Saint Helena's politics: a constitution that begins with allegiance

Why the constitution opens with allegiance to Britain

The constitution is a schedule to an Order in Council made in London, the St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Constitution Order 2009, United Kingdom statutory instrument 1751 of that year. It came into force on 1 September 2009 and renamed the territory, which until that day had been St Helena and Dependencies. The order reserves to the Crown "full power to make laws from time to time for the peace, order and good government" of all three islands, including laws that amend or revoke the constitution itself. Executive authority is vested in the monarch and exercised by a governor, who holds office at the monarch's pleasure and swears allegiance before the Sheriff of St Helena. In this catalogue's terms Saint Helena is a dependency, and its sovereign is the United Kingdom.

The preamble is written in the voice of "the people of St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha", and its first clause records their wish "to affirm their allegiance to the United Kingdom, its Government and the Crown". It then gives the island's own chronology of that allegiance: a link "that dates back to 1659", a charter of Charles II in 1673 that reaffirmed the island as belonging to the Crown, and the transfer of rule from the East India Company to the British government, which the preamble dates to 22 April 1834. A later clause recognises that "all peoples have the right of self-determination". The coat of arms, authorised in 1984, carries the motto "Loyal and unshakeable".

Section 2 lists nine partnership values on which the relationship with the United Kingdom "shall continue to be based", among them good faith, the rule of law, sound financial management and the impartiality of the public service. Section 4 puts every organ of government under a duty to give effect to them, then bars any court from finding an act unlawful for failing to, because the values are "statements of political principle". They still bind the governor. Sections 43 and 74 make them the test for refusing ministers' advice and for holding back a bill.

How the islanders lost and regained British citizenship

The citizenship clause refers to a specific loss. The British Nationality Act 1981 reclassified Saint Helena and the other crown colonies as British Dependent Territories, and the islanders lost their status as Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies, together with their right of abode in Britain. For the next twenty years many could find only low-paid work with the island government, and the only work open to them abroad was on the Falkland Islands and Ascension. Wikipedia's history of the island records that it was often called the "South Atlantic Alcatraz" in those years.

The campaign to reverse the change ran partly through the church. The Bishop's Commission on Citizenship was set up at the Diocesan Synod in 1992 to restore full citizenship and the right of abode. In 1997 a British review of the dependent territories committed the government to restoring the status islanders had held before 1981, and the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 did so. It restored full passports and renamed the dependent territories British Overseas Territories.

Emigration changed shape afterwards. It had been mostly young unaccompanied workers on long contracts on Ascension and the Falklands, and it widened to wage-earners of many kinds leaving for Britain, drawn by higher wages. By 2018 Swindon, in Wiltshire, had enough people from the island to be nicknamed "Swindolena". Section 20 of the 2009 constitution provides that no person with St Helenian status may be arbitrarily deprived of it, and that no person may be arbitrarily deprived of British citizenship, "whether by legislation or otherwise". The census of 7 February 2021 counted 4,439 residents, of whom 4,114 were St Helenian.

How the island came to choose a Chief Minister

The first elections for a twelve-member Legislative Council were held in 1969, under a new constitution. Two parties, the Saint Helena Labour Party and the Saint Helena Progressive Party, existed until 1976. None has been active since, although no law forbids one, and Wikipedia's article on the island's politics calls the territory a de facto non-partisan democracy.

The constitution of 1988, in force from 1989, governed through committees. Five council committees combined elected members with civil servants, arranged so that elected members always held a majority, and the five chairs made up the elected membership of the Executive Council. With few exceptions the governor had to follow that council's advice. The 2009 constitution kept council committees, while, according to Wikipedia's article on Ascension Island, it limited the governor's powers, added a bill of rights and made the judiciary and the public service independent.

Replacing the committees with a single leader took two votes. In January 2013 it was proposed that a chief councillor, elected by the Legislative Council, should lead the Executive Council and nominate its other members. A referendum on 23 March 2013 rejected the idea by 158 votes to 42, on a turnout of 10%. A second referendum, in 2021, approved it. The United Kingdom then made statutory instrument 895 of 2021, in force from 25 October 2021, which struck out the four sections on council committees and created the office of Chief Minister. The Executive Council had held three ex officio officers and five elected members. It now holds the Chief Minister, four other ministers and the Attorney General, who sits ex officio without a vote.

How the Legislative Council forms and checks a government

Who sits in the Legislative Council

The council has a Speaker, a Deputy Speaker, twelve elected members and the Attorney General, who may not vote. The elected members choose the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker by secret ballot from people qualified to stand who are not themselves elected, and neither has a vote, so a tied motion is lost. Seven elected members make a quorum.

Section 50 provides for the twelve to be elected by secret ballot and universal suffrage on a single roll for one constituency covering the whole island, and lets an ordinance divide it. The census office counted the 2021 population across eight electoral districts. The council is dissolved four years after it first meets, if not sooner. A candidate is disqualified by allegiance to a foreign power, an undischarged bankruptcy or a prison sentence of twelve months or more, and members declare their interests, assets and liabilities in a public register at least once a year.

How a Chief Minister is chosen and removed

At the first meeting after a general election the elected members choose the Chief Minister from among themselves by secret ballot, and the winner needs a majority of all of them, present or not. Within seven days the Chief Minister elect must recommend four other elected members as ministers, or the election has no effect and the council votes again. The governor then appoints all five by instrument under the public seal, with the portfolios the Chief Minister has recommended. The council's own pages listed five in 2026: Treasury and Central Support Services, held by the Chief Minister; Environment, Natural Resources and Planning with Economic Development; Education, Skills and Employment; Safety, Security and Home Affairs; and Health and Social Care.

Ministers are collectively responsible to the council for the advice they give the governor. Any three elected members who are not ministers may give notice of a motion of no confidence, which is decided by secret ballot between five and ten days later and needs a majority of all elected members. If it carries, the Chief Minister is deemed to have resigned five days after the vote, unless he or she resigns first or asks the governor to dissolve the council.

How the members outside government scrutinise it

Seven elected members sit outside the Executive Council, and the scrutiny posts are theirs. Section 69A, inserted in 2021, requires the governor to establish at least two Select Committees of elected members who are not ministers. The Public Accounts Committee joins three elected members to a chairman and one other member appointed by the governor from outside the council; it examines the audited accounts, may summon witnesses and takes direction from nobody. The council aims to meet formally at least four times a year, standing orders add a monthly Ministers Question Time, and members' pay may be set only after an independent body has reported on it.

When the governor may set aside ministers' advice

Which matters the constitution leaves with the governor

Section 43 binds the governor to obtain the Executive Council's advice and act on it, and then lists exceptions: instructions from the Crown through a Secretary of State, functions left to the governor's discretion, matters too urgent or too unimportant for the council, everything done for Ascension or Tristan da Cunha, and the six areas section 44 makes the governor's special responsibility.

Delegation under section 44(1A) needs a Secretary of State's prior approval. The Financial Secretary, appointed after consultation with the Chief Minister, is the government's principal financial adviser. The governor lives at Plantation House, where Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise given to the island in the nineteenth century, is often seen grazing in the paddock.

How the governor can refuse advice or a bill

Outside the reserved areas the governor may still decline the council's advice if, in the governor's judgement, it is inconsistent with a partnership value. The governor must then give the council written reasons naming the value, and needs a Secretary of State's prior approval unless the matter is too urgent, and the Chief Minister has thirty days to send written comments to a Secretary of State. No court may ask whether the governor was justified.

A bill becomes law when the governor assents to it. Unless a Secretary of State has authorised assent, the governor must instead reserve any bill that appears inconsistent with a partnership value or with the constitution, and a law already signed may be disallowed by the Crown and annulled from the day notice appears in the Gazette. With a Secretary of State's prior approval, the governor may dissolve the council at any time if effective government cannot otherwise be carried on.

Why Ascension and Tristan share Saint Helena's governor

What joins the islands of the territory

Ascension became a dependency of Saint Helena by letters patent of 12 September 1922, and Tristan da Cunha, with Gough, Nightingale and Inaccessible, by letters patent of 12 January 1938. The 2009 constitution ended that arrangement. Its preamble calls the three "separate territories" that "form a single territorial grouping under the Crown", and each has a chapter of the constitution to itself. Their dealings with one another rest on the partnership values and "a willingness to have due regard for one another's interests".

What joins them is an office. Whoever holds the office of Governor of St Helena is also Governor of Ascension and Governor of Tristan da Cunha, and the Attorney General of St Helena is Attorney General for both. Ascension lies 807 miles to the north-west and Tristan da Cunha 1,350 miles away, so an Administrator on each represents the governor. On Tristan the Administrator is a Foreign Office career civil servant selected by London.

How Ascension and Tristan make their laws

Neither smaller island has a legislature like Saint Helena's. On each, the governor makes the laws after consulting an Island Council, and is not obliged to follow its advice; where the governor acts against that advice, any member may put a view to a Secretary of State. The duty to act on the advice of Saint Helena's Executive Council does not extend to any of it. Tristan's Island Council has eight elected and three appointed members, plus a Chief Islander chosen in a separate vote held at the same time, and the island has no political parties or trade unions.

Ascension has no indigenous population and, by British policy, no right of abode. Its first Island Council took office on 1 November 2002. In January 2007 six of the seven members of a later council resigned, saying they were "assisting to legitimise a democracy that doesn't really exist on Ascension Island". In 2019 the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee recommended that Ascension and Tristan da Cunha be treated as British Overseas Territories in their own right, adding that this need not end the shared governor. Wikipedia's article on Ascension, revised in September 2026, records no government response.

Why the budget is settled in London

How the island's aid is calculated

The finance minister lays the annual estimates before the Legislative Council, but the island may raise a loan only as an ordinance allows and "in accordance with any borrowing guidelines agreed with Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom". In 2016-17 financial assistance from the United Kingdom of about £22.5 million supplemented £12.6 million raised from local taxes.

The National Audit Office set out the mechanism in February 2025. The aid rests on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office's assessment of "reasonable assistance needs", the gap between the budget the St Helena Government needs for public services and its own income. In real terms aid rose from £27 million in 2015-16 to £33 million in 2023-24, while the population fell by 10% between 2016 and 2024 to about 4,000. Part of the rise was health and social care for an ageing population, which cost £16.4 million in 2022-23, and part was almost £3 million a year to cover the airport's shortfall.

The airport was meant to change that sum. Its business case expected tourism to make the island financially self-sufficient by 2043, but the NAO counted 2,112 visitors in 2023, about a quarter of the 8,000 target for that year, and the Foreign Office acknowledged that self-sufficiency was unlikely on the original timetable. How the airport came to be built is told in the island's history.

What the latest aid settlement changed

On 8 April 2026 the island government announced a three-year settlement running to March 2029. Core aid rises by 4.8% to £37.51 million in 2026-27, from £35.79 million in 2025-26, and then by 2% in each of the next two years, with a further £40 million over the three years for capital investment. For many years, the government said, it had planned one year at a time and often began a financial year on a temporary roll-over budget while it waited for London's figure.

Gross domestic product was estimated at £40.7 million in 2024/25, and public administration added £7.8 million of value that year. The St Helena pound is pegged to sterling at parity, and the island government issues its own notes; the polymer series released in January 2026 carries the monarch's portrait beside Jonathan the tortoise and the St Helena ebony.

Which courts and commissions check the government

The courts of St Helena are the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and the subordinate courts, among them a Magistrates Court and a Juvenile Court, and final appeals go to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. The Supreme Court holds all the jurisdiction the High Court of Justice exercises in England, and it may sit off the island when, among other conditions, a matter must be dealt with promptly and every party can take part by teleconference or other electronic means. The governor appoints judges on instructions from the Crown, and judicial officers on the recommendation of a Judicial Service Commission chaired by the Chief Justice. Three men from Bahrain, held on the island as prisoners of Britain from 1957, were released by a writ of habeas corpus in 1960.

The bill of rights bars discrimination on grounds that include sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, political opinion, age and disability. In 2017 a St Helenian man applied to marry his male fiancé when the law referred to marriage between men and women; the Legislative Council updated the Marriage Ordinance in December 2017, and the couple married at Plantation House on 31 December 2018. An Equality and Human Rights Commission, legislated for in July 2015, began work that October. In 2021 it laid a wreath on the door of the Pipe Store in Jamestown, where the remains of some 325 liberated Africans, disinterred during airport construction, had been stored since 2008 awaiting reburial. A Complaints Commissioner investigates maladministration under nobody's direction.

Why a French flag flies at Longwood

Defence and external affairs belong to the United Kingdom through the governor. No British forces are stationed on Saint Helena, and the Royal Air Force keeps a staging base on Ascension. The island does run its own border. Every visitor needs an entry permit, and a short-term one can be applied for on arrival.

One foreign government holds land here. Napoleon was held on Saint Helena from October 1815 until his death on 5 May 1821, and his remains went back to France in 1840. In 1854 Napoleon III began negotiating with the British government to buy Longwood House, where Napoleon had lived, and the valley where he had been buried, and both became French property in 1858. They are administered by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an honorary consul of France who lives in the outbuildings is curator of the estates, and the French flag flies over them. The Briars Pavilion, where Napoleon stayed first, was given to France in 1959 by a great-granddaughter of William Balcombe, whose house stood beside it.