One funny fact about the “No Kings” protests held abroad is that they were called “No Tyants” so as to not be interpreted as anti-monarchist.
I wonder if the monarchy serves that role for the UK. Might be better to keep it.
I live in France, our common mythology, our Roman National as it is called here, is that we beheaded our king. Yet, the most authoritarian people you know will still claim the legacy of our revolution, of De Gaulle and Jeanne d'Arc. Even worse, this mythology is poised as under threat by a made-up out-group and used to seed reactionary fear and divisiveness amidst our nation.
The only real way that the monarchy can survive is if the kingdom stays united.
Also, president boris, stamer or farage is just a humiliation I can't really cope with.
I definitely appreciate the idea that if you lose confidence in the PM you can fire them pretty quickly. Being stuck with a crappy president for four long years kinda sucks.
The British royal family does get some bad press from time to time, but the recent string of British PMs really does serve to remind us all that the bar is really low :)
I always tell people I don't actually want to risk an elected presidency until Jeremy Clarkson is too old to run for it.
Personally, I like having a figurehead head of state that is subject to a directly elected Parliament.
The King may have cerimonital power but he can never exercise it. As was proved in the Glorious Revolution we can remove our head of state anytime we like.
I would much rather see the House of Lords reformed than the monarchy ended.
> I would much rather see the House of Lords reformed than the monarchy ended.
I'd be very careful about that one. Making it elected would be a terrible idea. There are some reforms that are possible, but they'd need to be very narrow (for example, limiting the size, and limiting tenure).
Right. So many of us are like this -- more Elizabethists than Royalists.
In practice with a Hitler type he could dissolve the government and there'd be new elections. I guess if the people voted the same guy back that might be the end of it but it's a bit of a failsafe to this kind of thing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973
Another example: the Duke of Westminster is worth $12B and owns a large chunk of London outright, including a ton of large, notable buildings. (Also, I think, the Twinings tea company.)
There's the Crown Estate, which is controlled by the crown, but the family also owns the Duchy of Cornwall (45K acres) and the Duchy of Lancaster (45K acres), as well as numerous private holdings that are less visible. And this is predominantly highly developed city space.
How does the UK benefit from the royal family allowing this, rather than just having a non-monarchist government that does the same thing?
Also, they provide a lot of face-time for the government. They show up at a lot of events, the kind of thing for which you might hire a celebrity to give it a sense of occasion. The actual dollar value of that is hard to estimate, and it's less valuable than the tourism, but the fact that people still want it suggests that it's providing something of value.
Thats the point, its not trivial to sell it off, because it was set up to counteract a fooling king in exchange for a stipend.
This system was explicitly designed to take an asset from the crown and place it in trust so that the king could get a steady income, ostensibly from assets that had unpredictable income.
Thus the crown estate was born, which has a bunch of rules, most notably about taking on debt.
(dartmoor is owned partly by the crown)
Strongly suggest the USA leaves tinkering with other countries' political systems alone for at least a generation. No standing.
The British are actually quite conflicted about the monarchy.
It tends to be bound up in what a lot of people used to observe was the distinction between Royalism and Queenism (or Elizabethism specifically).
We don't much like the institution in the same way (only narrow approval overall), but we pretty much loved the Queen as close to unconditionally as we love anyone (she's like one or two rungs down from Judi Dench and the late Terry Wogan), and would not have wanted to see it go in her lifetime because it would just have been weird.
Now, not so much. Charles has yet to earn that kind of affection. Though surprisingly he is getting there, and Camilla's popularity (always a very serious problem for the monarchy) is genuinely surprising because she turns out to be a) really a friendly, kind person and b) genuinely liked by her step-family.
When you consider how many people and how much wealth was destroyed during/following revolutions like the French or Russian, and the compound interest of that wealth over 150 years, the pennies we pay to the royals todays is probably cheap.
Just saying, if you went back in time and opted for a revolution instead of a constitutional monarchy, you'd probably be poorer today -- compound growth over 150 years is no joke.
The problem with demonizing people is that demons are badass and powerful.