Even the present Queen has not been "non-political". She certainly wasn't when everyone wrongly thought that Macmillan was on his deathbed, for example. She has merely grown old, that's all.
Opposition to the aristocratic social conscience is also opposition to organised labour, by the same people and to the same ends. Those who had removed trade union barons went on, by means of whichever party came more readily to hand, to remove hereditary barons, because both were bulwarks against neoliberal economic policy, neoconservative foreign policy, and the attendant assault on liberty.
All that is left is the monarchy. And the next King knows it.
Well, most of the time he does.
Furthermore, as global capitalism, European federalism and American hegemony all fall apart, we have never had more need of the full political involvement of the institution embodying and securing our abiding ties to the Commonwealth, that perennial counterweight (at least potentially) to global capitalism, to European federalism and to American hegemony.
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"Opposition to the aristocratic social conscience is also opposition to organised labour, by the same people and to the same ends. Those who removed trade union barons then, by means of whichever party came more readily to hand, removed hereditary barons, because both were bulwarks against neoliberal economic policy, neoconservative foreign policy, and the attendant assault on liberty."
ReplyDeleteExactly. Cutting the ties with the unions left Labour with no source of new MPs exacpt those who wanted to cut those ties. I mean those who started out on the student militant left.
As you yourself say, exactly.
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