She Won’t Decide.

Queen Ensures She Won’t Decide Who Governs in Hung Parliament. April 9 (Bloomberg) -- For the first time since 1923, a British monarch may have to resolve a stalemate over who will become the next prime minister. The queen’s aides are working to make sure that never happens. Eighty-seven years ago, King George V had to pickStanley Baldwin over Lord Curzon after Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law resigned without suggesting a successor. Polls suggest neither Labour Prime MinisterGordon Brown nor Conservative David Cameron will win the necessary votes for a majority in the May 6 election, resulting in a so-called hung parliament. Civil servants have drafted rules they hope will cover every eventuality to protect Queen Elizabeth II’s neutrality. “The queen must remain absolutely above politics,” said Robert Hazell, director of University College London’s Constitution Unit, who was involved in drawing up the new standards. “The palace is keen to distance the queen as much as possible in order to protect her.” The rules prescribe procedures to avoid the confusion that followed the February 1974 election, the only time since World War II that no party won a majority. It took four days before Conservative Edward Heath resigned as premier, allowing the queen to name Labour’s Harold Wilson to lead a minority government. Conservative Lead. A YouGov Plc poll completed April 7 showed the Conservatives ahead in popular support by 37 percent to 32 percent. That would give Labour 287 seats and the Conservatives 272 in the 650-seat House of Commons, according to a formula devised by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of Plymouth University. Their calculations suggest the Conservatives need to win the popular vote by more than 10 percentage points to gain a majority in the Commons. No YouGov poll has showed that since Jan. 7. U.K. bonds and the pound will stay “under a cloud” unless the election produces a clear winner who can narrow the record budget deficit, according to Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. As the polls tightened this year, Gus O’Donnell, who as cabinet secretary is head of the Civil Service, accelerated plans to codify the conventions that surround elections. Consulting with the queen’s most senior aide, her private secretary Christopher Geidt, and academics, he drew up a draft chapter for the Civil Service Manual. Impossible Position. When he circulated it in February, lawmakers on Parliament’s Justice Committee questioned whether Brown could be trusted not to put the queen in a politically impossible position by requesting another election if he was unable to form a government, something the Conservatives would likely oppose. Hazell said two new paragraphs had been added to the as- yet-unpublished final draft to address lawmakers’ concerns. The rules make clear that “the prime minister must not resign unless and until it’s clear who his successor would be, so that the queen and the country are never without a government,” Hazell said. “Second, it’s a strong duty on the prime minister not to put the queen in an awkward position, not to ask for a dissolution of Parliament if she might refuse it.” Those standards would prevent Brown from asking for a second election if he wasn’t able to form a government. Britain has no written constitution, relying on precedent and specific laws instead. The 83-year-old queen, as sovereign, still formally dissolves Parliament, appoints the prime minister and presents the legislative program as that of her government. She has done so since she came to the throne in 1952. Civil War. Limits on how the monarch exercises those powers go back to the 17th century, when Parliament asserted its right to govern over two of the Queen’s ancestors. Charles I was beheaded in 1649 after a civil war that followed his decision to rule and raise taxes for 11 years without summoning the House of Commons. Charles’s son James II, who came to the throne in 1685, was exiled after attempting to rule without Parliament and placing Roman Catholics in positions of power. The 1689 Bill of Rights guaranteed the legislature’s powers and curbed the monarch’s. Officials now want to ensure that elected representatives, rather than the monarch, make the key decisions. They lay the onus on politicians to make the decisions on any change of government, so that the monarch merely gives her assent. Anonymous Letter. The last attempt to codify was in 1950, when Alan Lascelles, private secretary to King George VI, the queen’s father, used an anonymous letter to The Times of London to set out the factors the monarch would consider when deciding whether to agree to dissolve Parliament. Those included whether the current Parliament was viable, and whether there was an alternative prime minister.
“The popular myth is that the prime minister loses office if his party is defeated in a general election, but that is not the position,” said Robin Butler, who was Heath’s private secretary in February 1974. “The prime minister remains prime minister until he cannot command a majority in Parliament and somebody else can.” A confidential report by Robert Armstrong, head of Heath’s private office, has been studied by Brown’s aides. It describes the fall of the Conservative government after Heath tried and failed to reach a post-election deal with the Liberal Party to stay in power. The Conservatives won the popular vote, though Wilson’s Labour Party took more seats -- 301 to 297. The Liberals won 14. Heath’s Talks. Heath spent much of the four days after the results were announced trying to persuade Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe that they could govern together before finally going to see the queen to resign. Thorpe demanded that Heath be replaced as prime minister and wanted a promise to make the electoral system more representative. The Conservatives rejected both demands. Written rules don’t necessarily avoid a crisis, according to Thomas Mann, senior fellow of governance studies at The Brookings Institution, Washington.
“In the end whether or not you end up having a constitutional crisis depends very much on the actions of the party leaders,” he said. “If one side decides to throw in the cards and, in effect, defend the legitimacy of the process, then the institution doing it doesn’t get damaged.”

Moussaieff pays $6.4 mn for blue stone. Moussaieff Jewellers Ltd.’s founder Alisa Moussaieff paid HK$49.9 million ($6.4 million) for a 5.16-carat blue diamond at a Hong Kong auction, beating Asian rivals with a price she says is less than the gem’s real worth, Bloomberg reports. Moussaieff, 80, says the fancy-vivid, internally flawless gem has a market value of about $1.5 million per carat and that she would have raised her bid had her rival persisted, said the report. A blue diamond of that size and caliber is so rare that it’s worth about $2 million a carat and high-street stores like Moussaieff could ask for $3 million, said Donald May, a Hong Kong-based jeweler who was also at the sale. “It’s a bargain and I got it at this price because everyone was asleep,” Moussaieff said in an interview. Her London-based boutique will change the gem’s mounting and offer the stone “to discerning clients, possibly in Asia,” she told Bloomberg. Asian buyers, especially the mainland Chinese, have been buying some of the most expensive gems at auction in recent years. For Christie’s International, Sotheby’s top rival, Hong Kong has outsold Geneva and New York for two straight years as mainlanders park their growing wealth in rare art and gems. The auction record for a blue diamond was set by Hong Kong property tycoon Joseph Lau in May with his purchase of a 7.03- carat gem in Geneva for 10.5 million Swiss francs ($9.8 million), said the report. Yesterday, host Sotheby’s sold a record HK$409 million of jade, diamonds, pearls and other gems to a filled room of about 150 bidders as auction-house staff, alternating between Putonghua and English, fielded calls from phone buyers. “Prices are very strong and we see good demand from Asian buyers,” said May, in a phone interview. Round, white diamonds of the third-highest VVS1 grade or better, Cartier jewellery and fine jadeite fetched the best prices. A necklace of 35 emerald-green jadeite fetched $43.2 million; a necklace of 50 flawless, round diamonds of between 1.5-carat and 6.55-carat, and of the highest-possible D colour grading fetched HK$52.2 million, against the top estimate of HK$40 million. Mainland Chinese bidding on the blue diamond was scarce because few understand that type of gem, said May. Among coloured diamonds, they also prefer hues considered as lucky, such as red or pink, he said. “The Chinese are learning very fast and have a good eye for quality,” said Tamara Moussaieff, who flew in from Tel Aviv yesterday to help her mother, Alisa, decide on the purchase. Alisa founded Moussaieff Jewellers with husband Sam half a century ago. The company supplies gems to royalty and stars, and owns rare stones such as the 5.11-carat “Moussaieff Red,” the world’s biggest natural fancy-red diamond. Sotheby’s five-day Hong Kong auction has tallied HK$1.25 billion so far, including yesterday’s watch sale that took HK$53.6 million. It ends today with the sale of an imperial pearl necklace and other antique Chinese ceramics, the report said.

NADA DE PALHA…Palha da Silva recusa convite para chairman da Cimpor
A Caixa Geral de Depósitos anunciou hoje que Luís Palha da Silva comunicou estar indisponível para aceitar o cargo de presidente do Conselho de Administração da Cimpor. Em comunicado, o banco estatal adianta que “Luís Palha da Silva comunicou a sua indisponibilidade para integrar a lista para o Conselho de Administração, designadamente como seu Presidente, para que havia sido convidado e que merecera a sua aquiescência”. A Caixa confirma assim que o nome escolhido para “chairman” da Cimpor era o actual CEO da Jerónimo Martins, sendo que Palha da Silva terá aceite o convite, mas mostrado agora indisponibilidade para tal.