Brexit or Breaksit?

[robkelk]

Can the Queen still dissolve Parliament and call new elections?  It's starting to look like a reasonable option.  May's Government is doing their level best to make dictatorial powers look attractive.

The Sovereign is free to dissolve Parliament on the advice of the Prime Minister.

That's the dirty little secret behind constitutional Parliamentary democracies: once somebody's been elected the leader of a majority party that votes along the party line, the Prime Minister pretty much is a dictator. Constrained by the constitution (written or unwritten) and the rule of law, of course, but that's all the constraints that there are on a PM. (At least in Canada, the party leader actually has to have a seat in the House of Commons before being allowed to become PM... but there's always somebody who's willing to give up a "safe" seat in exchange for a plum political appointment.)

If we didn't have political parties, that would be different. But there's that magic word "if".