Britain Is A Banana Monarchy

They must teach that "chessboard" line about the monarchy at public school. Hence, if you point out that it is rubbish, then they just keep saying it ever more loudly. That is what they do with those lines. There are quite a few of them. Knowing them, and sticking to them, is part of being in the club.

In reality, the monarchy enables the Prime Minister to occupy the entire board. Boris Johnson remained Prime Minister for months after having lost a confidence motion, and he openly intends to do so if he loses his seat in the House of Commons. The Queen appointed him, only she can remove him, she acts only on the advice of the Prime Minister (even when he has been found in court to have lied to her), and he is the Prime Minister. So there.

Many of the usual republican arguments are still very weak. But none is quite as weak as the claim that the monarchy occupies a space that politicians therefore cannot. That is the opposite of the case. 

Nor is the United Kingdom singularly "stable", with its very long and quite recent history of serious political violence, with its third General Election in four and a half years, with its third Prime Minister in four years, with its all of two years of majority Government out of the last nine, with one third of its territory dominated politically by a separatist party, with the tipping point bound to come in the next five years when a border poll had to be held in Northern Ireland, and so on, and on, and on. This is a banana monarchy.

And how is Defending the Faith coming along? Three Commonwealth Realms retain that title, although oddly none of them is in the godly Caribbean. Tellingly, it is not used even in Barbados, which is proportionally the most Anglican country in the world. No, those three are the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.

The present reign will last about 70 years. The Soviet Union also lasted about 70 years. But by the end of that, then there were still relatively few people who were coming of age as third generation atheists. In Britain, Canada or New Zealand today, though, that is the norm. Their grandparents lapsed a long time ago. Their parents may or may not have been baptised in infancy, also quite a long time ago. And they themselves have never had any kind of religion. Of course, even the most secularised society will acquire a religion eventually. Think on.

I repeat that the standard republican arguments remain profoundly unconvincing. "Come into the twenty-first century"? Into which year of the twenty-first century? 1949? 1919? 1917? 1789? 1776? 1649? 1291? 1115? 697? 509 BC? And who would want a "meritocracy", in which the people with wealth and with paper qualifications determined "merit" on the basis of wealth and of paper qualifications? It is no wonder that Thatcherites have mostly been covert republicans, while Blairites have mostly been overt ones.

Thatcher and Blair themselves, on the other hand, recognised that the Crown gave them the power to behave in absolutely any way they pleased, although on that score even they are being put to shame by Johnson. Having the monarchy serves only to obscure many, many problems from the people who would otherwise recognise them and take steps to address them. What has it ever done to address those problems? How has it ever prevented them in the first place? Those questions are not rhetorical.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I am standing for Parliament here at North West Durham. The crowdfunding page is here, and buy the book here. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.