[Moo]

Who owns Britain was a difficult read, mainly because my piss was actively boiling while I was trying to get through it. All the duchy stuff is bonkers.

[TobyD]

How many of you bootlickers agree with their exemption from inheritance tax?

Probably not many on this forum. It's within parliament's gift to regulate the royals better 

It doesn't bother me. I'm happy with the royals to be honest. I'm sure any revenue gained from taxing the royal family would pale into insignificance compared to the amounts of money Boris Johnson wasted while in office.
I'm far more bothered about the government, or lack of it.

[spidermonkey09]

If you could have just mentioned Brexit in that comment you'd have had the jackpot Toby......

[TobyD]

If you could have just mentioned Brexit in that comment you'd have had the jackpot Toby......

Perhaps the single biggest waste of money of them all.  Just imagine what a decent government could have done with what was spent pissing about with the roads in Kent, or on planes and lawyers trying to send a handful of people to Rwanda...

[Wellsy]

The whole thing about reliability and seamlessness and all that... fair enough but I'm not convinced you couldn't do that with another system that doesn't require us to have a hereditary monarch that we're supposed to bow to and call "your majesty." Fuck all that noise. It's the principle of it for me; they sit at the top of a class system as a symbol of all the stupid inequalities of land, wealth, class and so on in this country.

I know most people here would say if you started from scratch you wouldn't have em, but it's not worth the change, well I think it is worth the change; we should abolish the monarchy and the sooner the better

[spidermonkey09]

Perhaps the single biggest waste of money of them all.  Just imagine what a decent government could have done with what was spent pissing about with the roads in Kent, or on planes and lawyers trying to send a handful of people to Rwanda...

..... 

Not everything is about Johnson and Brexit is my point. Its about the principle of it, for me anyway.

I agree with Wellsy, get them abolished ideally and at the very least dramatically cut back. Its not about the annual cost per person of the royals or correct taxation, its the idea that 'being born in the right family gives you special blood which puts you above others...no concept is further from equality than that of monarchy' (quote from a provincial French mayor who is refusing to fly flags at half mast).

Paraphrasing from someone whos name escapes me, but basically if people actively favour their head of state being chosen according to blood line they should say so; too many people accept and even celebrate a system they don't actually argue for.

[spidermonkey09]

Perhaps the single biggest waste of money of them all.  Just imagine what a decent government could have done with what was spent pissing about with the roads in Kent, or on planes and lawyers trying to send a handful of people to Rwanda...

..... 

Not everything is about Johnson and Brexit is my point. Its about the principle of it, for me anyway.

I agree with Wellsy, get them abolished ideally and at the very least dramatically cut back. Its not about the annual cost per person of the royals or correct taxation, its the idea that 'being born in the right family gives you special blood which puts you above others...no concept is further from equality than that of monarchy' (quote from a provincial French mayor who is refusing to fly flags at half mast).

Paraphrasing from someone whos name escapes me, but basically if people actively favour their head of state being chosen according to blood line they should say so; too many people accept and even celebrate a system they don't actually argue for on spurious grounds eg. 'the alternative might be worse.'

[Will Hunt]

The whole thing about reliability and seamlessness and all that... fair enough but I'm not convinced you couldn't do that with another system that doesn't require us to have a hereditary monarch that we're supposed to bow to and call "your majesty." Fuck all that noise. It's the principle of it for me; they sit at the top of a class system as a symbol of all the stupid inequalities of land, wealth, class and so on in this country.

I know most people here would say if you started from scratch you wouldn't have em, but it's not worth the change, well I think it is worth the change; we should abolish the monarchy and the sooner the better

This is all fine, but if you actually want to convince anybody then you're going to have to complete the argument by explaining 1) what your alternative system is and 2) how that system tackles the problems that you cite in a way that we couldn't do under the current system.

As it stands, parliament has the power to curtail royal privilege as much or as little as it wants, but it doesn't because it isn't worth the political oxygen it would consume (and given the feeling in the public we're seeing then there doesn't seem to be much public appetite for it).

If it's just about the principle of it then, yes, I agree that it is stupid and unfair that there's a special family who occupy this position (it's also somewhat unfair to them because they have to be Royals with all that entails without being given a choice about it; as I said upthread it's not something I would choose for myself), but to want to go about a huge constitutional shift to remove some titles from a small handful of people that you're probably never going to meet seems like a vanity project borne of fragility. When I was younger I would have enthusiastically argued with you but there is only so much political oxygen out there and I'd rather we used it to fix real problems that actually affect people's day-to-day lives.


Two asides: I had no idea that there were so many people who felt so strongly about the Queen. I had an email from a contractor this morning asking to postpone a piece of weather-dependent work on Monday so the staff (many of whom are ex-forces) could pay their respects to our "beloved Queen" 
Also (just to rile you even further), the silly hats and the trumpets are indeed very silly, but a little bit of pomp and circumstance is good for you. God forbid we should conduct the affairs of state from a Portakabin on the outskirts of Crewe.

[Will Hunt]

Paraphrasing from someone whos name escapes me, but basically if people actively favour their head of state being chosen according to blood line they should say so; too many people accept and even celebrate a system they don't actually argue for on spurious grounds eg. 'the alternative might be worse.'

This is a silly piece of rhetoric that tries to divide opinion into either enthusiastic support or wholehearted rebuttal without any substance behind it. It really is possible to be ambivalent about this.

[Wellsy]

Well I'm not a constitutional scholar so I think it's fair to say that I don't have to give a comprehending 10,000 word comprehensive alternative but they definitely do exist, lots of countries have gone from constitutional monarchies to not that and its worked fine.

Why does it tackle current problems? Class ruins this country; it dictates our lives in most circumstances and its bollocks, we all know it, and the Royal Family are the embodiment of that. This whole fuss over a symbol shows that they matter, what they represent matter, and what they say about us matter.

I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.

[spidermonkey09]

This is a silly piece of rhetoric that tries to divide opinion into either enthusiastic support or wholehearted rebuttal without any substance behind it. It really is possible to be ambivalent about this.

Yeah, fair point; what I'm getting at is that there seem to be an awful lot of people who simultaneously like the royals but would never support any other kind of hereditary or bloodline seat of power. They're in favour of meritocracy...but not for the royals. Thats what seems odd to me, the disconnect.

(it's also somewhat unfair to them because they have to be Royals with all that entails without being given a choice about it

Two asides: I had no idea that there were so many people who felt so strongly about the Queen. I had an email from a contractor this morning asking to postpone a piece of weather-dependent work on Monday so the staff (many of whom are ex-forces) could pay their respects to our "beloved Queen" 
Also (just to rile you even further), the silly hats and the trumpets are indeed very silly, but a little bit of pomp and circumstance is good for you. God forbid we should conduct the affairs of state from a Portakabin on the outskirts of Crewe.

A couple of points on the above; they don't have to be fully fledged royals, they can opt out; nobody is suggesting demolishing the houses of parliament; and I'm under no illusions that mine anything but a minority view on this issue and I don't expect anything to change in my lifetime, so I'm definitely just pissing into the wind.

[36chambers]

I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.

But you've got to feel it for them, they had no choice, they were born into it. /s

[Wellsy]

I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.

But you've got to feel it for them, they had no choice, they were born into it. /s

I don't feel for them if I'm honest. It's sad when a family member dies, I'll give em that. But we don't close the government for a few weeks when other 96 year olds pop it.

As for the demands of it; it's not that hard. Being a carer is hard. Being homeless is hard. Not being able to pay your electricity bill is hard. Cutting the tape on a new museum and then going back to the Palace to get served on hand and foot isn't that hard.

[Will Hunt]

Well I'm not a constitutional scholar so I think it's fair to say that I don't have to give a comprehending 10,000 word comprehensive alternative but they definitely do exist, lots of countries have gone from constitutional monarchies to not that and its worked fine.

Why does it tackle current problems? Class ruins this country; it dictates our lives in most circumstances and its bollocks, we all know it, and the Royal Family are the embodiment of that. This whole fuss over a symbol shows that they matter, what they represent matter, and what they say about us matter.

I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.

Nice rant but, again, getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege. You might get rid of the royal family but that is absolutely not the same as getting rid of privilege, which you will never completely get rid of. The vast majority of privilege is dispersed throughout the population and privileged people tend to vote to keep it.
There's loads that we could do to improve the lot of those who are born with less privilege than others (compared to some people in other parts of the world then almost everyone in this country is very significantly privileged) but I don't believe that abolishing the monarchy would have any noticeable impact. High rents and house prices getting you down? Go after the NIMBYs who won't let us increase housing supply (and who often have a couple of nice buy-to-lets on the side) - oh no, wait, we won't do that because the NIMBYs are the same people who keep the Conservatives in power.

[chris j]

Yes,  in principle the monarchy is wrong. But given our politics, and the similar course to the USA we are on,  can you devise a system that won't give us President Farage, or Johnson, or yet another revolving door for old Etonians, demanding the same trappings of state as the royals? I can't see how it's going to be an improvement... TBH one of the bonuses of having a monarchy is they are just there, we don't have to vote for them every 5 years.

[spidermonkey09]

Two sides of the same coin. A country willing and able to address the issues you describe might also be one willing and able to move on from a hereditary monarchy. The two things are connected. I agree that neither will likely be addressed in the short to medium term.

[Wellsy]

Well I'm not a constitutional scholar so I think it's fair to say that I don't have to give a comprehending 10,000 word comprehensive alternative but they definitely do exist, lots of countries have gone from constitutional monarchies to not that and its worked fine.

Why does it tackle current problems? Class ruins this country; it dictates our lives in most circumstances and its bollocks, we all know it, and the Royal Family are the embodiment of that. This whole fuss over a symbol shows that they matter, what they represent matter, and what they say about us matter.

I know it'd be a ballache, I know there's loads of other shit, I know all that. But fundamentally to me; monarchies are not okay. It's not alright that they're "born to reign over us." Frankly it's fucking nauseating tbh, the way the nation falls over itself to tug the forelock, bow and scrape, tell ourselves how wonderful and saintly she was, that millionaire who lived in Palaces and had servants who did everything for her, who inherited her role and had no right to it other than blood, lining the streets in the morning and struggling to pay the rent that evening. Fuck that. Get rid.

Nice rant but, again, getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege. You might get rid of the royal family but that is absolutely not the same as getting rid of privilege, which you will never completely get rid of. The vast majority of privilege is dispersed throughout the population and privileged people tend to vote to keep it.
There's loads that we could do to improve the lot of those who are born with less privilege than others (compared to some people in other parts of the world then almost everyone in this country is very significantly privileged) but I don't believe that abolishing the monarchy would have any noticeable impact. High rents and house prices getting you down? Go after the NIMBYs who won't let us increase housing supply (and who often have a couple of nice buy-to-lets on the side) - oh no, wait, we won't do that because the NIMBYs are the same people who keep the Conservatives in power.

I'm not saying it'll magically fix anything, certainly have never claimed it would? I'm saying having a monarchy or not having it does matter, is relevant, and does make a difference, and that being considered it should go.

[Johnny Brown]

Yes,  in principle the monarchy is wrong. But given our politics, and the similar course to the USA we are on,  can you devise a system that won't give us President Farage, or Johnson, or yet another revolving door for old Etonians, demanding the same trappings of state as the royals? I can't see how it's going to be an improvement... TBH one of the bonuses of having a monarchy is they are just there, we don't have to vote for them every 5 years.

The system works pretty well tbh. Farage failed repeatedly to get anywhere near the house of commons. Bojo used all his wealth and privilege but only lasted two years before being booted out by his own. Likewise you can roll eyes at Trump but the system only gave him four years, and a lot of people learnt a lot from it. Meanwhile the Queen's favourite son buys time with teenage girls and the country lines up to pay its respects.

Seems a lot to me like most of the apologists for the monarchy, sorry bootlickers, would rather just not engage with the issue properly and are just pointing out that if you don't sweat it it's all chill, yeah?

getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege.

The existence of the royals props the whole thing up, enables and normalises it. It's fucking absurd and has no place in the 21st century. As I said, read up on how deep the rabbit hole goes and I'll be very surprised if you can retain the same view. The continued existence of the ruling class in this country is absolutely reliant on maintaining this conflation of their wealth and privilege as equivalent or inseparable from hard-earned success. It really isn't.

[Oldmanmatt]

Yes,  in principle the monarchy is wrong. But given our politics, and the similar course to the USA we are on,  can you devise a system that won't give us President Farage, or Johnson, or yet another revolving door for old Etonians, demanding the same trappings of state as the royals? I can't see how it's going to be an improvement... TBH one of the bonuses of having a monarchy is they are just there, we don't have to vote for them every 5 years.

The system works pretty well tbh. Farage failed repeatedly to get anywhere near the house of commons. Bojo used all his wealth and privilege but only lasted two years before being booted out by his own. Likewise you can roll eyes at Trump but the system only gave him four years, and a lot of people learnt a lot from it. Meanwhile the Queen's favourite son buys time with teenage girls and the country lines up to pay its respects.

Seems a lot to me like most of the apologists for the monarchy, sorry bootlickers, would rather just not engage with the issue properly and are just pointing out that if you don't sweat it it's all chill, yeah?

getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege.

The existence of the royals props the whole thing up, enables and normalises it. It's fucking absurd and has no place in the 21st century. As I said, read up on how deep the rabbit hole goes and I'll be very surprised if you can retain the same view. The continued existence of the ruling class in this country is absolutely reliant on maintaining this conflation of their wealth and privilege as equivalent or inseparable from hard-earned success. It really isn't.

Can you see the population at large supporting that?
Knock one down, the people invent another.

[Johnny Brown]

There's a summary of recent sentiment here, collated around the time of the 'Platty Joobs' last year: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/articles-reports/2022/06/01/platinum-jubilee-where-does-public-opinion-stand-m

A majority remain currently in favour, but as you can imagine support is highest among old right-wingers, and lowest among young lefties, but there has a consistent decline. In Scotland support is now at only 45%. opinion of their importance has also declined, and, tellingly, less than 50% see them as lasting another century. I can't see Charles giving them much of a bounce, their best chance of retaining majority support is for him to die in the next decade and Will and Kate to tread extremely carefully. It's hard to overstate the power those vested interests hold (the power over the press remains extraordinary, but ) and they've been canny to last this long, but can you honestly see a future in which public support consistently grows? The removal of the boomers from the demographic will have profound effects on our democracy.

[Will Hunt]

Yes,  in principle the monarchy is wrong. But given our politics, and the similar course to the USA we are on,  can you devise a system that won't give us President Farage, or Johnson, or yet another revolving door for old Etonians, demanding the same trappings of state as the royals? I can't see how it's going to be an improvement... TBH one of the bonuses of having a monarchy is they are just there, we don't have to vote for them every 5 years.

The system works pretty well tbh. Farage failed repeatedly to get anywhere near the house of commons. Bojo used all his wealth and privilege but only lasted two years before being booted out by his own. Likewise you can roll eyes at Trump but the system only gave him four years, and a lot of people learnt a lot from it. Meanwhile the Queen's favourite son buys time with teenage girls and the country lines up to pay its respects.

Seems a lot to me like most of the apologists for the monarchy, sorry bootlickers, would rather just not engage with the issue properly and are just pointing out that if you don't sweat it it's all chill, yeah?

getting angry at a few ultra-privileged people doesn't fix the thing that I think you're probably angry about. I suspect when you say that class ruins this country you mean privilege.

The existence of the royals props the whole thing up, enables and normalises it. It's fucking absurd and has no place in the 21st century. As I said, read up on how deep the rabbit hole goes and I'll be very surprised if you can retain the same view. The continued existence of the ruling class in this country is absolutely reliant on maintaining this conflation of their wealth and privilege as equivalent or inseparable from hard-earned success. It really isn't.

Given that your contribution amounts to namecalling and an invitation to gaze into a nameless rabbit hole, I'm surprised that you can accuse people of not engaging with the issue properly with a straight face.

There's a lot of different tangents to this and maybe we're at cross-purposes. I thought the general thrust of the thread was to discuss politics as it might be found in the real world, rather than it being a place to pine for a fantastical utopia. If we're going to question the monarchy then there's questions about how that affects governance and questions about how their presence in society affects privilege and equality of opportunity. I'm not advocating for the monarchy, I'm saying that I'm unconvinced that it's worth changing it at the moment because I don't think it would redress the majority of entrenched privilege or have a material impact on anybody's lives. You surely can't assess whether this is right or wrong (and I'm happy to be wrong and change my mind) without understanding what the alternative might be, but nobody has suggested anything different yet.

On governance, you go as far as to say that "the system works pretty well tbh" when it comes to appointing officials. The system as it is invests all the decision-making power in parliament. We have a prime minister to appoint a government which will then set the direction of parliament and decide what the legislative agenda will be. The monarch invites the prime minister to form a government and is then supposed to walk away and only turn up when required to wear the posh hat at some state function. The fact that they aren't supposed to hold any decision-making power is what makes it possible to tolerate them as hereditary beneficiaries when it comes to governance. If we get rid of the hereditary bit then how do we nominate somebody to perform this ceremonial role? Who can we pick who we can trust to be apolitical? In all likelihood if we got rid of hereditary succession then we'd also invest some power into the role. What powers will they be, will they be different to that of the Prime Minister, will they allow executive decision-making? How will that work in our existing system of parliamentary representation, or will we change that too? One of the big problems that republics have, in my view, is not that people might get elected who I don't like (this is never a good argument against democratising things) but that they invest huge amounts of executive power into one individual, which is far worse for achieving governance by consensus than having a ceremonial monarch.

On privilege you say that "the existence of the royals props the whole thing up, enables and normalises it". What is the whole thing that is being propped up and enabled and normalised, and how does one family among tens of millions propagate it? You don't actually say? If you're talking about privilege then I call bullshit. You don't need mama and papa to give you an estate and a title to benefit from their position in society. The majority of privilege is felt throughout the population by people who benefit from who their parents are, or who their parents know, or what postcode their parents can afford for them to grow up in. We see it with the royals but that is very much the tip of the iceberg; most privilege sits quietly under the surface using its better education, resources, and connections to improve the lot of its own children while others miss out. The Conservatives let it happen because it is the more privileged people who vote Conservative. That's where the problem is and parliament has all the tools at its disposal right now to start improving things.

If you're cross about something in society then it's important to correctly identify the cause because otherwise you end up like all those working class voters who were dissatisfied with their lot and decided to leave the EU. We poured years of political effort into that and it didn't do anything to solve the issues it was supposed to.

That last bit was just for you, Jim.

[Johnny Brown]

Just read Who Owns Britain and come back to me Will. Having been to a top public school I thought I had a good handle on privilege, but I didn't. It is an eye-opener.

[teestub]

 The system as it is invests all the decision-making power in parliament. We have a prime minister to appoint a government which will then set the direction of parliament and decide what the legislative agenda will be. The monarch invites the prime minister to form a government and is then supposed to walk away and only turn up when required to wear the posh hat at some state function. The fact that they aren't supposed to hold any decision-making power is what makes it possible to tolerate them as hereditary beneficiaries when it comes to governance.

If this role is purely ceremonial as you say, then why do we need anyone to invite the PM to form a government? It’s not as if Chuck 3 is going to step in and decide who should get to form a govt when there’s a hung parliament for example.

[Will Hunt]

I plead the Wellsy defence (I'm not a constitutional scholar).
Presumably we need to have some backstop in the event that politicians try and seize control unlawfully. Hence the armed forces have the monarch as their head so they can dismiss an unlawfully appointed government if there's cause to? It all seems totally academic at the moment (not least because when sitting governments act unlawfully it takes time for the courts to figure that out as in the case of the prorogation) but even republics like the States have something like the electoral college to act as an intermediary at election times.

[Johnny Brown]

Just read Who Owns Britain

It’s Who Owns England, sorry. My bad.

The constitutional issues really seem like a red herring given the majority of countries who manage without a monarchy. So often such arguments require a sort of Schrodinger’s King, where it is a purely symbolic role without power or influence until it is a vital cog in the machinery of state. If the former it can easily be replaced, if the latter it absolutely must be replaced.

There is another argument that has some merit (ten years ago I might have been in Will’s position) which is the military pledging allegiance to an apolitical figure. I don’t but this. The evidence I’ve read suggests that in battle, the loyalty combatants fight for is for their comrades. Broader questions of right and wing are either best ignored or likely decided by the attitudes of local civilians. The  importance of the nature of the figurehead back home is the sort of sounds-plausible-when-said-confidently-by-a-CO Victorian thinking that doesn’t really bear modern scrutiny.