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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I think the fact that our (Britain’s) prime minister has to go to someone else, someone well travelled with extensive contact with leaders around the world, ideally who’s seen prime ministers come and go, and explain themselves and answer for their actions is an incredibly good thing.

If we ever end up with a head of state that loses the trust of the people, then fine. On that day let’s ditch the monarchy. If it’s not working and we can’t fix it sure. At that point we should find a new way, and our monarchs should know that. I think so far the queen and our new King do know that. Until then as a pragmatist I see no need to upend the status quo.

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Except our new King has previously taken money from Saudis and supports the WEF, so they've already lost that trust.

I don’t think you have the right to speak for the British people. Neither do I. Let’s see.

Lets take a look at what the British people think so far: https://twitter.com/PhantomPower14/status/156892329675376230...

Scottish people.

Considering they recently publicly decided to be British, they're about as British as you can be.

Heh touché, but I think we can all agree that’s maybe not really reflective of popular regional attitudes towards “British”-ness.

And I suppose we will see as the parade travels south and crossese the border, but I don’t think you will see the same sort of anti-Charles sentiment in Manchester or London.

Fair, I didn't like what look like a dismissal of the Scottish people's Britishness.

Technically, Scots as in those born in Scotland and still living there voted to not be British. The vote was open to all living in Scotland (above the age of 16), which includes many people from the other nations such as England who may (or may not) consider themselves Scots, and conversely some people may consider themselves Scots but not live in Scotland.

> The vote was open to all living in Scotland

In other words, people with an unambiguous stake in the outcome.

Scots aren’t British? That’s great news, I’m gonna go update my passport!

1. "Let's take a look a look at what humans think about communism: <link to a video about North Koreans praising their leader>"

2. "That's just north koreans"

3. "North koreans aren't humans?"

Comment #3 is not a valid counterargument to comment #2. The point is that Scots may not be a representative sample of "all Brits", even if Scots are Brits.

No, my (possibly too subtle) point was that this might be the moment where Scots begin to cease thinking of themselves as Brits. I don't think there's any danger of the DPRK declaring themselves non-human

They aren’t “the British people”. Obviously.

I'm British, I want them gone. I'm not under any illusions that we have a meritocratic society but while we have a hereditary bloody monarchy I honestly feel somewhat gaslit whenever anyone claims we do (and they do claim that).

No system of government or society is pure, adhering to an unblemished ideal system. No communist government has been purely communist, no democratic system is perfectly democratic, no meritocratic system excludes all possible factors contrary to meritocracy. I don’t believe anyone has ever said our system is perfectly and ideally meritocratic in every way. That’s not what any reasonable person would take the statement “our system is meritocratic” as meaning.

It’s mostly meritocratic. Compared to many other systems, along with other comparable liberal democracies I’d argue it’s one of the most meritocratic systems developed so far. It’s also one of the most free, and the fact is free human beings don’t always make every decision based on merit. I think it’s clear if we chose to get rid of the monarchy we could do so through democratic mechanisms. So far we have chosen not to do so.

It's mostly meritocratic for the little people. 94% of UK children go to state schools, but only 50% of MPs went - and that's considered good.

A little bit of strawmanning there, implying I'm insisting on an unblemished ideal system. I simply think there's plenty of room for improvement on what we have, and stripping one family of a birthright to rule would count towards it.

I don't think it's at all clear we could get rid of the monarchy through democratic mechanisms! But that's rather besides the point - we wouldn't try, because the amount of state & media propaganda shovelled at us will prevent most people from wanting that. Unless some troubling events fast-track Harry & Meghan to the top of the succession order, of course.

He was also heavily supportive of environmental concerns decades before it was mainstream, so maybe he's won it back again.

Carbon footprint of ordinary British person: 10 tonnes. Carbon footprint of Prince Charles: 432 tonnes. (2019)

Talks to his plants though, allegedly.

I would like to point that the Spanish ex-monarch practically _betrayed_ Spain to the Saudis (he's currently self-exiled there) and he still has a non-negligible amount of support in the population.

I find "support of a monarchy" an indefensible position. Bonus points if your only argument is "well the current monarch is kind of nice and therefore we're not in a hurry to remove him" because that's literally one rotten apple away of exploding in your face (see Spain) and by then it's likely too late.

Exactly. At the very least you need strong constitutional provisions to get rid of the current one, assuming that the next in line could be better.

That's a very nice way to put it. He took a donation from Bin Laden's family, namely from Osama's half brother, Bakr Bin Laden.

> explain themselves and answer for their actions

Is that really what happens, though? And if so, what if the monarch isn't satisfied with the answer?

They get to tell them so. I don’t think a holder of sovereignty has to have active power. Weee human beings. Symbolic power matters. If it’s ever not enough, we’ll find another way.

Perhaps I'm either too cynical or too naive, but I can't imagine someone like Boris Johnson being even slightly fazed by it. Having to stand in a room once a week for a couple of hours being disapproved at is nothing to someone that's been through the public school system and modern politics.

The Monarch has no power to force an opinion but that is not the point. Having a safe and secret place for a PM to discuss difficult situations with somebody who has probably seen most of them before is immensely powerful.

I know some believe that all government should be open/public but I suspect in many cases that means that real discussions don't take place out of fear of offence or backlash from the public. If you were toying with the idea of e.g. privatising the NHS or selling off a load of gold for raising funds, you might want to discuss these privately before they end up as a Headline.

> Having a safe and secret place for a PM to discuss difficult situations with somebody who has probably seen most of them before is immensely powerful.

If the monarch is competent. History shows that it happens, but is far from being the norm. Blood lines do not guarantee anything in that respect.

I note that your head of state met 15 prime ministers and had them explain themselves. And not once found fault with them.

That's statistically rather unlikely if she were to actually have a choice. (It's even more unlikely given that group includes Boris Johnson and Liz Truss)

By all means, keep your pomp and circumstance. But don't pretend it has a useful function constraining politics when it's so blatantly obvious it doesn't.

> And not once found fault with them.

How on earth could you possibly know that?

Except, of course, that England (and later the UK) has not had anything resembling a revolution since 1688, or 1642 if you don't consider the Glorious Revolution a real revolution. Constitutional monarchy has proven an extremely stable political system.

> England (and later the UK) has not had anything resembling a revolution since 1688

England, I'll give you. We can ignore Peterloo. But everyone always forgets Ireland successfully leaving the UK through a combination of armed struggle and political action. Not so much the stabilizing influence of the monarchy as the willingness to shell Dublin or fire randomly into protests in Northern Ireland. And quite a lot of the Twitter anti-monarchism at the moment has been from Kenyans.

You seem to have entirely airbrushed from history the loss of 1/3 of the UK's land area scarcely 100 years ago.

The meetings are strictly private, no minutes are kept, and there is no one in the room with them. PMs have said it is about the only time they get to talk through issues and ideas with someone knowledgeable and invested, without any fear at all of backlash, or of it being leaked or misrepresented.

So your line of argument is way off.

> PMs have said it is about the only time they get to talk through issues and ideas with someone knowledgeable and invested

That's interesting - please could you give any pointers to who said this and when?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/57596969

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62844813

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