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Monarchy and Royalty

PsB said:
I realize you mean the pitchforks as a joke, but if that’s the automatic reaction to any speculative discussion of alternatives to monarchy, what hope is there? There are alternatives to royalty, monarchy and aristocracy that don’t automatically involve mobs and the guillotine. These alternatives are well established: just look around Europe for starters. (Let’s assume the Head of State is called President.)

Option 1: figurehead President, as in Germany. No real powers, represents the country abroad, inaugurates stuff, asks election winner to form a government... At best acts as a benevolent conscience of the Nation, at worst does nothing much. Essentially what QE2 does.

Why bother?
  • Would do it at a fraction of the cost and with few immobilized assets.
  • Can be removed in case of trouble, ill health, senility, impropriety, scandal, etc.
  • Clear separation of Church and State
  • Elected rather than anointed; by the upper house, or by the lower house. In the case of the UK possibly by the HoL, assuming that’s tidied up in the meantime (removal of bishops, hereditary peers, etc.). Or could be designated by rotation among heads of regions (as in Switzerland) or constituent nations...
  • Fringe benefit: tabloids would hate it

Option 2: President with limited foreign and/or domestic powers added to option 1. See Finland, Ireland or Italy for interesting examples. The Finnish President is the Commander in Chief and has a vestigial foreign policy role (from the Kekkonen days) although this is shrinking as successive PMs carve out increasing prerogatives, the way they all do. The Italian President has a key role in asking prime ministers to form a government, not a trivial matter in Italy.

Why bother?
  • Limit the accumulation of power by PMs (such as the recent power grab vs. Parluament, Henry VIII powers and similar nonsense etc.)
  • Guardian of the Constitution role as in IRL
  • Can be directly elected by hoi polloi (as in Finland or Ireland) or by Parliament
Option 3: President with more extended executive powers, with clear separation of competencies between President (“regal” matters) and PM (economy, domestic matters, etc.). To be researched...

Option 4: President with extensive executive powers, as in France. President steers policy in addition to being head of state. PM is designated by the President and serves at his mercy, essentially in an implementation role, and serves as a circuit breaker when the government becomes unpopular. Not a good option for the UK, assuming the country wants to maintain the preeminence of Parliament.

I’m sure it’s not difficult to come up with more.
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Excellent post. For me it highlights British exceptionalism: the unshakeable faith that no other country can teach us anything about democracy.
 
droodzilla said:
Excellent post. For me it highlights British exceptionalism: the unshakeable faith that no other country can teach us anything about democracy.
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Thank you. Nothing will change, as doing away with the monarchy is considered radical, and radical change is not something the British electorate are very comfortable with. The best that can be hoped for is some trimming here and there.
 
Martin Rowson on Britain emerging from lockdown – cartoon

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https://www.theguardian.com/comment...son-on-britain-emerging-from-lockdown-cartoon

Busy cartoon by Rowson, not to sure where to post this, please feel free to transfer to somewhere considered better Admins.
 
Seems the BBC may not have had their finger on the pulse of 'the public mood' after all:

BBC 'receives 100,000 complaints' over Prince Philip coverage

"A figure of 100,000 would make the coverage of Prince Philip's death the most complained-about piece of programming in BBC history.

Other programmes that attracted a high volume of correspondence included the broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera, which received 63,000 complaints in 2005; and Russell Brand's prank call to actor Andrew Sachs, which drew 42,000 complaints in 2008."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56721078
 
miktec said:
Seems the BBC may not have had their finger on the pulse of 'the public mood' after all:

BBC 'receives 100,000 complaints' over Prince Philip coverage

"A figure of 100,000 would make the coverage of Prince Philip's death the most complained-about piece of programming in BBC history.

Other programmes that attracted a high volume of correspondence included the broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera, which received 63,000 complaints in 2005; and Russell Brand's prank call to actor Andrew Sachs, which drew 42,000 complaints in 2008."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56721078
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Most of those complaints were about lost prime time programming. Viewing figures BBC 2 dropped by two thirds while Goggle box gained.

Perhaps the lesson from the complaints and these figures is that we should replace the monarchy with a head of state selected by a reality TV show called “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me a Palace For a Year”

The winning C-list celebrity would then have 12 months to enhance their public image with good works, and they’d be a lot cheaper. Probably attract more tourists too.
 
Here’s another refugee from continental Europe who like The Duke of Edinburgh came to Britain and served in the Royal Navy, seeing action at the D-Day landings. Yet the Daily Mail which had been praising Hitler a few years before his service in the navy chose to treat him very differently at the end of his life, including sending stringers to his funeral disguised as mourners in order to spy on conversations with his son and other family members.

The rancid bigotry of the British right wing press in full flow-

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laughingboy said:
The problem with that description from The English Constitution (note the casual Imperialism) is that it is over 150 years old, and is buttressed by patently offensive comments such as this:



Furthermore, Bagehot is interesting when it comes to your dismissal of the idea of compliance, as he goes on explicitly to label the English as a 'deferential' society, in the sense that people allow their educated 'betters' (he cites the middle classes) to govern for them.



So Bagehot can be read as saying that the English are not compliant to the Queen, but at the same time that they are compliant to a fiction in which the Queen plays a central part:


Your broader point about the requirement for some kind of mytho-poetic figurehead for a nation may be true - certainly, I think that Churchill's personal project to place himself as central to the national story is one of the reasons why any criticism of him is so contentious. However, if we look at the US, we see no need for a monarchy to fulfil this role of national totem. Instead, we see that any inclusive figure will do. After all, all that is required is someone who embodies our values. Perhaps, we need to find our own Lincoln or MLK.
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Indeed it is old - like the monarchy, but still relevant in parts (like the monarchy). His differential society comment is more about respect IMO, and subtly different to compliance. Other commentators have described the British, and in particular the English, along the lines of being unruly, violent and a bit mad. I think there is more than an historical grain of truth in that observation otherwise the monarchy would be more powerful today than it is. And yes, a privileged white man writing in Victorian England arguably at the height of the British Empire will no doubt 'butt up against' modern progressive narratives - a different topic, and one that might be worth exploring in a new thread.
 
Doesn't the abolition of the monarchy raise a few questions, cheaper? Monarchy is funded by their existing wealth and income of the crown estates, of which, something around 75% ish goes to the exchequer, the rest to Brenda to divide as she sees fit. So, if we get rid of them, do they pull up the drawbridge and the exchequer loses, or is their funding worth their existence?
Confiscate their wealth, and distribute it?, then you have to take away all excess wealth, including the millions made by our politicians. I confess don’t know what happened in other countries when they dismissed their monarchies peacefully, but well they still exist.
Russian oligarchs and Putin are an extreme example, state confiscates it, then later on shares it out unequally again,

I was also told at school that the armed forces loyalty is to the queen, not the politicians, hence no civil wars for a while?
Still think we’re effed whatever we do while the world continues to discriminate between human beings for such inhumane reasons. America is heading towards eugenics again with their discussions on who can vote, while apartheid and genocide continues around the world.

Just a thought......., hopefully pointing out problems, not an opinion, discuss, shoot me down in flames, just be careful KS, or I’ll let all and sundry know about your dogs nickname.
 
Kirk said:
Indeed it is old - like the monarchy, but still relevant in parts (like the monarchy).
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It's an interesting read, but when you look at it in any detail it's really incoherent. And this is not surprising, since it seeks to defend something - the political settlement of the mid 19th century - that even the laws of the time sought to update (Democratic Britain -1867 to 1928).

Just as a token of how weak its central arguments are, let's look at its opening argument on the monarchy:

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government.
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On its face, this is a reasonable statement and a strong argument - if it were true. The trouble is that, having made it, Bagehot then goes on to admit that

It acts as a DISGUISE. It enables our real rulers to change without heedless people knowing it.
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So, he says the constitution is intelligible but actually it's not - it's a disguise. Which collapses his 'best argument' for monarchy.

And when he later admits that he does not want arbitrary kings and queens in charge

If we look at history, we shall find that it is only during the period of the present reign that in England the duties of a constitutional sovereign have ever been well performed.
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we come to understand that Bagehot doesn't actually want a monarchy. He wants only the charade of a monarchy. His argument is that of an Establishment figure, seeking to defend a system because it works for them. The book celebrates the fact that the system confers power on people like him (a massive homophily bias, if ever I saw one) and satisfies itself with a sense of superiority by revelling in the way that it obscures this fact behind a facade of majesty and religion, via the monarchy. In short, the 'poor and stupid' - to use his abhorrent bundling of terms - deserve what they are getting.

So the problem with the English Constitution is not with its age, per se, but the astounding self-serving nature of its founding assumptions.
 
laughingboy said:
It's an interesting read, but when you look at it in any detail it's really incoherent. And this is not surprising, since it seeks to defend something - the political settlement of the mid 19th century - that even the laws of the time sought to update (Democratic Britain -1867 to 1928).

Just as a token of how weak its central arguments are, let's look at its opening argument on the monarchy:



On its face, this is a reasonable statement and a strong argument - if it were true. The trouble is that, having made it, Bagehot then goes on to admit that



So, he says the constitution is intelligible but actually it's not - it's a disguise. Which collapses his 'best argument' for monarchy.

And when he later admits that he does not want arbitrary kings and queens in charge



we come to understand that Bagehot doesn't actually want a monarchy. He wants only the charade of a monarchy. His argument is that of an Establishment figure, seeking to defend a system because it works for them. The book celebrates the fact that the system confers power on people like him (a massive homophily bias, if ever I saw one) and satisfies itself with a sense of superiority by revelling in the way that it obscures this fact behind a facade of majesty and religion, via the monarchy. In short, the 'poor and stupid' - to use his abhorrent bundling of terms - deserve what they are getting.

So the problem with the English Constitution is not with its age, per se, but the astounding self-serving nature of its founding assumptions.
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Certainly one view of Bagehot and TEC; however, I'm not quite sure what any of it has to do with my original post but please carry on if you so wish. Always an interesting read.
 
Maybe we should have a referendum on whether we should sustain them any further.... let it be the will of the people.
 
ks.234 said:
Of course the monarchy’s purpose is compliance to a hierarchical society with privilege and vested interest at the very top. The compliance has be enforced with violence many times in the past and while the monarchy is no longer responsible for directing violence, compliance is how our hierarchical society with privilege, power and vested interest at its head is maintained.


A hierarchical society with institutionalised elitism and privilege established by birth is at odds with a meritocratic and democratic society and the devolution of power.
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Perfect for Socialism Today. So, the purpose of the monarchy is to be compliant to itself? Society, like nature itself, is hierarchical; nothing will change that, despite the best efforts of Marx. Hierarchy as expressed through class, e.g. feudal, money, celebrity, etc - is a fact of life and won't change either. Even meritocracy is class based and therefore hierarchical. And some of the most progressive democracies in Europe - some might even called them socialist - retain monarchies, as does the UK - among other reasons, because the majority of their populations are ok with both the idea of monarchy and its real-life representatives. They also willingly comply with 'the elites, the powerful, the privileged', etc and their societies seem settled and all the better for it.

Btw, as anti-elite, I assume you voted Leave. And do you think that devolution in the UK played a major role in Brexit and thus served as a sort of counter-force to meritocracy (and arguably, democracy)?
 
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