The UK Constitution And The DSA Agenda

Lately I'm seeing lots of talk to the effect that the Democratic Socialists of America are communists, but their agenda goes back a lot farther than that. I found the graphic embedded above at Conservative Treehouse, which says it comes from DSA Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo. I think there's less of Marx in it than England of the 1600s and the subsequent UK.

The first two agenda items are "Eliminate the US Senate" and "Congress [presumably now just the House] chooses Executive & Judiciary". This, with a few small differences, is the system England adopted during its 1642-1651 Civil War and codified in the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Settlement Act of 1701, that "Parliament is supreme".

In the time since then, "Parliament", theoretically the House of Commons and the House of Lords, has come to mean the House of Commons exclusively in normal speech, and somewhere during the reigns of Victoria or Edward VII, the monarch lost all executive authority -- if the monarch were now to refuse assent to any bill passed by parliament, it would cause a "constitutional crisis" that would likely in the modern age result in the abolition of the monarchy.

The extent to which the monarchy is controlled by parliament extends to parliament's ability to override the line of succession. I asked Chrome AI mode, "if the House of Windsor someday runs out of heirs to the throne, does parliament select the next monarch?" It replied,

Yes, the British Parliament holds the ultimate constitutional authority to determine the next monarch if the current line of succession fails. Under the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701, Parliament is the supreme body that regulates and dictates the rules of royal succession.

Running out of heirs is practically impossible, as the legal line of succession includes thousands of living descendants of Electress Sophia of Hanover. However, if that entire lineage became extinct, Parliament would manage the vacancy using specific legal avenues. Parliament would introduce emergency legislation to either expand eligibility parameters or nominate a brand new royal dynasty.

So far, parliament has stayed out of internal royal family management issues in the line of succession, like the question of whether the former Prince Andrew should be formally removed -- since he's number eight, the question is unlikely to come up -- but parliament is the authority that controls it:

U.K. lawmakers are calling for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to be removed from the royal family line of succession after his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

“I can tell you the government is looking at options in relation to succession,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told reporters Monday. “We are considering what measures could be taken, but that would have to be after a police investigation.”

Trade Minister Chris Bryant echoed Starmer’s remarks in a parliamentary debate, saying: “We are working at pace on this, and we intend to bring forward legislation when we can.”

On that basis, I don't see any reason why parliament, if it disagreed with Prince William and his children being next in the line of succession, could instead designate Prince Harry, although it would have to get the other countries in the British Commonwealth to agree -- but neither the monarch nor the royal family would have a say in the matter.

The only area where the UK constitution differs from the DSA agenda is that in the UK currently, judges are selected by an independent board, although before 2005, they were in fact appointed by the Lord Chancellor, a cabinet minister within the government.

Pretty much all the other DSA agenda items have in fact already been implemented in the UK, at least de facto. These include amnesty for immigrants, abolition of deportations, and elimination of the military. Labour is in the process of extending existing UK wealth taxes:

Andy Burnham has declined to rule out introducing a wealth tax and suggested the government "might be having to ask for a little more" at some point to balance Britain's books.

The incoming UK prime minister said he needed time to look at the state of the public finances before committing to policy changes but argued that the UK needed a "greater sense of fairness".

. . . He added: "So, you know, decisions to be taken in time, they're going to be difficult. I'm not going to shy away from that. You know, we are going to have to work quite hard to make sure, you know, we can pay our way.

"And at some point that might be having to ask for a little more. But, you know, those decisions are not for now. They're for another day."

Burnham has committed himself to Labour's fiscal rules but indicated he thinks there is room for movement on tax within the confines of the party's manifesto, which rules out raising VAT, income tax or national insurance.

The hole the UK has dug for itself has taken centuries of digging.