemplified by Baron High Ridge and his allies, are among the most self-centered and intolerant in the known universe. The aristocratic parties which have existed have tended to be working alliances of individuals with the same basic interests, but those alliances also tend to be flexible, elastic, and subject to change. This approach to party and faction has been changing for some time now, but the tradition of ad hoc alliances irrespective of formal party labels remains very much alive.

Looking back throughout the series, it seems like Cromarty was consistently the head of a minority government, with changing sets of coalition partners. During OBS we had the Conservative Association in government, then during FoD the opposition parties were able to stall a formal declaration of war. He had also been knocked out of the premiership several times prior to OBS.

Reflame wrote:And how improbable is that there would NOT be a sufficient support in the Lords for the following suggestion of a centric politician: We should replace the current High Ridge government with a very similar government, just with a reasonable Foreign minister (and maybe a responsible Defense minister). Let's enforce a change on very few government posts: Just enough to reject extremely wrong proposals of Haven (and maybe to prevent the worst scenarios of letting the quality of our army greatly decrease under an incompetent defense minister) -- but small enough that you can still accept the suggested government because it is so similar to the government which you voted for. So you, supporters of the current government, can now have both: keeping your preferred governemnt almost unchanged, and yet prevent the worst mistakes in the foreign policy and the navy.

It doesn't work that way. It seems like cabinet post appointments are pretty much at the Prime Minister's discretion. In order to hold his coalition together, High Ridge had to give his partners those cabinet posts. The Foreign Ministry was held by the Progressive Party's leader, Elaine Descroix. And they needed someone incompetent running the Navy so they could siphon off funds.

Anyone more competent than Janacek would have kept as much of that funding for the Navy as they could - meaning less to go around for the Liberals' and Progressives' pet projects. Without these, High Ridge doesn't have a coalition.

munroburton wrote:
Anyone more competent than Janacek would have kept as much of that funding for the Navy as they could - meaning less to go around for the Liberals' and Progressives' pet projects. Without these, High Ridge doesn't have a coalition.

I wouldn't call Janacheck incompetent. He had served as head of the Navy multiple times and was a respected officer. He just had certain conservative views which created blinders as to how he saw the universe and no one changed them - if he had any fault, he continually chose underlings that would build bubble chambers for him, and he never had to truely face the consequences of his blinders until PD1919 and news of thunderbolt.

When HoS came out, I posted about Janacheck's (Then a Sr Captain) rebuttal to Roger Winton's paper on what a future navy should look like and what the RMN's future responsibilities should be. I spoke of Janacheck's gall at picking apart what essentially was his future monarch's position paper spelling out what that future monarch wanted HIS future Navy to look like and do.

MWW countered me, saying that Janacheck's response was seem by Janacheck and many of his Sr. contemporaries as guidance given by a wise, influential sr. officer to a young jr. officer (who everyone knew one day will be influential) as to the true nature of the universe and the RMN's place in it. The Rebuttal was education for a sheep who was straying off the true path - a sheep who they wanted to reform into their image.

And more than anything that is the problem with Janacheck - He, and his attitudes, were formed in a different era with different dangers and requirements. Haven was a distant issue, that was always someone else's problem for most of Janacheck's career. In his mind, Roger poked the Bear by building a powerful expeditionary navy and brought that Bear to Manticore's doorstep, not the other way around - and somehow never got past that idea. Janacheck wanted to return to the time of protecting the Wormhole with forts, having a small non-expeditionary wall to protect Manticore, and having thousands of small presence units protecting the merchant marine. And sadly, he never realized that the universe had changed, and the old solutions didn't protect against the dangers in the new realities.

So post war, with the Havenite bear doing it's thing way over there, Janacheck was given his wish by High Ridge to go back to status quo, to trim back Roger's dangerous expensive wall, and return to the old patroling days with units that were not seem as expansionist while further forting up. And he gathered like minded individuals around him who threw out data that didn't fit that picture.

So Janacheck wasn't incompetent or inept - he was just a creature from another time with a mindset to match.

Though I’m still wondering why, when his CNO quit, there wasn’t a car from the Palace waiting for the CNO at the curb to have a talk with Beth.