It is a complete fantasy that the monarchy is supposed to be neutral in all matters. What would be the point of that? If, for example, it could not intervene to prevent the despoilment of our built environment, then there really would be no purpose at all to it. But such is not the case.
Leaving aside the mistakes and misfortunes of his own life (which have absolutely nothing to do with the institution as such), Prince Charles is either on the wrong track or just plain wrong when it comes to syncretism, and Greenery, and the Dalai Lama.
But he is right about an awful lot more.
And that makes him the voice of huge numbers of people who have none in the supposedly more legitimate parliamentary process, of which the monarch, complete with a power of veto in the defence of certain interests not exactly dear to the hearts of New Labour or the New Tories (and therefore now impossible to defend by means of voting), is properly, but not currently, an integral part.
As the culmination (at least so far) of the coup that began immediately upon the death of John Smith, this country is now being run – really, literally run – by the wholly unelected and unaccountable Peter Mandelson of the Young Communist League. Give me Charles over him any day.
And then there's Mandy's old boss.
ReplyDeleteWell, indeed. Our supreme ruler is an old Maoist - MAOIST! - who went on to become the rabidly "free"-marketeering and pro-Bush Prime Minister of Portugal before being wafted into his present, unelected and irremovable, position.
ReplyDelete"If, for example, it could not intervene to prevent the despoilment of our built environment, then there really would be no purpose at all to it. But such is not the case."
ReplyDeleteQuite right. Constitutional scholars and historians have long held that the central role of the monarchy is to preserve a certain aesthetic in urban environments. It's a little appreciated fact that Henry II's main dispute with Thomas Beckett was over the proportions of flying buttresses at Canterbury, for example. Or that Cromwell's main beef with Charles I was over the architrave at Bridewell. It's more commonly known, of course, that George III's long-distance interference in Boston's city-planning were the direct cause of the American Revolution.
The monarchy exists to embody and conserve this country's character and culture, yes.
ReplyDeleteAs I say, it was over precisely this point - the conservation of culture - that Charles I fought the Civil War. Don't be fooled by that Divine Right to rule nonsense. Pretty much every king, from Richard the Lionheart through George IV to Edward VII has been crystal clear that their main role was to stop people building buildings, singing songs or painting paintings that didn't fit the prevailing aesthetic.
ReplyDeletePrince Charles is exactly AGAINST what is currently “the prevailing aesthetic”. The 1968 generation, get over this idea that you are anti-Establishment. You are the most entrenched Establishment ever.
ReplyDelete“Don't be fooled by that Divine Right to rule nonsense”
Don’t, indeed.
Didn’t Charles I believe in the Divine Right of Kings? No, he did not. Or at least he certainly expressed no such view at his grotesque “trial” pursuant to a Bill of Attainder, and before eighty of his carefully selected parliamentary and military enemies under a second-rate lawyer, John Bradshaw, created “Lord President” because all the proper judges had fled London rather than have anything to do with the wretched proceedings.
There, Charles declared repeatedly that, by denying the authority of the “court” to try him, he was simply upholding the law as it then existed, including the liberties of the English people and the parliamentary institutions of the English State. No law permitted the trial of the monarch, he argued. On the contrary, the law of treason then in force provided for exactly the opposite, namely that any attack on the monarch’s person was itself an offence. Simply as a matter of fact, he was right.
And the subsequent behaviour of the Cromwellian regime fully vindicated him. In sillier circles, Cromwell’s imposition of the greatest tyranny in English (never mind Irish) history is termed “the English Revolution”.
In fact, of course, it long preceded the emergence of any industrial proletariat and is wholly inexplicable in Marxist terms, just as is the very existence of any Marxist movement in, say, the Russia of 1917, or Albania, or China at least until very recent years, or Korea, or Vietnam, or Nepal, or Bengal, or Sri Lanka, or Ethiopia, or Zimbabwe, or Uganda, or Rwanda, South Africa, or Cuba, or Peru, or Bolivia, or ... well, make your on list. At their respective heights of Communism, certainly Spain, and arguably also Italy and even France, were standing contradictions of the whole theory.
If there is any truth at all in the Marxist analysis of history, then these things simply cannot be. I think we all know what follows from the fact that these things are.
Stay on topic please.
ReplyDeleteThe role of the monarchy is the topic.
ReplyDeleteThat's absolutely true, Lloyd. Remember Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, saying when Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Blitz, "Now we can look the East End in the face". What she meant, of course, was that minor damage to a small wing was a price worth paying for the very welcome destruction of swathes of ugly tenement blocks full of poor people.
ReplyDeleteShe wasn't New Labour.
ReplyDeleteEvidently not or she wouldn't have regarded minor damage to her palace as a price worth paying for slum clearence.
ReplyDeleteNo indeed.
ReplyDeleteTony Blair certainly wouldn't regard minor damage to any of HIS many palaces as a price worth paying for slum clearance.
ReplyDeleteNo. And all credit to him for that.
ReplyDeleteIt was of course rather drastic clearance that made him able to afford his palaces at all. I expect that they are not only as numerous as Saddam's, but about as tasteful.
ReplyDeleteSay what you will about Blair, he's morally a step above the royal family, right enough.
ReplyDeleteOn the Continent, of course, the French Revolution is directly attributable to the lamentable decline in the upkeep of the gardens at Versaille since the glory days of the Sun King. The monarchy had failed in its duty to conserve culture, and paid the price.
It's true. Without supporting military intervention in the middle east, a former long-serving prime minister would have no means of financial support at all. David should certainly not be dismissed as a paranoid conspiracist.
ReplyDeleteHe wouldn't be as absurdly rich as Blair is.
ReplyDeleteBlair is morally a step above the Royals? Which living member of the Royal Family is a war criminal, then? And that's just equivalent to Blair, not worse than him.
I've heard that within each of his palaces, written on the ceiling above his bed, are the words "This sumptuous abode was paid for with the blood of Iraqi children." Blair ordered these inscriptions because he wants to wake up smiling every day.
ReplyDeleteIf only we could return to the days of the monarchy, when the very idea of having people who started questionable wars for personal enrichment in power was anathema.
"If only we could return to the days of the monarchy"
ReplyDeleteWell, there we have it. You people really do think that the monarchy has been abolished, so that the Seventies campus Marxist coup is complete. How very, very, very New Labour.