The Queen has more power over British law than we thought
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Parliament does have power over the monarch in some senses, of course, in that there is precedent for Parliament changing the order of succession or introducing a regency. This happened without the monarch's assent, though admittedly over a hundred years ago. But the British constitution is one that replies on precedence, not a formal document.
I've characterized the Queen's powers as "reserve powers" inasmuch as, if everything goes wrong and Parliament dies from a meteor strike, the government still legally operate provided there is a monarch (even if you have to reach deep into the line of succession to find that person). By law she has to call elections within a certain amount of time. Obviously there's nothing to force her to follow the laws, but that's true of any country. She (or her heirs) are the leaders of last resort.
Oxymoron.
You have to vote for a president right otherwise you end up with ... well Oliver Cromwell. A Dictator by any other name.
Nonpartisan in the sense that the Queen is nonpartisan. So of course, partisan. Still, nonpartisan like not publicly wading into political debates, and not opening up the office to the vulgarities of electoral politics.
For example, Germany elects its president by convening both the Federal and State legislatures together, who then vote. By pulling in all the regional parties and legislators, the President has to have broad support across party lines. It's also convention that the President doesn't wade into daily political issues. The result is a largely ceremonial office, usually held by a broadly respected statesperson with former government experience. Which is what you want for the "emergency button" you hope you don't have to push in the first place.
This is relevant because Western monarchs claim the office of Rex/Regina.
Unelected officials should never have significant power. This led to a harmful coup d'etat in Australia. It's not a ceremonial office, and simply the fact that the emergency button exists makes it possible for perversions to continue and cause serious issues (and it has).
Partisanship is very far from the only cause of dysfunction in governments. I'd argue it's not even the worst.
However, even if it’s generally accepted that the child or close relative of the current leader should become the new leader there will eventually be back and forth over time between the royal family and other members of government. In theory they might have absolute authority, but in both practice and tradition there will be many informal limits.
In general, monarchies pretty much have had the absolute maximum of power concentration possible without disastrous consequences.
Where presidents have actual executive power such as USA, France, Russia, the issue you bring up can, at least in theory, occur.
I'm not sure if the postal service still is, and the prisons could probably be let go - but I think there's a lot of land, especially in the south owned by the crown.
The royal family does have many billions in personal holdings as well, of course.
The Crown and Queen Elizabeth II are different persons. Queen Elizabeth II is a natural person. The Crown is a legal person, a corporation sole – a corporation with only one member, who right now is Queen Elizabeth II. Actually the Crown is not a single corporation, but a number of legally distinct corporations which all have identical membership. There is "the Crown in Right of the United Kingdom", "the Crown in Right of Canada", "the Crown in Right of the Commonwealth of Australia", "the Crown in Right of New Zealand", etc. All up, there are 16 nations with Queen Elizabeth II as monarch, and each of those nations is a distinct corporation "the Crown in Right of X". But, also there exist distinct "the Crown in Right of X" corporations for each Australian state (6) and each Canadian province (10), and also each of the three British crown dependencies (Isle of Mann, Jersey and Guernsey). So there are 35 legal persons (corporations sole) "the Crown in Right of X", and one natural person who is presently the sole common member of all of them. Each of those 35 corporations has distinct assets, which in turn are distinct from the personal assets of the natural person called Elizabeth. If any of those 35 entities became a republic, the assets of the "Crown in Right of X" corporation would pass to its republican successor.
That said, there are some Duchies that are privately owned. In my opinion, these should be seized by the state during the establishment of a republic - if we're going to abolish the monarchy, we need to go the whole way and strip each member of all their inherited wealth too.
It's the very least they deserve, and would provide a much needed clean slate for New Britain.
Stay Classy, Britain.
Why not? I admit I'm more familiar with the Belgian situation than the British Crown, but to me it always seems not very difficult to replace the monarch with almost nothing. I don't see why we need any kind of president, even though that's what people always talk when there's talk of doing away with the monarchy. The real leader of the country is the prime minister anyway.
In Brazil in the 19th century liberal democrats thought a monarch was unnecessary, after 67 years of successful politics under a king. Upon abolition the country devolved into a long succession of military coups and dictatorial governments.
There have obviously been successful countries without monarchy, but it is very risky to say that a figurehead does nothing. Reserve powers are a pretty real restraint.
The monarch appoints "preformateurs" and "formateur" who are elections start talks between people from the different political parties and (try to) form a cabinet, in different stages of the process. That's where he (or possibly she in a few decades, when Filip dies or abdicates and Elisabeth becomes Belgian's first Queen, if that's still a thing then) has by far the most influence in politics.
Some people he shouldn't even have that influence, and I'm inclined to agree. In any case, finding another process for that is probably the most difficult issue to deal with in case we would transform to a pure parliamentary democracy.
Reserve power ... I don't know. I don't think he has enough power for that. Maybe symbolically, maybe that counts for more than I think. Some say the king and/or the whole royal family is one of the few things that still hold Belgium more or less together.
If indeed having a figurehead can protect us from civil war and other kinds of chaos, then by all means, let us have a figurehead.
None of these problems are insurmountable, of course. And you could just keep an executive -- I personally prefer just replacing the Governor General in Canada with a president, preferably indirectly elected. Still, patching the constitution would be pretty involved, if you wish to fully excise the executive in its current form from the Westminster system.
In theory, the people themselves are the source of legitimacy for modern governments. But the media and some of the population demands a figurehead that provides centralized moral leadership.
What role does it play that an elected official isn't better suited for?
One way to look at it is that with a portfolio of investments you want to spread your risk amongst different classes. If you are securing an IT system then you have defence in depth. If you produce medical devices you want to have physical and logical locking mechanisms (see Therac-25). The US style is to make everything elected: judges, sheriffs, presidents, governors, DAs and school boards are all elected. Which means that they are all vulnerable to the same class of failure.
Note: This particular role mentioned in the article, of providing consent/impact to certain broad classes of legislation, are not included in my argument above. I'm merely replying to your statement that an elected official is always better suited to all roles.
But because the Canadian government rammed the constitution down the throat of the Quebec government, any constitutional change is now a political impossibility. And now Indigenous groups are demanding a seat at any constitutional discussion, which is absolutely appropriate but also fraught with uncertainty.
So the lack of change to our constitutional monarchy is not because we cannot think of how to replace it: it’s because Pierre Elliot Trudeau done goofed.
But, politically, the unanimous consent of the provinces to do so is essentially impossible to obtain, due to the history you mention. Canadians also simply don't care much about this. My impression is that most people are basically republicans by sentiment, but their level of actually caring about this is near zero. I'm in that camp myself. I'd like a republic. But the headache of opening up constitutional negotiations? Gah! That has never ended well in our history.
Personally, I think that the best way to characterize the Queen is that she was liberal for the 1950s, but as times have changed and as she's changed she's become more conservative.
[1] EDIT: Because at the minimum they can be interpreted as affecting her finances.
In particular so do the British Armed Forces, who swear allegiance to the Crown [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Armed_Forces#Command_o...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_assent
Certain bills (e.g. financial) are by convention not blocked by the Lords and so once these final bill has been approved it is sent to the queen for her signature to put it in law.
The last time the Monarch refused to pass a law approved by Parliament was 1704
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bbc_parliament/2327561...
The day the queen refuses to assent to a bill against the will of parliament is the day the monarchy ends.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_p...
The Prime minister moved to keep power by requesting the Governor General (Queen's representative) prorogue parliament.
In this circumstance, the Governor General accepted the Prime Minister's request, which ended up rescuing the Conservative minority government. But I think most people agree that if she had decided otherwise, and allowed the majority coalition to take over, that would also have been an acceptable result. So this was, indirectly, the Queen making a ruling on a power struggle between a minority government and a majority opposition.
Considering how controversial this is 50 years later I'd say they did a good job in Canada to be as apolitical as possible, because sacking a sitting Prime Minister is definitely picking a side.
If you presented an example where the Prime Minister told the Governor General to do one thing, and she did another, then I'd agree that counts as the Queen/GG exercising power.
It's MORE democratic if anything.
That's like 150 times a year? Every 2 days? How is that 'exceptional'?
I wouldn't be surprised if the Guardian has a week of damaging headline from this.
Today's was the Prince of Wales added an exemption shafting home owners on 'his' land, causing people's homes to become worthless so that he can collect extra rent. A clear abuse of power.
Indeed. Apparently they are releasing this as a series. I am very curious to see what they have next. Though I have no idea about how actually damaging this would be for the royal family.
As for the Queen being a small c conservative, absolutely. British monarchy in this century is a badly run crime syndicate.
https://davidallengreen.com/2021/02/the-queens-consent-a-str...
And then 48 hours later, as if by magic, that plan (which would have required the Queen to publicly assent to an overtly-political variation of current norms) suddenly vanished without trace or comment.
Our governor general (and hence the monarchy) rubber stamped it then. I've never forgiven the institution.
This article has the thousand-plus laws she's been consulted on: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...
This isn't really guaranteed to be a "moderating" influence except in the most technical sense. The current queen does not seem very eager to grab more power, but one could easily imagine a more devious and power-hungry monarch parlaying the ability to interfere with some laws into greater political power.
Imagine a Trump-type figure in England. Popular on social media, eager to bend the laws, and calling on the support of a loud minority willing to sacrifice the principles of democracy. Now imagine that figure is also the King of England, with the current powers given to the monarch. Why would you want such a hereditary system?
Britain should scrap the monarchy entirely while they have the chance.
Because if she did anything else someone else would. Constitutions barely mean anything when tested, our unwritten constitution might isn't worth fuck all
I'm not defending the monarchy, mind you, I'm just pointing out that it doesn't matter if the chief executive is the monarch or a president.
I don't know much about it, but the anachronisms in terminology were pretty hilarious.
If you have the time, I think that Veronica Wedgwood's (she published as CV Wedgwood) history of the era is pretty great. The writing is fun and engaging. The problem is, it's contained in four books:
The King's Peace The King's War The Trial of Charles I Oliver Cromwell
I don't think that Dame Wedgwood is really someone that academics read anymore (she's definitely old school history), but her scholarship is good and she wrote wonderfully.
God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, by Christopher Hill.
I can't remember any exact books on this, though it was basically the theme undergirding pretty much all of the politics of the time. Sorry I don't have more. It's been awhile!
Assuming the only negative changes that can occur to a person or group's interests are from the government, this makes sense.
In reality, where we have enormous corporations who have the power and ability to negatively affect the lives of citizens in new ways previous legislators could not have envisioned, un-democratic checks against legislative action strongly benefit the powerful.
Not quite. The laws that are unenforceable, because they apply to the 'person at the top', act as a bright line; in any country with a sufficiently capable citizenry, this line is the indicator that the 'person at the top' needs to be made to step down.
Edit. I'm thinking of the Magna Carta as an example, where the monarch was held accountable by the barons who forced him to sign. Seems like the barons make my point, since they're not planning on enforcing their agreement within the legal framework. One of the provisions in that document was:
> Under what historians later labelled "clause 61", or the "security clause", a council of 25 barons would be created to monitor and ensure John's future adherence to the charter.[44] If John did not conform to the charter within 40 days of being notified of a transgression by the council, the 25 barons were empowered by clause 61 to seize John's castles and lands until, in their judgement, amends had been made.
She used her powers to get an exemption from transparency laws with regards to her personal wealth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que..., and Charles did the same to ban his tenants from purchasing freeholds: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/09/prince-charl....
This constitutional corruption of our laws by the most privileged family in Britain is indeed a bad thing, and one of the many reasons why the monarchy should be abolished.
Also, every member of the royal family should be stripped of their wealth and exiled.
Doesn't that just shift corruption to the next party? I don't see why logically switching the ruling party would abolish corruption. It might even increase it.
Also, the wider principle is that there shouldn't be an untouchable hereditary ruling class at all. It's an absolute nonsense.
One of the key problems in many human societies is that most of the wealth and power ends up concentrated in the hands of the undeserving few, who use it to further enrich themselves and their families, at the expense of everyone else.
"Targeted for removal" wasn't intended as a euphemism for death squads or anything like that.
The monarchy in the UK only seems to benefit themselves and tabloid newspapers. While the Queen has been a dutiful monarch (whos work ethic I happen to respect), the rest of her family seem pretty terrible with their crazy shenanigans.
What work does the Queen actually do?
As an American citizen it is why I don’t mind presidents that I don’t like have a large secret service revenue, fat salary, and so forth both during and after their presidency.
She's like a grandma the nation respects, even though you suspect there might be a sinister side to her.
What exactly is the justification for having those tasks, if they're deemed necessary, executed by some hereditary, secretive, uber-wealthy family rather than by someone who is actually a civil servant?
This is categorically different from a democracy where the leadership's wealth is separated from the nation's. If the laborers die, the President is not impacted in the least. A President may choose to spend your life and money to take over new territory and increase their power, but they are spending your wealth to do it, not their own. If the resources are mismanaged you are harmed, not the President.
Next this doesn't even work out if we replace the monarch with an automaton which faithfully executes economic theory.
A monarch of 100M people might spend 10,000 people for some end that on net increases his wealth whereas a president of 100M might find the rest of the people so appalled at the 10k corpses that they vote him out of office.
If you look at how monarchs have actually and in fact spent the blood of their people historically we wouldn't have to argue theory. Throughout history monarchies have spent their people liberally in proportion to their ability to do so. You can look at recent history at a bunch of nations that are still technically monarchies you will note that their period of moderation directly coincides with the waning power of the very actor you claim somehow serves to moderate the state.
This understanding is completely outside of actual reality. The statement "Monarchy is superior to democracy in a very important way" goes on to explain why you believe the monarch has a greater incentive to avoid wasting the lives of his citizens. This isn't even close to true. A monarch who loses 1% of his "wealth" in the form of dead people still has the other 99%. A President can lose his job, his wealth, and his personal power for less.
A president is incentivized not to put upon the people more than they can bear with the understanding that all they have to do to be rid of him is check a different box next go round. A monarch faces the same risk but only if the anguish of the people is enough for them to spend copious amounts of their own blood in violent revolution.
This difference in resistance is the dominant difference in motivation NOT a proprietary feeling towards a kings subjects. This is well born out by an ocean of blood spilled foolishly by monarchies through history. I don't misunderstand you. I don't think you have properly understood history.
They have a tolerance of how much resource can be wasted. President's kickback isn't worth anything when the resource wasted can actually cause problem for the nation(Only at this point the monarch will start paying attention). So i am pretty sure they both are similar in this context.
The easiest ways to corrupt someone are offering them wealth, opportunities for their children, or a popular reputation; the royals are relatively immune to all of those.
The government literally pays them and promotes them as a symbol of the nation - how is that not offering them "wealth, opportunities for their children, or a popular reputation"?
Also, the Monarchy is effectively a mechanism for it's powers to be controlled by ministers, this means parliament can and has been effectively shut down temporarily to avoid debate at the whim of Government Ministers against the will of parliament itself.
What about billionaires?
You know, millionaires don't need all their money either.
How about we take all their money and exile millionaires, billionaires, and the monarchy?
For high-end millionaires (say $100 million or more), I can still get behind that.
For low-level millionaires who legitimately worked for their money and built their business, absolutely not. A million dollars is not a lot in 2021.
I say this as a not-millionaire.
From the other Guardian article:
"The number of tenants on Scilly caught by the exemption is not known but has been estimated at 100.
One of them is a 78-year-old retired oil executive, Alan Davis. He has been prevented from buying the freehold to his 1960s bungalow."
The Royal Family may not be to your taste but these two articles are hardly grounds for insurrection.
I am genuinely sobbing about Alan the retired oil executive's plight.
It is of course not the only reason to abolish the monarchy. Just one more for the list.
This is such a no-brainer, and I really don't understand why anyone anywhere in the modern world would want someone to rule over them.
I'm not saying it's a good reason, just that it's a reason.
The more absurd thing, in my mind, is that citizens of dozens of countries, including first world nations like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, consent to having the monarchy, even though it is largely ceremonial. Certainly no one believes it creates stability, nor that turmoil would ensue if they abandoned it.
I gotta say that I find the rabid anti-monarchal take a lot of americans have online kinda weird. I wouldn't say I feel "ruled" in any real sense by the British crown even though it is technically true. The Prime Minister and the House of Commons are where the actual legislative power rests and as much as the Governor-General is technically the commander in chief I highly doubt if she called for a revolution against the civilian government that would get any traction.
Furthermore I gotta say that given a lot of the other options I LIKE the hoky kind of odd but deeply rooted ceremony that surrounds our governmental proceedings.
Is it silly that the prime minister has to be presented to the Governor-General to get invested and leads a Privy Council (and for that matter is called a Prime Minister)? Yeah, but it's been WORKING that way for a long time and that inertia is important, especially I think nowadays with a lot of uncertainty from the largest democracy in the world.
If we just need somewhere for power to divest from, then hand it over to the royal Corgis. If you have to have the fiction of a figurehead to make your government function, better it be something that has no possibility of corruption.
The article disagrees with you. Or at least points out where there isn't always true.
They could just as well polity said to her to pound sand.
Queen asked them, it was up to them to say yes or no. I imagine if some other party was in power back then results might be different
But every time we bring it up for removal there are excuses why it cannot be done. The Governor General et all are a cost center - not just federally but in each province. Or worse two factions aligned to removing the monarchy don't disagree on how it should be done and the measure fails (Australia). At least the Australians managed to remove 'Queen/Heirs' from the citizenship pledge and acknowledged that many immigrants who want citizenship came from countries in Africa and Asia that were colonized, whose people were treated like shit, and had their natural resources stolen.
Cute and hoky to some... but others are being asked to pledge to an institution that subjugated many of their ancestors. For no good reason. Even if you have not been subjugated, there is no reason to pledge allegiance to her.
the UK left the EU in Jan 2020
We should take the opportunity to get rid of the position of monarch since we claim to be a democracy. We could also modernise parliament when it becomes ours - things like ejecting people for jeering and interrupting would be a start, close the subsidised bars, ... make it at least have a semblance of being a workplace.
Almost everyone wants someone to rule over them, or at least over their neighbors.
Do you want someone to rule over you?
You can argue that the doctor is being helpful when they tell a four-year-old "this won't hurt a bit", but the naked truth is that it's a lie, and the child has no actual choice in the matter. Similarly, you can argue that your MP or state senator has your best interests at heart (and some may!), but that doesn't mean they don't rule you.
MPs are supposed to work for us, those with power wish to reduce the scope of "us" and some MPs are there specifically to enable that. But anti-democratic MPs doesn't alter the lack of rulers in a proper democracy it just changes whether our (UK) political system is a proper democracy or not.
If the crown was directly replaced with an elected president for instance, that would be an enormous amount of power for a populist leader to wield and the lack of policy responsibility would lead to populists leaders. If the president was appointed by parliament then there is opportunity for corruption.
So there would need to be far more drastic changes and many possibilities (like changing from a parliamentary system) would not be popular. Ideologically I don't think anyone should hold such power based on who their parents we're, but in practice I'm a soft-monarchists or conservative on the matter.
Edit - The powers don't have to be replaced, the holders of those powers do.
under the UK constitution Parliament is short for Queen-in-Parliament and all executive and legislative powers come from the sovereign
In practice, all of the powers of the Crown must be exercised, and must only be exercised, by the Monarch as directed by various configurations of notionally-subordinate officials (whether the Parliamentary majority or the Cabinet as executive committee of the Privy Council or...). Simply investing those powers formally in the institutions which direct them in practice would have no noticeable effect. Or investing them, with the same practical constraints, whether together or separately in, like, any random person chosen off the street. The advantage of a ceremonial Presidency in place of a monarch is that they could continue to do the ceremonial functions as well as signing where directed by the Cabinet, etc., without occupying the time of people with real and substantive responsibilities in government.
Let us not forget the diplomatic aspect they afford and I'd say from that aspect alone - done more good than the elected politicians. Whilst the media love to focus upon the negatives, you can't overlook the positives and initiatives - the prices trust and other chartable involvements and then tourism. Though the diplomacy aspect is something that you have to respect the Queen and been a national asset in that respect.
So far from a no-brainier as you say if you look at their involvements beyond the headlines.
As an aside - if America had a royal family, the prospect of Trump on legal currency bank notes would be zero.
TFA is literally about how it's actually not just a legacy rubber stamp, and the Queen gets involved more than a figurehead would.
> As an aside - if America had a royal family, the prospect of Trump on legal currency bank notes would be zero.
We don't know that. What if the Trump family was the royal family? I don't think this is an unfair question - Prince Philip is probably just as much of a racist as Donald Trump is, if not more so...
But I think a symbolic monarchy could serve a useful purpose by giving those people a ceremonial role in return for promising that they will never attempt to actually govern.
Edit: Deleted first sentence per comment below.
I happen to agree with the GP that monarchies should be abolished outright, but it is clear that people feel strongly and build identities around ceremonial roles.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_and_image_of_Eliza...
It isn't welfare if the person works in an official capacity.
I have no idea if this is how the British monarchy works in practice, rather just the view from my side of the pond. In the US, we have the concept of career vs political positions in government agencies, but in practice, there is a great risk of interference between the sides.
Any bureaucrat of any government have more power in your life than you think. And over time, we're giving them more and more power to regulate our lifes. (I'm not even talking about politicians here, they're more powerful than any absolutist king of the history).
However I find it hard to reconcile it with the fact that many/most of the nicest countries on earth to live in are constitutional monarchies. Including Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, UK, NZ and Japan.
I don't know why this is, but it gives me pause in overthrowing the monarchy. It might be the existence of a monarch unites society in some way, or it might be that socities that move slowly rather than with revolutions tend to be more stable and comfortable.
I think, as with most things in the UK, we will get rid of the monarchy when it causes a problem that can't be dealt with in an easier way.
A potential explanation for the phenomena you've observed is that it's uncommon for new monarchies to be started in the 21st century, so the countries that still have monarchies are all countries that for the most part have had stable forms of government for many decades if not centuries.
Also there are plenty of poorer countries with monarchies: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, North Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Bhutan, Lesotho, Oman, Qatar, etc. (I'll admit it's a bit suspect to label North Korea as a monarchy).
Qatar is absurdly rich, but the wealth is inequitably distributed (unusually so). Although the GDP per capita is ~60k, the median household income (and the median per-capita income) are considerably lower than the countries the parent comment mentioned.
Why are you mentioning nominal GDP, not PPP which is $55 grand according to CIA (which is more than Sweden's and UK's and just a bit less than US's)? If they raise their taxes to the level of Sweden they will have larger nominal GDP although without any increase in the purchasing power.
That's not true. The royal family of Sweden have immunity from prosecution, fines etc.
And not just in theory - there are actual examples of royal family members escaping speeding tickets, investigation into hunting accidents, illegally using the secret service to raid the homes of people suspected of possessing potentially embarrassing photographs etc etc. (see eg https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1326783/How-King-...)
They also enjoy diplomat status while traveling abroad etc etc.
A Crusader Kings mod that would focus on the internal & external struggles of a cloistered totalitarian regime, like North Korea, would be very interesting.
If conformity and deference are a necessary trait for survival that has to have some effect, even if it's a societal effect rather than a genetic one.
Also, you haven't mentioned Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. Are they not nice places, despite sharing the very same monarch?
Yeah, but all separate monarchies.
Also, Japan and the UK were not exactly nice when their monarchs had absolute power...
Because it has nothing to do with wealth?
The detrimental financial costs of monarchies are a drop in a nation's budget.
Just as the prime minister gifting his best friend 1 million euro per year from the nation's budget wouldn't really impact matters much overall in a nation that deals with billions each year.
It would still be quite corrupt, of course.
> It might be the existence of a monarch unites society in some way
Of course not, it is almost always a decisive issue in countries that have a monarchy.
In republics, almost everyone agrees that republics are better, but in monarchies the issue divides the population, and those that are in favor of retaining the monarchy are almost always traditionalists who desire to do many senseless things simply because they are tradition and are afraid of change.
History has always sided with the progressives, for no man wants change for it's own sake. When a man desire change, he typically has thought well of it, and desires a change for a reason, but when a man desires that matters stay the same, he very thought little of it, and wishes that they remain so for their own sake.
There is no survivorship bias here without an argument that conservative societies do not die.
My argument that the progressives are usually right is not empirical, but rational.
disclaimer: I should note that with “conservative” and “progressive”, I do not mean the U.S.A. identity politics terminology, that has little to do with either conservation or progression, but the simple definition of aiming for change or for inertia.
When a person desires change, they either want it for their personal gain, or have seen the shortcomings of the current system and want change to get rid of them. Yet no system is perfect, and most changes have some tradeoff. When a person desires that matters stay the same, they are either profiting from the current state, or believe that the current system is better thought-out than it might seem at first glance, and are like this for a good reason.
This line of thought is based on Chesterton‘s fence [1]. Of course, a well thought-out change is still a good thing, and not all reasons for the current system are sensible. I count myself as a progressive as well, but it is not as clear-cut as you make it out to be.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton'...
The difference is that a man can rarely convince the others of a chance that is not in the interest of the many, but only in his own.
If there be legitimately flaws in the system that he wishes to address, it will be far easier to convince the collective by pointing out said flaws.
> When a person desires that matters stay the same, they are either profiting from the current state, or believe that the current system is better thought-out than it might seem at first glance, and are like this for a good reason.
And the big thing you leave out: that many, many men simply desire inertia for it's own sake and are afraid of change for no other reason than that it be change.
There are almost none in comparison who seek change for it's own sake, simply because they are afraid of matters staying the same.
So political propaganda rarely works? Every political action is sold as beneficial to the many, but how many of them actually are? I feel like political dynamics are rather a bit less straightforward than you're portraying.
Have you ever seen a republic successfully transition to a monarchy by will of the people because someone sold it as an idea in the people's interests?
You can probably squint at the Cambodian restoration and describe it that way.
While not a democratic republic, my understanding of the restoration of the Spanish monarchy to replace Franco’s fascist republic is that it essentially meets that description anyway.
> The authoritarian personality is a personality type characterized by extreme obedience and unquestioning respect for and submission to the authority of a person external to the self, which is realized through the oppression of subordinate people
Considerably more so-called progressive folks (and others) put their faith in US Presidents they favour, than do subjects of most Monarchs, let alone the UK Monarch.
The level of demagoguery I witnessed around 2008 and 2016 in the US was ridiculous, people were spellbound as if their leaders were Disney characters brought to life.
Most Democratic Heads of State are elected on highly superficial and preformative presentations of themselves, effectively the result of giant PR and communications mechanations.
Other Heads of State - like Von der Leyen in the EU, have barely any democratic legitimacy.
QE2 has a narrow range of power, and she's actually done a pretty good job at it frankly, giving legitimacy to the notion that there is likely a lot that people can be brought up into. It's obviously not something that one would create from nothing in 2020, nor would anyone want more power bestowed than they have, but it works fine.
The US has Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, the UK is stuck with QE2 and Will and Kate. I'd take the later if I could.
First, I am sorry that you're offended by a statistical figure.
Second, the figure was from research that was done in my grandparents' era, about three quarters of a century ago. About 40% of Americans displayed authoritarian personality traits.
Any assumptions you've made are merely coincidental. Have a nice day.
Tradition has always been worth more than sanity or even human lives to many men. — as man will resort to absolute madness, so long as the madness be a tradition that has gone on for long enough.
As an Australian, wtf are we doing with a monarchy? Makes no sense, it's just a holdover from the colonial past, bring on the republic immediately. (Anecdotally, the general consensus amongst my peers is that the Queen's death will be the trigger for this - no-one wants King Charles again).
As an Englishman - it's too deeply part of our culture to remove just like that. What would we replace it with? A President? How would that be different from the Prime Minister? It's not obvious how it would work, and it's not clear what we'd gain from that (except not having King Charles again). Who would the military swear loyalty to? How do we transfer hundreds of years of strong tradition into a new structure without breaking things? I know that smart people have thought of good answers to all these questions, but they're not part of the public awareness, they haven't had time to steep into the public conciousness (unlike republican ideas in Australia, which are pretty well-formed and accepted).
There are any number of wrongs that can be corrected. Is “abolishing the monarchy” the best use of the limited budget for societal change?
And is it worth, on top of that, the risks of unintended consequences?
I’d feel similar being implored to surgically remove my appendix and tailbone.
There's currently a government in Westminster making laws and dictating to us that the vast majority of the country didn't vote for. The public also has the power to change a monarchy, with the only real difference being that the "election" and transfer of power is less peaceful.
Democracy is of course better, but representative democracies in large nations are about as participatory as a monarchy.
At this point people who think the monarchy should be abolished get filed under "malicious actor who wishes to put themselves, or their ideological co travellers, as my master instead, or wishes to use the de facto power vacuum to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense", i.e. they put themselves into the "I would probably be better off if this person were to be dead" category.
At least the new rich overlords wont ask me to pledge allegiance to them during a citizenship oath like the do in Canada. Not just the queen, but also to her heirs like the great Prince Andrew The Pedophile.
From a democratic/ideological perspective you might be right.
On the other hand, having a royal family it cute -- doesn't that count for something :)
I live in Denmark where we also pay the royal family some money, few privileges, etc..
My personal pocket philosophy is that the money we pay the royal family is the cost of a peaceful transformation to democracy.
A revolution like the French isn't free or without risks. Paying off the monarchy for generations to come is quite possibly cheaper.
A revolution would have incurred negative growth, and it's entirely possible that our economy would have been marginally smaller today, had we opted for a violent revolution.
Would be fun to see if anyone did that math? :)
In any case, if paying a bit of money and respect was the cost of a peaceful adoption of democracy it might have been worth it.
Just look to Syria, paying Assad an absurd amount of money to take a ceremonial role would probably have been a lot cheaper, and less risky.
Emphatic no from me on that one.
On the one hand, most of the physical tourist attractions could be maintained without monarchy actually owning or inhabiting them - indeed, the tourism value of Buckingham Palace would perhaps be improved if you could actually go inside.
On the other hand, perhaps that would ruin the mystique - and the mystique is certainly worth something too, as the wedding of William and Kate is estimated to have generated several billion pounds in tourist revenue all by itself, which is enough to pay for several decades of monarchy.
You could merge them, South Africa-style if you wanted, but it's pretty unusual. Most parliamentary systems separate the two.
You don't want one person having both.
Its the main reason royals serve in the armed forces.
Mind you - he was an officer and from a rather posh guards regiment so that's kind of what I would expect him to say.
Mind you - the UK can only have a standing army with the express permission of Parliament:
This requirement only seems to apply to British Army, the Navy and Air Force are exempt. W good example of how unimportant the pageantry is.
In contrast, the 'Royal' Navy was created expressly by the monarch so allegiance is implied.
Why does the armed forces need to pledge allegiance to a person?
> In the UK, it's the monarch, not the government. That balance of power (military v political/legislative) gives you national stability.
I don't think there's much evidence of that.
> You don't want one person having both
Why not?
> Its the main reason royals serve in the armed forces.
The main reason the royals serve in the armed forces is that the royalty (and even the broader nobility) is a remnant of what is notionally a warrior elite that is traditionally barred from servile labor but has position of authority ultimately grounded in military function. The substance of both the authority and the distinct warrior class is almost entirely extinct, but traditions remain, including the tradition that it's pretty much the only thing that looks like work that senior royals are permitted to do, as anything else in government would be seen to violate their distance from that function and anything else would be seen as demeaning the monarchy.
Under the Westminster system of government, I cannot see any alternative to having a seperate head of state that is not part of the government, even if they do nothing more than wake up every 5 years, appoint a prime minister and go back to sleep again.
We, here in the rest of the world, use a magic number to determine that. 51% (or 50% + 1).
Various factions horse trade until some coalition of parties has a majority, and then they rule as coalition. Members of both the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats had cabinet seats.
The main downside to this sort of process is that sometimes negotiations take a long time. Belgium spent nearly two years bickering over forming their coalition in 2010.
Form a coalition that does or have new elections. You can even set a timeline after an election for a coalition to be in place or new elections are mandated by law.
EDIT: which seems to have been introduced in 1993 and never removed :-/
Usually “smallest integer greater than 50%”, of which the other two are imperfect approximations.
In a parliamentary system, the legislative body selects a head of government using a negative process, i.e. they choose the first best alternative that won't lose a vote of no confidence. You don't need 51% approval from parliament, you need to not get 51% disproval.
And depending on country, there are rules for in which order the various players are asked and how much time is allowed to pass for horse-trading and coalition-making, but generally the order is that you first ask the incumbent if they want to continue governing, and thereafter each party leader in order of size in parliament if they have an alternative that they think can pass a vote.
Also, in countries where coalitions are the norm, the various parties have aligned into blocks during the election campaign so that you can be reasonably certain that a vote for party A implicitly is a vote for their block.
Why do you need to have someone make a choice? Have a set timeline for one of the other to secure the support of a Parliamentary majority or new elections are called by operation of law.
Being able to make laws helps with that.
Also see, from https://www.royal.uk/royal-finances-0
> The Crown Estate as a whole dates back from the time of the Norman Conquest.
In 1760, George III reached an agreement with the Government over the Estate. The Crown Lands would be managed on behalf of the Government and the surplus revenue would go to the Treasury. In return, the King would receive a fixed annual payment, which was called the Civil List. With effect from 1 April 2012, the Civil List was incorporated into a new system of funding referred to as the Sovereign Grant.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch. It cannot be sold by the Monarch, nor do any profits from it go to the Sovereign.
The Crown Estate is managed by an independent organisation, headed by a Board, and any profit from the Estate is paid every year to the Treasury for the benefit of all UK taxpayers. The Treasury is effectively the principle Government stakeholder and is kept informed of the estate’s overall business plans and strategies.
The Estates portfolio has a value of over £7.3 billion, from beef farms in the north of Scotland to Portland stone mining in Dorset. Windsor Great Park is the only Royal Park managed by the Crown Estate. All other parks are administered by the Royal Parks Agency.
Correct.
> “nor do any profits from it go to the Sovereign.”
Incorrect. Currently 25% of the Crown Estate’s profits are paid to the Monarch. This was raised from 15% in 2018, and is set to revert back to 15% in 2028.
”The palace, like Windsor Castle, is owned by the reigning monarch in right of the Crown. Occupied royal palaces are not part of the Crown Estate, but nor are they the monarch's personal property, unlike Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle.”
Occupied palaces, like Buckingham Palace, are owned by the reigning monarch ‘in right of the Crown’ (like you pointed out).
Similarly, the Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch ‘in right of The Crown’.
“In right of The Crown” means it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne.
So, you are correct (and I was wrong) that Buckingham is not part of the Crown Estate.
Notwithstanding this technicality, would you agree that the overarching point remains that it isn’t as if “the money goes to the monarch for their personal enjoyment” (which is what I interpreted you implied), but towards Buckingham renovations, which is a property of The Crown[1] (i.e the state) and which in turn is embodied by the reigning monarch.
It sounds to me as if the monarch is like a custodian/shepherd of these assets for the benefit of the state (the crown).
Versailles is one of the most visited places in the world. Having no royal people in there makes zero difference to that.
We could have the tourism without the actual royals, 100% no problem there
1. Versailles has a boatload of art in it and is massive.
2. Some rather dramatic things happened there.
Buckingham palace has plenty of art, but so does the V&A Museum.
And you can't re-create the historical drama and preserve stability.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/991925/visitors-palace-o...
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/373081/uk-royal-tourism-...
These are not the sorts of places that people typically visit on overseas holidays more than once. So once the ticket has been bought, whether or not it is "an actual royal palace" is irrelevant.
Of course people like to feel the glamour of being close to the mystique of living wealth, but once an attraction is firmly on the circuit it hardly matters. See Tower of London, Blenheim Palace, Edinburgh Castle, Hampton Court Palace, etc.
According to Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, Buckingham Palace would be around the 70th most visited attraction in the country, hardly a sign that you need a living monarchy to sustain tourism - https://www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=423
Only because of Hollywood accounting.
Tourists don't come to England to see the Queen. Tourists can't see the Queen. Tourists come to see the Palace. The Queen doesn't own Buckingham Palace. The government does. If the Queen were to disappear tomorrow, tourists would still come to England to see Buckingham Palace.
Sure, but that's the metric you need to go by if you want to evaluate the tourism value of a "living" monarchy.
That tourists would continue to exist with or without the queen doesn't really tell us anything useful. It's a question of how many.
The concept of personal property can perfectly accommodate of a limit in how much a individual person can personally own, especially in regard to the distribution of wealth in the whole population.
An Act of Parliament could just ascertain that the Windsors exempting each other from Inheritance tax was unlawful, and ask the new Republican Revenue & Tax office to assess 40% IHT on every historical generational transfer of assets.
Just redressing the historical injustices that the Windsors benefitted from would strangely make them much less rich.
I think it's an interesting social experiment that may be worth the cost it requires to maintain.
Elsewhere, there are alternative viewpoints. The funny thing is that your proposed institution assumes the layman is the one who needs to be taught or reminded more often than not.
Ok, but how is that related to the political power of the monarchy?
I don't think tourists even know what powers the Queen actually holds.
It is however seldomly proven. Should that not be a requirement, like it is for the rest of us?
Monarchy isn't a hot potato, that the current power-holder has to directly pass on lest it get "dropped on the floor" and cease to exist. Monarch is a belief of the people that a position of power exists and is "open" to be taken by a person with a claim on "right to rule." It's a thing you can convince people you deserve, at which point they put the crown on your head rather than shooting at you for wearing it. Succession gives a peaceful path for that transfer of power, but succession isn't the default; a power vacuum being grabbed at by random nobles—usually violently!—is.
If the current monarch stepped down, someone else without the same scruples would just step up. You'd have to, in effect, get every even-barely-theoretically-"righteous" noble to all agree to denounce the power, for the power to truly go away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rival_successions
Like there can be some guy living in another country who says "um, that monarchy no longer even exists" or "um, my ancestors lost that war a long time ago and I don't plan to reignite it", but still has some kind of association of enthusiasts who claim to actively want him on the throne. One such example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz,_Duke_of_Bavaria who insists that he doesn't actually think of himself as the King of England -- his relative who last actually exercised that position was deposed back in 1688 -- but that doesn't stop other people from thinking of him that way. :-)
Wikipedia has several dozen people listed in the official present-day line of succession to the British throne and notes that a genealogist has claimed to identify over 1,000 people in that line.
It's possible to imagine a France-like republican future for Britain in which people's elaborately detailed and extensively researched pretense claims are not very interesting news for the overwhelming majority of the population, but it probably wouldn't be something that would happen overnight in response to a couple of abdications when a huge number of British people and a substantial number of people with claims to the throne are actively enthusiastic about the monarchy.
In theory, it'd then be shared as belonging to the nation. In practice, you'd get the political class lining their pockets in the short term, and leaving us worse off in the long term.
Between letting successive populist governments have free reign over what happens to certain wealth, institutions and freeholdings and spunking it on policies during their 4 or 8 years in charge, and letting a somewhat stable (if sometimes self-serving) hereditary monarchy retain stewardship over the course of centuries - I'm inclined toward the latter.
It is possible to negotiate a deal where they have no power and get to keep their properties but they have to maintain it themselves.
Sure, it might be possible to get a better deal. Or it might not, is it worth the risk?
Giving a ceremonial role is a pretty solid carrot. And compared to violent revolution it's dirt cheap to offer :)
I'm sure it wasn't easy to convince the Danish king to sign the Danish constitution in 1849. It's not a given that it could have happened peacefully.
In the end, it might not last forever anyways. It'll last so long as the monarchy remains popular, because at the end of the day the votes can change the constitution.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Abney-Hastings,_14th...
Every single now living monarch sits on their throne because an ancestor of theirs took it from someone else. In this case, might makes right.
Edit: The election happened as the king before him had no heirs.
Well, Karl XIV became king because he was elected by parliament, and then Karl XIII formally adopted him to make him and his family royal, not the other way around.
Either way, his son and grandson both married women that were descendants of Gustav Vasa in an attempt to bolster their claims, and that guy definitely took the throne by force.
So yes, you're right in that not every current reigning monarch has their position due to conquest, but most of them. And then that doesn't really matter, because the point I was making is that "rightful" is actually bullshit, it's 100% made up. It's political theater created to make it harder for presumptive conquerors to keep a throne, even if they have the might necessary to take it.
I'm looking at you, readers from Ireland and France. :) Have at it.
A French or Irish monarch might also help bring UK back into the EU :)
Everyone's happy. Ireland and France have their democracies. England has its monarchy.
We can even draft a constitution with bounds on who can become monarchs. For example, they might need to be citizens of former British colonies. That might help keep the former colonies happy. Keep in mind both Ireland and most of France were, at one point, colonized by Britain (for France: See Hundred Years War, The Black Prince, and Joan d'Arc).
They've already had at it. The French in 1066 and the Irish have invaded Wales and Scotland. So have the Dutch, Germans and Scandinavians for that matter, it's time to give someone else a run.
Preferential hiring if they want a job as a reenactor or tour guide.
For instance, the monarchy didn't stop the rise of Mussolini or Franco.
But it might it improve the odds?
Starting with a violent revolution tends to put violent people in charge of your democracy.
I suppose it worked reasonably for the Americans.
Being exposed to the atrocities of /most/ (im no expert) modern day monarchs and being an arab in the middle east, i find it REALLY hard to call what they do cute, or something math and money could fix. These problems, even dänmarks, evolved through strife, injustice and corruption.
Monarchies are necessary as-long as the region needs them .. i see politics more like an evolutionary process where monarchy is part of a nations dev stages.
I actually wish you were right.
We now have a Queen, and the role of the monarchy is entirely ceremonial.
Back in 1849 the Danish king signed the constitution, making the role of the king ceremonial, and giving us democracy.
Sure, this was in the aftermath of the French revolution. And hadn't the Danish king signed away his power we would likely have had a revolution.
Yes, monarchy in it's original/natural form is horrific. It's essentially a dictatorship, no different. But I'd money and a ceremonial role can grease the wheels for a peaceful transition is that so bad?
In Britain they don't have a constitution the same way. But I see many events throughout british history where the crown gradually signed away power.
Not saying its bad, just saying they wont do it. Theyre already rich beyond imagining- sadism and abuse are rampant, and the public doesnt seem to care.
Like seriously, how much cash will it take to convince the saudis to go ceremonial? Meanwhile another gay person is hung and a dissident is assassinated. That all said .. seems to be what the region “wants” - displeasure isnt high enough yet for regular folk to demand change.
In arabic there is a saying “the people earn the ruler they deserve”.
Beyond the short term moral qualm .. its just a step in the development of these countries - it could - and i was - worse. Better wiser days will come.
But countries where the powers in charge are closely balanced enough that the transition away from a monarchy to something else slowly (maybe leaving the monarchy itself intact as in the UK) are much better than the ripping off the bandaid approach seen in Germany or France. Moderate political change is generally a better idea than radical change.
Some are bringing up points on wealth and for me that feels like it stems from envy which is also pretty ugly. I postulate that striping the royals of wealth will make no one here materially better off.
And it’s not like "civilization" was something one might really believe to stand on fairness, reciprocity and mutual care. That kind of things can survive in civilizations, and probably civilizations can’t survive themselves without leaving some room for these feelings.
This idea that criticism of wealth must be just down to envy is really quite a tired stereotype.
It makes even less sense when there's a hereditary class of people whose wealth and power is constitutionally guaranteed and, as we've discovered, who use corrupt means to maintain this by intervening in the lawmaking process to neutralise threats to their income.
It's not envy to realise that there must be a better system than this.
It's an ad hominem attack, nonsensical, tired, and, as someone who has experienced a lot of wealth envy in the past, always strike me as so incredibly insincere.
I'm not saying that's worth more than a fully functioning democracy, or that they couldn't monetise themselves, but I think this is what OP is referring to. Something can be both 'cute' and an ugly business.
If people want to go and look at the English and think that it is cute they can. But that shouldn't influence the local decision making.
If the Queen had ever alienated the population the UK would have become a republic within a few years. Nobody actually thinks she rules anything which is why this article in the Guardian is news, and why it takes pains to point out how obscure this apparent veto actually is - apparently so obscure that even Parliamentarians themselves believe it's not used for anything!
I (name) do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that on becoming a British Citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law
After which the citizen is issued a passport by Her Majesty’s Passport Office.
If we compare and contrast with America, nobody needed to swear allegiance to Trump at the border. They let in a bunch of people who would have actively and publicly wanted him gone. One of these two countries is pretending that birth literally should confer special privileges.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/british-citizensh...
Trump is not equivalent to the Queen in role. The Queen is supposed to be a figured head only, a bit like the American flag. That's why this news is controversial because it's an abuse of position.
Real power in the UK rests solely in the House of Commons.
The last monarch that forgot that publicly had their head cut off in 1649.
That fact is celebrated every opening of Parliament when they slam the door in the face of the Queen's representative Black Rod, exactly so that she remembers.
You might not like the unwritten rules that govern the UK but they've worked pretty well so far and have been malleable enough to be reformed whenever there's been a problem.
Reality: These things are actually more based in culture and tradition than law.
Spot on on the being based more on culture and tradition than law though.
And while nobody believes in that divine right nonsense any more, 99% of people who see the royals as corrupt and incompetent don't have anything better to say about our career politicians.
If you're a foreigner apparently you'll be pushed to the front for a good view.
Also cute!
I also forgot that if you think Queen Elizabeth II could be considered a tourist attraction in England you also have to think that public hangings are great and that Salman of Saudi Arabia is also a total babe.
What a silly comparison.
Royalty in Europe has abused their power. It's inherited corrupt power, that time and time again has shown that given this power they abuse it.
Is it the same? No. Just like how Anders Brevik is not as bad as Hitler.
But yeah, Anders Brevik's crimes are "cute".
Defending corruption and crimes because "at least it's not Saudi Arabia" is what's truly silly.
The implication that if you think the queen has touristic value you must also think that Andres Breviks crimes were great is just a silly false equivalency.
It’s possible to think that the queen has touristic value, could be considered cute, and probably needs to be further seperated from power, but I suspect that’s too much nuance considering we have already hit Godwin’s Law.
Well that's a straw man.
> It’s possible to think that the queen has touristic value, could be considered cute
It is. And one of the Boston bombers was considered cute. It has no baring on whether he's a good guy, or someone who should be stopped.
What we have in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Britain is a ceremonial monarchy. The article is about how queens assent still granted the crown some indirect power (mostly through access to politicians).
But in practice, the crown has very little power. And is a culture institution.
If the cost of peaceful transition to democracy, is paying the crown money for generations to come, and giving the crown a ceremonial role. The might be worth it, even if the current King is a murderous lunatic.
(Future kings will learn that the monarchy needs to be popular, or people will vote it out of existence)
Other parts of the royal family have claimed immunity when committing crimes (traffic violations), even though they don't actually have it.
So the king and his family have been abusing their power. It's a slap in the face of the whole country.
Look elsewhere in this thread for abuses of power from the British royal family. Also, you know, Prince Andrew…
Immunity from prosecution is hardly "some indirect ceremonial power", especially when it's has ACTUALLY been used to commit crimes and getting away with it.
It seems silly but the US has to have the President go to everything and time is money to the President.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Crisis
https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/danish-workers-str...
True,
I don't think anyone was convinced Assad would step down if given more time or money.
Just saying, that in that calculus offering a ceremonial role is still a cheap bargain -- assuming you can get the people in power to take the offer -- that's not a given.
Honestly would much rather be poor and free than be "royal".
I do think they serve a purpose, and tradition is important to many people (I know the progressive-types want to pull all that down).
Defending state supported inherited power, which has already shown to be corrupted and have abused that power, by saying it's "cute" is like saying pirates murdering and stealing are romantisised to being cute.
Don't confuse watching and enjoying Pirates of the Caribbean with thinking it's a good idea to murder and steal on merchant ships.
Russian oligarchs and mafioso also have their charm, but don't confuse The Godfather part II with a good idea.
And maybe one day it will be time to do away with it.. but it does have a cuteness factor to it.
And politicians are unlikely to want to burn political capital doing away with a popular cultural institution.
So as long as they behave, remain popular, I doubt the monarchy will go away.
And we've not even mentioned yet Prince Andrew's connections to Jeffrey Epstein, and how he's being allowed to get away with it because of his family.
You might probably buy far more and far better distributed amount of cuteness without a royal family.
> A revolution like the French isn't free or without risks. Paying off the monarchy for generations to come is quite possibly cheaper.
Nothing is without cost and risk. Keeping a royal family includes a cost and it rise the risk inherent with any concentrated political/wealth power. It is not absolutely safer on all regard to go for a different kind of government of course, it’s a different trade-off.
>A revolution would have incurred negative growth, and it's entirely possible that our economy would have been marginally smaller today, had we opted for a violent revolution.
First, one might be willing to destitute royal caste from its privileges without willing to shedding blood and make widespread violence arise. The question is, if the people decide by means of a referendum to get rid of privileges, will the privileged few accept without trying to use violence to maintain their position?
Actually in France, they are several pretender to the throne[1]. It’s just that virtually nobody care.
>Would be fun to see if anyone did that math? :)
Maths on what? Societies are complex systems with many parameters whose evolution is subject to the butterfly effect. You can throw numbers in-between to decorate any thesis you would like to defend, it doesn’t give it any meaningful scientific credibility.
> Just look to Syria, paying Assad an absurd amount of money to take a ceremonial role would probably have been a lot cheaper, and less risky.
You say that like there was some kind of strictly internal consensus in the people of Syria to go for what happened rather than paying Assad. That sounds like an absurdly simplistic exposition of reality.
[1] https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2019/07/08/qui-serait-l-...
How do you replace the people in power peacefully, if they don't want to go?
It generally works out best if you offer them a carrot.
My point was merely that if it avoids violent revolution, the size of the carrot your offering might not matter so much :)
In the sense that keeping the royals around probably is cheaper and creating less fuss than becoming a republic. Precisely as the monarch is not elected, there is (the odd left fringe aside) very little controversy to be had.
Rather than electing a president (which, of course, will lead to a fraction of the population seeing their candidate lose), we've got our (ceremonial) head of state and everybody just deals with it. The monarch is very much aware that the survival of the institution he represents relies on him being apolitical and not attempting to boss parliament around.
Heck, the grandfather of the current monarch even won over a lot of the left when pointing out (in the late 1920s sometime) that he was the king of the communists, too - not just the bourgeousie, and asked the head of the labour party to form a government when election results indicated that was what the electorate wanted - despite attempts from the establishment to have him appoint anybody but the election winners.
Basically, as long as the royal family are as well behaved as they mostly are, they are probably cheaper and less controversial than any alternative. (While still being outrageously undemocratic, of course).
The main argument for abolishing monarchy around here probably is on humanitarian grounds - basically, it is hardly fair to have one's life cut out for oneself from birth?
It was considered a "bad move" and his son was restored to the role of head of state about 12 years later to correct it. :P
The idea of a powerless head of state has always appealed to me. I can't think of anything worse than someone like Johnson assuming that role.
I don't see it as cute, more as a cancer. Sometimes they are benign but you still want to get rid of it in-case it actually ends up killing you.
But I do agree with you that the concept of monarchy (hereditary power/wealth at taxpayers' expense) has run its course.
EU project is only partially compatible with monarchy, you either have the power or don't and monarchs can only slowly lose more and more power to bankers with time. Thus, the current anti monarchy trend in many countries of Europe would be expectable. British probably see it coming and jumped of the train.
The transition is done, if you stopped now there would be no revolution to keep the monarchy.
True, now we're just paying interest on a purchase made generations ago.
Is that so bad? I assume it'll go away if the monarchy becomes unpopular.
Is funneling tons of taxpayer money to some useless family of millionaires bad?
Yes, I think so. It's a moral failure and should just stop.
On what grounds exactly?
"For unknown reasons, Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home was not advised of Anthony Blunt's spying, although the Queen and Home Secretary Henry Brooke had been fully informed. In November 1979, then PM Margaret Thatcher formally advised Parliament of Blunt's treachery and the immunity deal that had been arranged"
Letting them stay and keep all their vast wealth would risk allowing them continued influence.
Also, the birth of the United Republic should involve a peaceful transfer of power, so doing this in the French style is completely out of the question.
I’m talking about what legal process is used, and what grounds are given for that process.
Of course, it would need a majority in both Houses, and in practical terms would require popular approval too.
What are their grounds for the power they currently wield??
The grounds for the power they currently wield is that it’s the law.
In this case...Constitutional.
Taking away their political powers / their status as royals is one thing, but exiling someone is punishment. You can't just hand out punishment for no good reason.
If they commited crimes that were illegal at the time they were commited they should stand trial for that, but I very much doubt any of those are serious enough to warrant exile.
While you can take away their powers pretty easily via a law everything else, such as striping their wealth, would be punishment that needs to be justified. The Queen hasn't started any wars or genocides as far as I am aware, so how would you justify this punishment?
Her being a royal is completely legal after all!
>Not casting one's former monarchs under the guillotine.
Where is your joie de vivre, my friend?, for the revolution is at hand!
1. A new Royal Assent Act, that makes assent automatic upon a bill passing both Houses. Assuming this in itself receives assent, it would remove the monarch's power to veto or refuse a bill (a power that hasn't been used for over 300 years anyway).
2. A Republic Act, that transfers all powers, abolishes the monarchy, strips them of their wealth, exiles them, etc.
Where is the debasement here?
For instance, if parliament passed a law allowing “The Purge” to happen yearly, would murders committed on that day be “rule of law”? If you don’t think so, perhaps you agree there are some inherent principles to rule of law that aren’t simply a majority vote of a legislature. (For instance, perhaps there’s an assumption that exiling someone who hasn’t committed any crime is a violation of due process rights, rights as a citizen of the country, etc.)
While you could of course exile them like other countries have done in the past, why would you do that? What reasoning would you use to justify exiling them, striping them of their personal property etc. ?
Abolishing the monarchy is one thing, it can be justified pretty easily, the interests of the people. Anything beyond that however would be punishment, what have they done that is currently illegal that warrants that punishment? Punishing them simply "because they are royals" doesn't really work out, that isn't illegal after all.
Technically just abolishing the monarchy / taking away their powers would suffice.
> Technically just abolishing the monarchy / taking away their powers would suffice.
It wouldn't suffice, because they still derive a great deal of power from their inherited wealth. What's the point of abolishing the monarchy if we permit them to remain as landlords for huge swathes of the country? Then they're still lording it over people economically, even if no longer doing so constitutionally.
I am no fan of the royals and other nobles and look forward to the day when they all work for a living and wear seat belts like regular people. Yet, we must acknowledge that rule of law means law for the bad, the useless, and the rich. The ends don't justify the means.
This is not an intuitive concept by any means, but it helps to think about it in terms of the origins of the common law: the underlying idea is that the long acceptance of something or practice of something by regular people is a sound basis for its legitimacy. This still finds expression in the theory (in the US, anyways) that the speed limit should be the speed at which 85% of people drive. On this footing, the legitimacy of law is more about observation than about the decision of a particular person or administrative body.
Some things to contrast with the common law are "positive law" and "statute law". Legislation passed by Parliament is indeed statute law; it's not common law. Yet, to a significant degree, common law ideas and ways of judging remain prevalent in the United States, the United Kingdom and the other English speaking countries. It's the common law that defines most crimes with which you'd be familiar. It's more relevant than you think.
Although Parliament is indeed sovereign and Parliamentary sovereignty is said to mean that Parliament can not be bound even by Parliament, there are contemporary limits recognized to Parliament's law making authority. Sometimes they are even called "constitutional", referencing the unwritten English constitution; and sometimes they are clearly linked to the Convention on Human Rights. Either way, what we see here is an assertion of the old idea of "transcendent law" that binds everyone, even the law makers -- and that is what rule of law is really about.
As a more serious response to this: to do so is applying a law change retroactively and flies into the face of any semblance of a nation ruled by laws. — what they are doing is not illegal as they did it, a such, they cannot be punished for it by a retroactive law change.
A new Act of Parliament would be needed anyway to establish the United Republic, it could be included in that. Perhaps as a 100% wealth tax on the first X people in line to the throne, or similar.
- It's not not a criminal incarceration; it's an involuntary psychiatric commitment so your usual rights to due process don't apply.
- You see, we're not giving lesser rights to this group; we're simply giving more rights to the other, so it's fine.
- It's not a form of punishment; it's simply a procedural event to exile, so we can do it to someone who committed no legal crime.
And this is the grim, grim reality of human rights. — simply doing the same thing under a different name is enough to overstep them.
Also just to note this wouldn't be done arbitrarily, but within a specific purpose of abolishing the monarchy and removing all vestiges of their power.
The right to not be punished by the state for anything that was legal at the time one did it, by way of a future law change.
Saying “It is not a form of punishment; it is simply a procedural change.” can be used to enable any such matter.
> Also just to note this wouldn't be done arbitrarily, but within a specific purpose of abolishing the monarchy and removing all vestiges of their power.
The same can be said about anything.
Let us incarcerate all those that have removed the foreskins of their children in the past, when it was still legal to do so; — this is not a form of punishment; this is simply to remove all vestiges of involuntary foreskin removal.
Yes but the converse is also true, claiming that something is being done as an unfair punishment, as an argument against it.
In this case, it's also worth noting that most of the monarchy's private assets are vast amounts of property and land, of which they are the landlords. The state seizing and administering this property for the benefit of the country, rather than to perpetually enrich this elite, is a public good.
Rather than taking this to be a punishment on the royals, consider it an anti-punishment on the people afflicted by their predatory rent-seeking behaviour.
No, in this particular case, it can only be claimed if there be no law against it.
The principle is quite simple: no man can be punished for any act that was not illegal when he committed it, no matter the act.
No matter how unfair the punishment, if it were indeed legal as he committed the act, the argument cannot be raised.
> In this case, it's also worth noting that most of the monarchy's private assets are vast amounts of property and land, of which they are the landlords. The state seizing and administering this property for the benefit of the country, rather than to perpetually enrich this elite, is a public good.
Perhaps it is, and the same argument can be made for seizing the property of the very rich, but this is entirely unrelated.
The difference is that a new law can be passed that the rich should surrender their property, and if they not do so, then they commit a crime, at the time it is so written in the law books.
Likewise, the former monarchs can be punished for being unwilling to surrender their power if ever the law change, and it no longer permit them to monarch; — they simply cannot be punished for their time as monarch when this was still legal, under this scheme.
> Rather than taking this to be a punishment on the royals, consider it an anti-punishment on the people afflicted by their predatory rent-seeking behaviour.
The argument was about their exile, not their assets being seized.
Their assets can easily be seized without any retroactive application of the law.
Of course, if the new law target only the former monarchs, and not every similarly wealthy man, then it goes against the other human right of fair justice and æquality before the law.
A fair point, I did pivot back from answering this regarding exile.
If we consider why a set of international human rights principles were pushed in the first place, it was to act as a preventative measure against totalitarian governments abusing their citizens, and in particular, was a reaction to how the Nazis brutalized and killed millions of people during and prior to WW2.
What it wasn't intended for, is restricting how exactly to transfer power within a state.
Article 9 of the UHDR states that:
> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
The key qualifying word here is "arbitrary". For ordinary citizens, this is taken to mean that due process and the rule of law must be applied. For a head of state who is ordinarily immune from prosecution (as the Queen and her family are), it can't mean this, because the normal due process doesn't apply to them.
So if Britain did abolish its monarchy, the only interpretation of "arbitrary" that makes sense here is that the monarchy be treated according to the protocols decided for establishing the new republic. And if this statute outlines a process for exile, then so be it.
(Conversely, if it says nothing about exile, but the new government attempts to do so anyway, then this may well be in breach of Article 9.)
> Of course, if the new law target only the former monarchs, and not every similarly wealthy man, then it goes against the other human right of fair justice and æquality before the law.
As noted above, this already doesn't apply to the royal family. They are protected from any legal consequences for their actions that would apply to an ordinary citizen.
Targeting them specifically would simply be redressing this imbalance of justice and power.
I'm guessing you're not a Brit? A problem with that is the British people support them - about 72% for 21% against and I think they've been clearly in favour for at least the last century. So you can't really do it unless you get a dictatorship in to go against the people.
Btw, Can the brit people name any other candidate to be the queen or the king? From the existing family or a new one?
That would be awesome, because there are some great. Brit scientists which would make a great king or queen.
Theoretically yes through parliament, who approves succession issues in a complex system with precedents that about 3 people understand. William of Orange becoming King is probably the most notable example. Recently there was a curios case where succession laws were change so that females inherit equally, but everyone with the Queen as their head of State hate to change their laws at the same time, had one country not done so, or the wrong gender babies been born at the wrong time along with a few untimely deaths, the countries would have ended up with different Monarchs.
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9294955/queen-elizabeth-constit...
Sure, that's a fine idea.
> Also, every member of the royal family should be stripped of their wealth and exiled.
Why, for using the power they rightfully have? Or just for the crime of having money? This seems very petty.
Should this be extended to all families with significant hereditary wealth? Or just the royal family directly?
The people who bought a lease knew exactly what they were paying for, it’s not something you buy to “leave for your children”...
If the Monarch’s exemption to the normal leasehold laws was secretive and not known to buyers at the time, then it’s a problem.
There is no happier afterlife once you get rid of a monarchy. You get a quasi-monarch with an opportunity to change him/her every X years and all the vile, disgusting, hateful polarization that comes with those elections in the era of Twitter.
If you kick out Elizabeth, I would probably offer her Czech throne in my turn. Can't be worse than who sits there today after winning a slim majority.
With regards of being stripped of wealth, what makes the Royal Family different to other cases of inherited wealth? Should I not bother saving up money for my kids?
But, I think a lot of people are this extremist and abhor any form of inter-generational wealth. Basically, every individual should start from 0 and "prove" themselves. You are free to do anything except sacrifice and save for your own family.
Wait, what? What's the alternative?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords says this:
> Membership is granted by appointment or by heredity or official function.
> Membership was once an entitlement of all hereditary peers, other than those in the peerage of Ireland, but under the House of Lords Act 1999, the right to membership was restricted to 92 hereditary peers.
The other two hereditary peers are not elected. They have some ceremonial role (though they can vote) that was thought prudent to retain. I don't remember (if I ever know) what it was.
Overriding a democratic referendum by someone who wasn’t even elected to rule...
Ignoring that the Queen and much of her staff would likely be dead, where exactly do you think Governments come from? Parliament would just reform and be recognized de facto until the laws were either reconstructed or replaced. Sometimes words have no meaning, and the queen has no practical power to do any of this, so it's basically irrelevant in my view.
It’s oddly used as a pro-Merica. To which I normally say the US isn’t a democracy, but a Constitutional Republic. I don’t know why I do that, it only causes people to dig in deeper to their position. Their argument generally boils down to the US has elections and elections = democracy.
I can even see hints of that in this thread applied to the UK, but I’m assuming those are Americans.
It makes me curious as a British Scholar would you call the government a Constitutional Monarch? Do you find it commonly referred to as a democratic monarchy or just a democracy consistent with what I tend to see in the US?
It is a silly semantic debate. If you define "democracy" narrowly to mean only direct democracy, then no the US isn't a democracy. If you define "democracy" broadly, to include representative democracies with constitutionally entrenched protection of minority rights, then yes the US is a democracy, as are quite a few others.
Whether a country is a republic or a constitutional monarchy is rather orthogonal. You can have a representative democracy with constitutionally entrenched protections of minority rights, and with that you can either have a mostly ceremonial constitutional monarch, or a President. The later is a republic, the former is not.
I think the UK does fall short somewhat, in lacking a codified constitution, there is really no such thing as entrenched rights – other countries without an entrenched constitution include Israel and New Zealand. Then you also have countries like Australia, which does have an entrenched written constitution, but the rights protected by the Australian constitution are rather limited – protection against religious discrimination and the implied right of political free speech. But "democracy" vs "constitutional republic" isn't a good way of capturing those deficiencies.
I don’t think this is a matter of being overly pedantic. What you have done is redefined “democracy” to “republic”.
To use a real world example you don’t find many historians that call the ancient republic of Rome a democracy, or a representative democracy.
A republic is just that, a form of government where the people are represented by elected officials/representatives.
Does the US have any characteristic besides elections that results in you calling it a democracy? Do you call China a representative democracy? They do elect representatives after all.
Yes, clearly I give democracy the narrow definition where the people directly manage the affairs of the State, not elected representatives. It’s not just out of tradition though it’s because other forms of government have other names and democracies from the beginning have nothing to do with elections or electing officials. For example in Ancient Greece, the original “democracy”, they had officials for certain purposes that were not elected, they were selected from the populace through a lottery.
> A republic is just that, a form of government where the people are represented by elected officials/representatives.
In 1999, Australia had a national referendum on becoming a Republic [0]–to replace the Queen with a President. The referendum was defeated, despite polls showing a majority of Australian voters favoured becoming a Republic. Most observers attribute the referendum's failure to disagreements among Republic supporters over how to elect the President – many wanted a directly elected President, but the model proposed by the government had the President elected by the Parliament instead. Advocates of the indirectly elected President model were concerned that a directly elected President would become a political office, and transform Australia's political system from a Westminster-style parliamentary one into an American-style presidential system or a French-style semipresidential one. (The fact that Ireland has a nonpartisan directly elected President while retaining a Westminster-style parliamentary system did not seem to be considered.) Also, some were concerned about the fact that the government's proposal gave the Prime Minister the right to sack the President at any time for any reason, although if sacked the President would be replaced by the longest-serving state Governor (which is a non-partisan position) not by a candidate of the Prime Minister's choosing.
If "Republic" means "a form of government where the people are represented by elected officials/representatives", what on earth was Australia voting on – they already have that. The fact that Australia already has "a form of government where the people are represented by elected officials/representatives", and yet isn't a Republic, is pretty clear evidence to me that is not what the word "Republic" means.
> To use a real world example you don’t find many historians that call the ancient republic of Rome a democracy, or a representative democracy.
The Roman Republic was really closer to a plutocratic oligarchy than a representative democracy. The system was set up so the ruling class (the patricians, and even the wealthy plebeian families) had far greater representation than the poor free masses (to say nothing of the slaves). It was definitely not a system of "one person one vote" (or even "one man one vote"). What made it a Republic then? It became a Republic when they abolished the Roman monarchy. It effectively stopped being one when the monarchy was de facto reinstated with the Emperors, although in the earlier Roman Empire, the Emperors still retained the pretence that they were merely "first citizen of the Republic" rather than monarchs (the Principate); it was only in the later Empire that pretence was dropped (the Dominate).
Actually, the early US Republic wasn't a representative democracy either, it was a plutocratic oligarchy like the Roman Republic was – most people were denied the right to vote. Many states imposed voting restrictions based on race, gender, literacy, property ownership, etc; generally speaking, only middle-to-upper class white men were allowed to vote, and representation was very often denied to women, non-white men, and poor white men. It was really only in the 20th century as those voting restrictions were lifted that the US finally became a genuine representative democracy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Australian_republic_refer...
As you said they were voting to replace the “Queen” and become a republic. But for the Queen Australia would be a constitutional republic, hence the vote to remove the Queen to become a republic.
It goes without saying the Queen (Monarch)is not elected and Queen’s heirs will succeed the Queen’s powers. It’s not enough that otherwise Australia has an elected parliament, even dictators in Roman republic were elected.
Because the UK and Australian Constitutions provide for unelected monarchs they are Constitutional Monarchs.
The US isn’t a “representative democracy” it is a Constitutional Republic. The fact that slavery existed under the constitution and was later amended to out law slavery never had and effect of the constitution providing for a Republic form of government at all times.
The US also needs to be viewed through a certain lens: 1) I believe it was only the 2nd attempt in history at creating a Constitution; and 2) the US only became an independent county through war and treaties. Maybe it was a plutocratic oligarchy in the beginning, but they were still elected representatives making it a republic, and that’s exactly why democracies do not have elected officials and the people manage the affairs of the state directly or otherwise temporary officials are selected at random. And as much of a plutocratic oligarch as it may have been, King George laughed when he heard about the concept of the elected “President” after losing the war and he famously said if Washington actually does give up the power “he would be the greatest man in the World.”
The Queen has basically zero powers in practice. Her role is purely symbolic, with no practical relevance. Her symbolic existence, whether it be good symbolism or bad symbolism, does not change the fact that Australia already has, in every practical sense of the word, "a form of government where the people are represented by elected officials/representatives". You can even say that her rule over Australia is democratically legitimate due to the failure of the 1999 referendum to remove her.
All the Queen's actual powers in Australia are exercised by her representative the Governor-General. She does not instruct the Governor-General what to do. Outside of exceptional circumstances, the GG does what the PM advises the GG to do. In exceptional circumstances (such as the 1975 constitutional crisis), the GG makes up their own mind what to do – they may inform the Queen of their decisions as a courtesy, but ultimately the discretion is theirs not hers. All the Queen does is appoint and dismiss the GG, and the Queen has always (in recent decades certainly) done so according to the advice of the Australian PM.
If the Queen is physically present in Australia, she can personally exercise her powers rather than going through the GG, but even there she is bound by the convention that she does whatever the PM and ministers advise her to do. In the utterly unlikely event that a constitutional crisis happened to coincide with a royal visit, she might be called upon to exercise some discretion, but I think in such a scenario she would quickly depart from the country so the GG could sort it out.
The only hypothetical scenario in which the Queen might have some real power would be if the GG and PM were engaged in a race to be the first one to sack the other – if the PM instructs her to sack the GG, and she knew the GG was about to sack the PM, she would have a choice whether to follow the PM's instructions immediately, or to delay doing so until the GG had the chance to sack the PM first. That situation has never actually happened (although in the 1975 crisis came close to that hypothetical without actually reaching it.)
She has some other extremely trivial powers – for example, when she comes to Australia, she doesn't have to produce a passport (indeed she doesn't have one) – which again, is primarily a symbolic thing. Anyway, at the age of 94, she has made clear she does not plan to ever come to Australia again, so whatever powers she has when physically in Australia are now exceptionally theoretical. We will have to wait and see who is her successor (most likely Princes Charles, although it is not impossible he could predecease her), when that is (her mother lived to 101, she will be 101 in 2027, but it is not impossible she might even live longer than her mother did), and whether that successor ever comes to Australia as King – it could happen that her death is followed by an Australian Republic, and Charles III or William V, King of Australia, might not make it here before one is instated.
> The US isn’t a “representative democracy” it is a Constitutional Republic
I'm sorry but the US government doesn't agree with you. To quote the educational materials the US Citizenship and Immigration Services provides to prospective US citizens: "The United States is a representative democracy." [0]
And the United States Congress doesn't agree with you either – to quote H. Con. Res 139 of 2003 (passed unanimously), the US constitution "established the United States as a federal union of States, a representative democracy within a republic." [1]
So, I think I will trust the US government and US Congress' position, not yours.
[0] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/lesson-pl...
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-... see page 8 of PDF
>The United States, under its Constitution, is a federal, represent- ative, democratic republic, an indivisible union of 50 sovereign States. With the exception of town meetings, a form of pure democ- racy, we have at the local, state, and national levels a government which is: ‘‘federal’’ because power is shared among these three lev- els; ‘‘democratic’’ because the people govern themselves and have the means to control the government; and ‘‘republic’’ because the people choose elected delegates by free and secret ballot.
Nowhere does it say it is a representative democracy, but it does state there is the occasional town meeting which is purely democratic in nature.
It explicitly states a republic with a democratic character, specifically in the sense whereby the democratic part refers to that character by which the people are the ultimate source of control over the government.
Props for the citations though. I had to check. Also, note that Congressional Resolutions are a glorified instance of "Hey voters, we have an opinion!" and are largely irrelevant to anyone that actually is already a citizen. Many would prefer that Congress spend more time not making resolutions, and more time solving actual problems.
Now your 0th source is interesting, and I see no indication of when that document entered circulation. However, depending on the administration in power, or who has approval authority, it's best to just kind of average things out based on what you're trying to do.
Though note, if this document is part of the process of becoming a citizen, this is taking surprising liberties with more foundational documents, and shown to the right representative in a bad enough mood, that it may ruin a civil servant's day by having to be rewritten. It's a back and forth sort of thing.
In short, try not to take it too seriously, like those of us that obsess over documents do. It just leads to migraines and frustration.
I quoted page 8 saying exactly that! (Question 5, "The Constitution") "The original charter, which replaced the Articles of Confederation and which became operative in 1789, established the United States as a federal union of States, a representative democracy within a republic"
It says the US Constitution established the United States as "a representative democracy within a republic". This isn't talking about direct democracy at the local level – the US Constitution has nothing to say on that topic. It is saying that the United States itself, federally, is "a representative democracy within a republic".
> In short, try not to take it too seriously, like those of us that obsess over documents do. It just leads to migraines and frustration.
You claimed I was redefining words. I provided evidence that the US Citizenship and Immigration Service and the US Congress uses definitions closer to mine than to yours. You then tell me not to "take it too seriously"? Maybe you could just have said, "No, I was mistaken to say you were redefining words, you aren't".
Definitions are based on usage after all. If the way I (a guy in Australia) use a word is (roughly) the same as the way the US Congress uses it, that is pretty strong evidence that way of using it is mainstream and legitimate
And now I have to apologise for that, because I realise you are not the person I was originally talking to, but someone else. I should have been paying more attention before I spoke so strongly
Perhaps because this is both pedantic and wrong? A state can be both a democracy and a republic, and many are, such as the United States.
Always has been:
"But a representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated & the exercise of the legislative, executive and judiciary authorities, is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will in my opinion be most likely to be happy, regular and durable." -- Alexander Hamilton, 1777
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-01-02-01...
It’s because democracy doesn’t appear anywhere in the constitution. The law of the land, the very document that establishes our form of government doesn’t mention democracy, do you think it’s an accident or oversight of the founding fathers?
Article 4. Section 4:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government...
"The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote."
You could make the case that the constitution originally didn't create a country that perfectly implemented the ideals of a representative democracy, but that's trivially true due to slaves and women not having the right to vote.
It may also be fair to say that the Electoral College is still a compromise between representative democracy and representation of the individual states, but it does nevertheless approximate a representative democracy, especially when the winner of the popular vote happens to become president.
In theory, I think it's possible for an anarchist republic to exist, where there are no elections or rulers, and also no monarchy or "private" interests owning the state.
de·moc·ra·cy
/dəˈmäkrəsē/
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
You seem to think that you have some technical claim to correctness. You are in no sense correct, technical or otherwise. The reason that people probably get annoyed by your claim is that nobody likes a pedant, but a pedant who is not even correct by some pedantic argument is particularly irritating.
Moreover, nobody ever seems to subscribe to this weird definition where democracy is conflated with direct democracy except people trying to argue that the United States is not a democracy. I suspect motivated reasoning.
Is it though (more expensive)? I've heard they spend 1.5 billion dollars per year for the president (flights, security, meetings, etc). And that's the explicit part; the implicit one is the election spendings which last year constituted 6.5 billion dollars; if they come from special interest groups, I suspect, they should be somehow payed back in the form of legislation, tariffs, taxes, and projects appeasing those special interest groups (so taxpayers will probably pay way more than what was donated).
Supposedly it removed the power of the Queen to dissolve parliament.
Lots of British people, me included, were deeply alarmed by it. Parliament was essentially rogue.
* Had the Queen tried to dissolve Parliament I think they would have ignored her.
The British system is strictly about convention and precedent, whereas Americans have a little more explicit guidance from the Constitution.
I think what we've learned as Americans in the last few years is that it isn't enough to have a foundational document. Convention and precedent indeed play a large role in the function of how the well government works. Congress is now terminally defective, largely because of the loss of the norms and violations of precedent, starting roughly in the mid 90's.
Perhaps the idea that convention and precedent is the only thing holding the British system together makes it stronger.
This echos the Roman senate during the late Republican period quite strongly. They, like the British, depended on precedent (their "Mos Maiorum"). Like us Americans, once the social norms were violated things quickly devolved.
Coronavirus has been a pretty good litmus test for which countries have good governments, and which countries do not. The UK has consistently led the charts in terms of deaths and infections. I think it shows the fundamental defectiveness of the system itself - a defectiveness that has been pretty visible for years if you looked at the country with a critical eye, but doesn't seem to be often acknowledged, since english people have a cultural prohibition against complaining.
Of course, these people were a minority, but that just leads to the question of the appropriate protection of minority rights in a democracy, to which there is no obviously correct answer.
Polls showed that people in general were quite keen on lockdowns, as it so happens.
Some countries have different methods for measuring covid deaths. For example you have to have tested positive before you died vs autopsy after vs if you died in a care home automatically covid.
[1] This policy has some good technical reasons behind it, but its political use is still a bit gross.
In that sense, it is absolutely a failure of governance. People not wanting to contain it didn't happen in a vacuum... except perhaps a leadership vacuum.
Complaining about the status quo.
If you ever visited Britain, you'd see how much Brits complain. See: whenever it's raining. Or sunny. Or just grey. Or drizzling. Or foggy.
Up North, people tend to be much more comfortable speaking up and giving a piece of their mind.
Personally, I am a regular writer of letters of complaint, and frequent arguer in the street, haha :)
Drives me nuts when I see people complaining, but not then actually doing anything to resolve it.
Authoritarian states have been able to manage the pandemic because their residents must do as they're told or suffer. Many others do well because they have cultural cohesion and people are willing to band together for the greater good. That is to say, people must either be willing to act for the greater good or be forced to do so.
Failure to manage the pandemic is more a sign of a liberal government (unable to force) and cultural breakdown (individuals unwilling to act), outside of countries that are actually just not capable.
The UK and US aren't willing to enact forceful measures, which actually think makes them quite good governments, in contrast to China, for instance. The US, at least, has been in a cultural death spiral since the late 60s and completely lacks cohesion. I suspect the UK has similar issues, but I know little about it. That is our actual weakness that has lead us to be unable to manage this crisis. Our government being unwilling to force us is one of our primary strength.
sure, but even poorer European countries managed pandemic better
This is a rather silly metric. The UK is also one of the leaders when it comes to the vaccine rollout, far outstripping any European country, several of which could easily end up behind the UK in overall stats before this is over.
(I didn’t downvote you)
Frankly in all of these measures of actual state response to the pandemic it has been a leader. It has had high infection rates, but there could be many reasons for that. The UK is never going to have a highly obedient population like in APAC countries, it also has a relatively high density, extremely low sunlight hours and prevalent vitamin D deficiency as a result.
This is complicated by the supreme court which is far more political in the US than the rest of the anglosphere, to the point where it's arguably a third chamber of legislature. They have a lot more latitude to reinterpret the constitution as they wish than anywhere else and they provide the precedent that would very often be left to parliament in other countries.
Just to highlight the difference, if you asked a random citizen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the UK to name a single supreme court judge they'd probably be unable to.
Don't each of these countries feature sovereign Parliaments [1]?
Congress is not sovereign. It is one of three co-equal branches of government. This, the separation of powers, was a deliberate decision by America's founders.
In the real world, separate from theory, the Westminster system seems to have evolved into something far less vulnerable to authoritarianism than the US system. Constant partisan conflict and strife and culture wars down there seem to have yielded a degraded democracy, with the presidency assuming many trappings of a monarchy.
At least the Crown is a symbolic monarchy without real power. I remember being absolutely flabbergasted with the bizarrely reverent way Americans talks about Bush when bombing commenced on Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s; the concept of a "commander in chief" and the general marshal tone of US politics around the executive are quite baffling. But I suppose it makes sense given that the first president was a general.
If anything needs reform it's the fucking Senate. Basically the same problems as the US Supreme Court has where whoever's in charge when people die get to pack the upper house of government. I'd happily take at least term limits but I feel like it should either be elected or produced somehow via vote share during the parlimentary election.
> Don't each of these countries feature sovereign Parliaments [1]?
Australia does not have a sovereign Parliament. The Parliament of Australia is subject to the Constitution of Australia, and the High Court of Australia can and sometimes even does invalidate Acts of the Australian Parliament as violating that constitution. So in that regard, the Parliament of Australia has limited powers just like the US Congress does. The big difference is that while the US has three coequal branches, Australia only has two – the legislative and the judicial branches. In Australia, while the executive branch is theoretically equal to the legislative branch, in practice the executive is subordinated to the legislature.
Actually the question of whether even the UK Parliament is sovereign is debated. Keep in mind the UK has three legal systems: (1) England and Wales, (2) Scotland, (3) Northern Ireland. Northern Irish law is based on English law, so Northern Irish constitutional law has at best minor differences from English constitutional law. By contrast, Scottish law is a completely distinct legal system, with a very different heritage (based on Continental legal system, ultimately tracing its origin to the laws of the Roman Empire), and that includes a distinct body of constitutional law. And while it is true that parliamentary sovereignty is a fundamental principle of English constitutional law, its status under Scottish constitutional law is debated. In the 1953 case MacCormick v Lord Advocate, the Lord President Lord Cooper (the most senior judge in all of Scotland) said that "the principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish Constitutional Law", and left open the possibility that if the Parliament of the UK passed an Act which was a clear violation of the 1706 Treaty of Union which created the United Kingdom – for example, if the Parliament of the UK tried to abolish the independent Scottish legal system and impose English law on Scotland – the Scottish Courts would have the power to invalidate that Act. In practice this question is unlikely to ever arise, because it is politically inconceivable that the Parliament of the UK would ever actually pass such a law. (The case was about whether Queen Elizabeth II was allowed to use the regnal number II in Scotland, despite the fact that Scotland had never had a Queen Elizabeth I – the court ruled that the Treaty of Union said nothing on the topic, so the Queen's choice of what regnal number she used could not be said to violate the Treaty.)
To answer the original question, I definitely remember the name of one former Australian High Court Justice – Michael Kirby (who is famous for being the first openly gay High Court justice). I am a bit of a law nerd, but I don't think you need to be a law nerd to remember that.
I still remember it wasn't that long ago the British System were laughed and attacked on HN for lacking a document like the Constitution. And how convention and precedent were antique.
Having said that convention and precedent aren't foolprove either.
"As long as human are involved it can always be corrupted."
-Mao Zedong
Unless some people hoodwinked some sneaky things in there.
But otherwise, it's moot: if you have a highly functional and credible judicial system, and a framework to work from - you don't really need a constitution.
Did they forget that? There's still the House of Lords and the House of Commons for a reason. The monarchy and the landowners are still a thing and are still a ruling class.
It is worrying that the Queen can just say no before legislation gets off the ground, but that's true of many of the more powerful MPs, too. I'm in the US, so I'm not exactly familiar with the process on your side of the pond, but over here, we have legislation stopped before pen hits paper simply because it's clear that the current leaders will never allow a vote on it.
That is a broken system, yes, but given the length of time people in those positions tend to serve (and I use that term lightly), it doesn't seem like the Queen's influence is much more. And at least her input doesn't suffer from being completely partisan.
To be abundantly clear: I don't think this is right, I just don't think it's very different than any other politician impeding democracy. Kings and Queens can and have been voted out, too.
The commonly-held belief in the UK is that the Queen gets to do this exactly one time before she is abolished completely, on the assumption that millions of people would riot if she used her power in such a direct fashion without a truly extreme reason (like a nuke blowing up Westminster or something).
She'd have to be so sure that the populace would be behind her, and willing to risk the very existence of the monarchy. It'd take stopping a really "bad" thing for her to take that risk.
So the Queen's advisers lobbied for a royal commission to not be possible to scrap by executive order (but it was scrapped anyway), for the royal estates to be exempt from road traffic regulation (all private land is) and some Queen's Estate representatives threatened to complain to a senior minister in a meeting with civil servants about the impact of a bill which the Queen gave assent to anyway. Over the space of half a century. If there are other instances where royal representatives were a roadblock rather than on of many special interests whose opinion they humour, the incentives for politicians to publicise them are strong.
I think that's more consistent with the monarch's impact being "practically nil" than her being the reason things never go people's way. There's an argument that's more legislative discussion than the representatives of a ceremonial monarch should be participating in, but you don't pressure civil servants by threatening to tell the Chancellor you're gravely concerned if you're actually pulling the strings.
The fact that governments have sought her approval on matters, despite not being required to do so, isn't remotely surprising. And if you didn't care about the state providing a privileged life for the royals before, why would you care now?
The fact is, not enough people care enough to make it a political priority.
More to the point, virtually all royal powers can, by tradition which is as strong as fundamental law, if not as clear on how you might amend it, be used only on the advice of (which in practice means at the direction of) of various bodies of Government, mostly the Cabinet wearing different hats.
The Crown just provides a bit of formal distance from the acts for the actual actors (but, being as it's been true for so long, that probably doesn't mean much in terms of practical accountability.)
So the House of Lords is democratic in the sense that lords are appointed by elected politicians, but its less democratic than say the European Commission, where commissioners are also appointed by elected governments but have a fixed term of office. Which is less democratic than the Houses of Parliament, which is less democratic than a proportionally elected government like the Germans have and so on, but I digress.
Basically its a continuation of the idea that the British state has had the ability to create Lords for thousands of years, but now they don’t pass the title on to their children and they dont get given a bit of land to build a castle on. I think there are probably a few hereditary peers that are actually just the great great grandchildren of very successful Victorian businessman, just because they have the title ‘Lord’ does not necessarily of aristocratic lineage dating back to William the Conquerer.
https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/aristocrat-uk-britain-fa...
> Separate research last year confirmed that just under a third of all land in England and Wales is owned by members of the aristocracy
Sure, the Queen could decide to exercise her power outside of the constrained ways she currently does, but the very likely effect of that is a vote to strip her of her power.
This is the system of government that the people of Britain have chosen, and the impact of the queen is exclusively a political problem. If there was a serious difference between the will of Parliament (Commons) and the Queen, the result is a foregone conclusion.
There is surprisingly little basis for arguing that the people of the UK have ever chosen almost anything important about our current system of government. That system is largely based on historical conventions, often dating back centuries and in some cases to the outcomes of civil war, and the status quo has several built-in feedback loops that make it difficult to change even with widespread popular support. The constitution of the UK is a fascinating subject, but it can also be rather uncomfortable subject matter to study if you believe in ideas like democracy and civil liberties.
As a "person of Britain", I have certainly never had any say in the system of government.
The article is actually making a big deal about the fact that the queen expressed an opinion about legislation in an area that the author decided wasn't covered by the vague wording of a pamphlet.
This is always a fun start to any argument about the constitution of the UK.
The thing is, you're building on a foundation that could potentially be challenged. As we discovered during the Brexit debates, people are happy to use words like "parliamentary sovereignty" when it suits their purposes, yet clearly many of them have never actually read Dicey, much less understood its entire argument or what the resulting concept of parliamentary sovereignty really means. And of course Dicey himself was not empowered with any special authority, but rather assembled a rational argument based primarily on historical precedent, which has subsequently been broadly accepted by figures in authority in the UK but is still, like everything else about our constitution, more a matter of convention than clear popular mandate.
Perhaps more importantly, if Parliament really is constitutionally sovereign, in the sense that its rules are supreme over all others and nothing a current parliament does can ever bind a future parliament, then we can never improve our system of government by adopting a formal written constitution, even if doing so would have overwhelming public support at the time. If you're going to make any argument about improving the constitution, starting from a foundation that necessarily precludes the single most important improvement that could be made might not be the best idea.
Basically, the UK Parliament passed a law delegating all of its powers to the Canadian legislature and declared it would never debate or pass a law again on the Canada question. Nothing actually stops them from doing so. But after 150 years of holding to this convention, it may as well be written in stone.
One can imagine the UK Parliament delegating its powers to successor entities and then essentially abolishing itself to a purely ceremonial function. Give it some time, and everyone gets used to it and that's the new system. Just ramp up devolution, basically.
For what it's worth, Parliamentary sovereignty is also an idea in the Canadian constitutional system, where it's taken to mean that the legislatures have absolute authority within their areas of jurisdiction, and that collectively the legislatures also have the authority to rewrite the constitution.
(As an aside, "What would happen if the British Parliament did repeal the British North America Act 1867 or Canada Act 1982?" is a rather fun hypothetical from the Canadian side.)
But yes, if we did want a new written constitution to become superior to any other legal authority except for a popular decision to change that constitution, one strategy that might be compatible with our current legal order would be to establish and empower whatever new order was intended and then render the historical Parliament functionally impotent so that no mechanism remained for it to pass any new legislation that would undermine the new order.
I wonder what Dicey would have made of such issues today. I suspect he might have argued that any claimed authority under any system of government is relevant only if that system has popular consent, so regardless of historical precedent, if the will of the people is clearly to change to a new system of government then the old system no longer enjoys any moral authority anyway.
As a practical matter, if the public view is clear and most of those in positions of power within the new order, such as political representatives and judges, support that view, then arguments about preserving the historical order become moot points anyway. And if the public ever felt strongly enough about our constitution that this kind of change was a realistic prospect, I wouldn't expect anyone in a position of power to keep that position under the new order if they didn't support it.
The Queen would likely (rightly) refuse Royal Assent if parliament tried that, given that as she is also Queen of Canada, she could never legitimately allow the UK Parliament to do that.
And if so some reason she did not, it would have no real impact on Canada anyway. Practically speaking Canada is in no way bound by the UK at this point. While legal theory may claim otherwise, it does not really matter. Legal theory would also claim the US constitution is illegitimate, because it was not passed in the way considered correct by its predecessor document (Articles of Confederation). Nobody cares.
The UK trying to change Canada's constitutional situation would be no more effective than the US passed a law claiming to amend Canada's constitution. The Government of Canada would laugh at it, and otherwise move on with their day. In the UK case they might debate changing to no longer be a Monarchy, since their Queen had failed them here.
Canada would, of course, simply ignore any such act. Even if there were a strong legal argument made in our own courts that it somehow abolished our sovereignty, we'd all agree to simply pretend otherwise.
For example, the custom is that the Queen will appoint whoever she believes to be most likely to hold the confidence of parliament as the prime minister. Obviously the best candidate is usually the leader of the majority party or a collation that has a majority.
De Jure, however, she may appoint anyone (besides herself?) at any time for any reason. She would be stupid to do anything other than what is customary, but if she did, I am pretty certain the consensus would be that doing was was legal if unwise. After all, this has already happened in a form by way of the Governor General in Australia infamously dismissing the prime minister to enable Supply to be passed, and new elections held, which clearly violates the custom.
The selecting prime minister case is also interesting as it is one of the few where the custom is not based on the advice of Her Majesty's Government because of the obvious conflict of interest there.
On the other hand, while all Royal Prerogatives are de jure the Queen's, many of them arguably can only be exercised by the State/Government, which is clearly a distinct entity from the Queen, despite the laws constantly identifying the two as one and the same (the laws identify both the hereditary office of the Monarchy and the executive organ of the state as the Crown, despite those obviously being distinct things in reality). For example, If the Queen tried to seize control of the Armed Forces away from her Government/MoD, this might be deemed unlawful despite control of the the armed forces being a reserve power, and her being the nominal commander in chief.
One of the nice things about a good written constitution is that it helps to differentiate what is merely custom vs what is the actual law. Of course, the actual law and the written law can still differ, but it does help to avoid assuming what is merely a custom is the de jure law.
Isn't that true of any such system? The US may have a written constitution, but that would be just a piece of paper if it weren't for the conventions surrounding it.
> Perhaps more importantly, if Parliament really is constitutionally sovereign, in the sense that its rules are supreme over all others and nothing a current parliament does can ever bind a future parliament, then we can never improve our system of government by adopting a formal written constitution, even if doing so would have overwhelming public support at the time. If you're going to make any argument about improving the constitution, starting from a foundation that necessarily precludes the single most important improvement that could be made might not be the best idea.
The statement is that Parliament is sovereign, not that Parliament necessarily ought to be sovereign. In practice I'm sure we could find a way to restrict the authority of parliament - the judiciary have already signalled some willingness to question the validity of laws if they undermine the integrity of parliament as a democratic body or basic human rights. But assuming we didn't, sure, we'd have to technically have a revolution, akin to the founding of the Fifth Republic in France. So what? Most countries have to redo their constitution every so often - it'd be very strange to expect a written constitution from hundreds of years ago to be appropriate for government today.
Perhaps, but I think there is a profound difference in the legitimacy and authority of a system of government if there has at some point been a clear demonstration that the general public consent to it. The ideal might be a popular vote to accept the original constitution document, with a substantial majority in favour, and then some practical mechanism that allows any member of the public to cause a later change to the constitution if the consensus of their peers agrees with them. The important point is that the final authority on the system of government is the people being governed, directly.
In practice I'm sure we could find a way to restrict the authority of parliament - the judiciary have already signalled some willingness to question the validity of laws if they undermine the integrity of parliament as a democratic body or basic human rights.
According to our current constitution as generally accepted, the courts can't overrule the will of Parliament. That is parliamentary supremacy in action.
Human rights cases heard by our highest courts have typically come down to favouring an interpretation of statute law that is compatible with other statute law like the HRA in cases of ambiguity. It is understood that if Parliament clearly intends a new law to reduce the legal protection of human rights then our courts must follow that intent in their judgements.
After that, we're getting into some very fuzzy areas that come to the foreground with issues like Brexit or Scottish independence, but again the courts will enforce the will of Parliament (and by extension, the ability of Parliament to express its will).
I personally don't think either of those is necessarily a good thing, which is why I believe it could be better in the long term if we had a proper written constitution as many other states do, setting out the basic structure of our government and associated responsibilities, authorities and limits on power, with explicit popular consent to that form of government.
Well, the will of the people can't bind itself, so I'd say the current system reflects that pretty well.
> According to our current constitution as generally accepted, the courts can't overrule the will of Parliament. That is parliamentary supremacy in action.
Sure, but this is also, as you said, just a matter of convention and precedent. Jackson suggests the consensus has already shifted somewhat away from absolute parliamentary supremacy.
The series theme may come across as bland when compared gems like the wire & breaking bad... but the theme of duty, especially in these times, is uniquely powerful, and production values are worthy of any top series on tv.
For a nonUK viewer, it is hugely instructional. I enjoyed the show immensely
I think the only way to get a better picture is to read a lot of different books on the subject.
IIRC, you conquer a territory, descend (biologically or legally) from someone who did, or politically maneuver to replace an existing monarch or heir (for instance, by assassinating them).
In the Holy See: you have people from several factions argue whose candidate should be Pope, and then you compromise on a Pole (Wojtila).
A better answer for the UK in line with your point about religious recognition is that you are anointed monarch. There is a coronation ceremony where the heir is anointed with holy oil (chrism) by the Archbishop of Canterbury. After that, they stop being an ordinary person and become monarch.
You can see part of the coronation of Elizabeth II (and hear the incredible Zadok the Priest coronation anthem by Handel) here [0], although not the anointing itself, because it happens under a canopy and has never been filmed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_succession
For example that article mentions the Kingdom of Italy was briefly had this as the succession law:
The Kingdom of Italy was designated a secundogeniture for the second surviving son of Napoleon I Bonaparte but, failing such, provided for the emperor's stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, to succeed, even though the latter had no blood relationship to the House of Bonaparte
Actually, it is true but not exhaustive. Nor was it intended to be. I was addressing the context of monarchy in the UK, as the rest of the comment makes clear.
Pretty fascinating history overall. In England's case, the earliest monarch we'd recognize as "King of England" was Alfred the Great, who was king of what was called Wessex at the time. Wessex was the last holdout of "native" English as opposed to being ruled by Vikings and their descendants. Wessex eventually re-conquered the island a few hundred years later and became England.
As to how earlier kings gained their position, at least in England I'd say it was some combination of local warlords that were semi-legitimized during Roman rule, then later their descendents consolidated power after the Romans left, either through marriage, trade, or violence.
That definitely didn't happen. The locals in Roman Britain would be the Bretons, a Celtic-speaking people. The withdrawal of Roman power from Britain was followed with the Anglo-Saxon migrations of people from what is now the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark, which (actually rather rapidly) displaced the Celtic speakers with Germanic speakers. The Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms arose after the migration, although they were subsequently occupied by the Great Dane Army that settled in the Danelaw region of England. It was the Mercian (one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms) failure to deal with the Vikings and Alfred the Great's success that led the Wessex king, and not the then-dominant Mercian king, to actually unify all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into a single Kingdom of England.
The origination of these Anglo-Saxon kingdoms is extremely unclear, happening during the Great Migration and in an area where the written record rather abruptly dies out. Virtually the entire list of sources for this period is Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the Peoples of Britain and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle commissioned by Alfred the Great.
To answer the question of how hereditary monarchies get started: in the modern era (post-Napoleonic Wars, generally), new monarchies carved out of existing states either elevated important local elites (the Sharif of Mecca's sons got kingdoms in Iraq and Transjordan out of WWI, with the Sharif himself proclaiming a kingdom in Hejaz), or they shopped around important royal families in Europe to import a monarch (e.g., a lot of German princes found themselves kings of newly-created Balkan states in the 19th century). The right of conquest to attain a royal title is pretty well-accepted, although conquest usually comes from someone who already has a heritable noble title anyways (cf. the Dukes of Normandy becoming Kings of England).
The older noble lineages in Europe (and elsewhere, but I really don't know much about the history of nobility outside of Europe) appear to largely arise from a Germanic system of elected chiefdoms where one family gradually gains enough power to force the elections to choose them, eventually (though not always, cf. the Holy Roman Empire) dispensing with the pretense of election. Given the paucity of written sources, we obviously have very little record of how these influential families actually came to gain their influence, and the sources that we do have tend to be edited to suggest divine providence as the originator of their rule.
Just call yourself one, and have enough people agree with you.
I think the options for becoming a monarch are:
1) the birth heir of a current hereditary monarch
2) the designated heir of the current monarch (e.g. some Roman emperors were appointed by their predecessor. Although the August didn't call himself "king" because of the historical political animosity to a king, he did intend for the position to be hereditary, but the first few emperors had trouble having sons. Whether the emperors were monarchs is arguably semantic, although Rome was more of an empire [extracting resources from the periphery] than a feudal state, which would argue that they are not monarchs by my definition above. On the other hand, Roman administration of provinces wasn't as strong as a nation-state.)
3) get elected as monarch [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy]
4) conqueror somewhere and establish a feudal state. It might be necessary for you to have a successful succession in order for history to call you king, though.
I'd argue you have it backwards there. You start as a dictator (you and a bunch of people who agree with you take over some part of land, congrats you're the King) then the legitimacy comes from you and your family holding on to it till everyone's used to it.
Now, the House of Commons has made the House of Lords something that can be ignored, and now they also want to do away with the Queen.
I think it is dangerous to see the House of Commons gaining more and more power over the country, without any regulatory body being able to hold them in line. Basically, the person who leads the party that wins the general elections the moment the Queen's powers are stripped, is the person who creates, validates, appoints and signs the laws of the country. Is that the power you want to give to one single party? What if that body decides to stop holding elections?
A Head of State that holds office for more than one or two periods of a House isn't such a bad idea. Continuity is also important, especially considering the whims of (less than) half the general population every fout years.
That's how it works in almost every modern democratic country. The check and balance to the power of the current government is the constitution, with a national constitutional court enforcing it.
Almost every modern democracy has a bicameral legislature.
How do the lords get elected?
Membership is granted by appointment or by heredity or official function
> Now, the House of Commons has made the House of Lords something that can be ignored,
The House of Commons gained the right to override the House of Lords through the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949. A lot longer than 20 years ago.
People can afford to take edgy contrarian positions on the basics of democracy because they take it for granted. The Queen is not an abusive monarch and never has been, in fact she's been so scrupulously symbolic that her actual political views are almost entirely obscure. So here we see arguments of the form "maybe Parliament should have to bend to the whims of the Queen".
The Queen is 94. How many more years can she carry on? When she dies, Prince Charles will take her place and he has always been politically active in ways the Queen has not. Does the idea of Charles vetoing legislation sound fun or in any way appropriate for a first world democracy? No, it does not.
I don't like the Guardian at all but it's good that they're bringing this to light, or rather, it would, if they were actually revealing the documents in question. It seems this article isn't going to do so, which means we are being asked to trust the Graun. Unfortunately I don't trust the Graun so this is a bit of a pickle. What's being said here sounds plausible, and there's really no reason for such a process to exist at all, but it could also be shit-stirring.
Recently Johnson overruled the House of Lords appointment commission to give someone a peerage that was involved in a corruption scandal[1].
That along with the the lies used to the win the Brexit referendum have robbed me of any faith in our current system of first past the post government so I see the need for more checks and balances.
Unfortunately, the current system seems open to abuse such as Charles using this royal privilege to keep people from owning homes on his enormous estate lands.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson...
I do think there is a case to be made on the qualitative aspect of value.
A monarch acts as a check for ambitious undesirables (politicians/hollywood types etc) from achieving the ideal elite rank in society, as no one can truly be king by definition, except the king. As such, they act as "power inhibitors" on the rest of elite society.
Inhibiting cult of personality, the monarch instead reflect opposite values like devotion to duty, and restraint, instilled from birth.
In summary, this seems like catastrophic insurance. Even if the probability is very low, the price to insure against a despot , would seem to be reasonable.
Honestly, this is the most surprising part of the article to me.
https://lop.parl.ca/sites/ParlInfo/default/en_CA/legislation...
No, she's not, the Prime Minister is head of government. The monarch is generally held to be the head of state, though that's not entirely clear and the Governor-General is sometimes referred to that way.
> She actually did so in 1975.
The Crown by the action of the Governor-General did, there's no indication that the Queen had any direct involvement.
.. yet.
And, that is precisely the problem with her powers. She can keep anything secret that she desires, including war crimes.
Well, I mean, it's possible that the detailed information that has come out about the GG trying to get assurances that, if the PM advices that he be removed to forestall a dismissal, the monarch would disregard that advice and receiving a communique from the Queen’s private secretary that, in that event, she would be obliged to follow the PM’s advice has managed to miss another layer of secret communication directly with the monarch directing the action, with the other private communication being a cover. But, I mean, secret backchannels and influences are always possible whatever the former arrangement of power is: the conspiracy theory that the dismissal was directed by the Queen has far less support compared to the theory that it was directed by the CIA, which has no formal role in Australia’s government.
To take a recent example from a country that shall remain nameless, how do you stop a magalomaniac from duping half the population with a mix of nationalist rhetoric and promises of rolling back any half-uncomfortable environmental or sociological progress? If the whole government gets tainted at the same time, even if the country realises its mistake half a decade later, the money wasted in switching the laws back - the economic equality and environmental progress lost, the damage to international relations... all because the person in charge doesn't actually care about the country, and there is no ironclad process for getting them out of power (besides the collective power of a government that is either scared of his voter influence, or realises their power is contingent on his)
None of the laws this article claims the Queen has "influenced" worry me in the slightest. It doesn't benefit anyone to know how much wealth she has (in fact, if something should happen and her wealth fluctuates drastically, that could cause more damage to public and international perception than good) and the law has always maintained, as far as I'm aware, that many driving laws do not apply on private property - Sandringham et al being considered private property for the purposes of this law makes logical sense to me. The national monuments one is just bizarre, smacks of a power-grab by government - albeit a petty one. I suspect it was a way of getting more tourist revenue. But either way, its not exactly earth shattering.
"But what if Prince William becomes king and uses these powers for evil purposes?" I hear you cry. Well, in that case something will change. Either an uprising will happen or evil will be done. Though as long the monarchy's well-being for their whole life is entwined with the country's well-being, there is less likelihood that a sane king or queen would rock the boat significantly.
I seriously doubt that this is the law that will cause the next major catastrophe. As that certain other country has proven, unbridled democracy is a more potent threat.
Have you ever met her? Brenda's media team are some of the best in the business.
Monarchies with that much control, even theoretically, are not allowed in.