I know I've been going on about this a bit, but I've changed my mind about which is the best post I've read on it.

Step forward mitchbenn_blog.

I may be preaching to the perverted converted here, but srsly, you guys, this is an excellent post:

what its proponents seem to have missed is that if there is a single defining characteristic of "Britishness" it's that WE DON'T BLOODY DO THIS SORT OF THING.

We DON'T stand in town squares saluting bits of cloth and singing songs of praise to Our Glorious Leaders, we don't "pledge" anything to anybody - a "pledge" is just words, and words don't suddenly acquire significance or resonance through sheer repetition... I recited The Lord's Prayer every morning for my entire school career and I still don't believe a word of it. And if we don't feel the need to fly the Union Flag in our front gardens, it's not because of a lack of love or respect for our homeland, it's because WE'RE STILL THERE. It was Britain outside the front door when we went to bed and it'll still be Britain when we wake up. We don't need a flag to remind us.

The whole post is well worth reading, although it does contain minor spoilers for tonight's Now Show...

I ask because matgb has informed me that I am now being syndicated to Lib Dem Blogs on Lib Dem Voice... Oh dear. Poor Lib Dem Blogs. Are they ready for my level of random spamming, I ask myself? Oh well; I suspect I'll find out. I'm very happy to be welcomed by the nice "freeze duty on real ale" advert, though.

The important business of the day is this: Happy Birthday nannyo! Wave to all the nice Lib Dems ;)

The less important business of the day is a trio of interesting links:

1, Is anyone really surprised by this? As a parent of a child at a Voluntary Aided Primary School, I can say I'm not surprised in the slightest. The "entirely voluntary" contributions one makes for one's child to dress in fancy dress for World Book Day, are just one small recent example. Do you make the contribution, or do you allow your child to be ostracised? Tough choice that one... It's no surprise to me that some schools have extended the emotional blackmail as far as admissions policy.

2, The ruckus about Lord Goldsmith's plan to force all children to pledge allegiance to a monarchy that many of them no longer hold dear (which I first blogged about three days ago) lives on. By far the best post on the matter I have seen is the provocatively-named Tampon Teabag's Britishness Test. Go, read, pass the test and giggle subversively. Especially all those of you on my new extended F-list at Lib Dem Blogs. You won't regret it.

3, Why is it that something which straps to your wrist is infinitely cooler than something that doesn't? I don't know. But I do know that this is the coolest thing I have seen so far this year, and I would sell my grandma to get one (props to innerbrat for the link). Anybody want to buy a slightly dotty ninety-one year old lady with the short term memory of a goldfish? She won't take up much room, she's only four foot six, and she's got a degree!

Y'all know I have no truck with republicanism (either the American or the British kind) but seriously, this is just bloody stupid. There are many reasons I detest the proposal to make our kids swear an oath of allegiance to the queen, but the main one is that the idea that all children should be forced to pledge allegiance to anything is anathema to the (albeit being steadily eroded by this government) liberal tradition of this country and our fabled tolerance of eccentricity (yes, republicans are mad, but they don't harm anyone, so let them carry on being mad if they like).

I love my country, and I love the queen (gawd bless 'er). But I don't see any particular reason why anyone should be forced to share that opinion. I love the Last Night of the Proms, and happily sing along with Rule Britannia and Jerusalem. But I wouldn't force anyone to join in if they didn't want to.

Pledges of allegiance belong in upstart young countries like America, not laconic old democracies like ours.

I've been promising this entry for a long time, haven't I? I've finally been pushed into making it, after many invitations to join republican groups on Facebook etc. by a comment on a forum this morning, that if you're a secularist you must also be a republican because "[n]aturally we can't be a secular society with the head of the C of E as Head of State for Life..." Now, I actually agree verbatim with that assertion: if you're a secularist (which I am) and agree that there should not be a state-sponsored religion (which I do), then the Head of State should not be forced to be the leader of a particular religion. Apart from anything else it's profoundly illiberal to force an individual to profess a religion which they may or may not believe in, never mind to become head of a religion they may or may not believe in. Why not let the monarch choose their own religion (or lack thereof) rather than forcing them into the CofE? But it does not follow that disestablishment of the CofE leads naturally to republicanism. That it is presented as an argument for republicanism strikes me as a massive failure of logic, and makes me cross, and has thus prompted me into actually making this entry.

There seems to be this assumption among certain segments of Liberalism that if you're an intelligent, thinking Liberal you must be a republican too. To the extent that I kind of assumed that matgb was a republican for a long time after first meeting him (not that we talked about the monarchy at all) and was pleasantly surprised when I found out he wasn't (I found out by being in the room when he read a piece about Liberals necessarily being republicans and him ranting lengthily about it). I therefore want to elucidate why I, personally, think republicanism is impractical and pointless (at best) and actually harmful and destructive (at worst), if only so that other Liberal monarchists might not feel so cowed and outnumbered by their republican fellows.

Firstly, to clear up a definitional issue, when I say republican, I mean by the British definition (a state which does not have a monarch, but may or may not be democratic) not by the American definition (a free state which may or may not have a monarch, but is not a dictatorship). Republicanism in the UK goes through fits and starts of popular favour, and seems to be largely dependent on the behaviour of the royals at any given time. The largest pressure group in favour of dissolving the monarchy is Republic, whose stated aim is to replace our ceremonial, non-executive, constitutional monarch with a directly elected ceremonial, non-executive constitutional president. To which my response would be: what's the point? If we already have a symbolic, non-executive head of state, why go through all the hassle of removing her, to then have to go through all the hassle of an election process every however-long to get another one? If the head of state is merely for ceremonial purposes and isn't to wield any power, why not keep the one we already have for ceremonial purposes?

It's worth wondering why Republic don't advocate an executive president, though, I think. Perhaps they recognise the dangers of such. Perhaps they realise that having a ceremonial head of state is a good thing, as a check and balance against the excesses of tyrannical government? Which leads me to wonder why they bother to campaign so vociferously to replace the perfectly good ceremonial head of state that we've got...

Republicanism as a meritocracy

I am fully in favour of a meritocracy. I also do not think that it is any coincidence that social mobility (i.e. the ability to rise from humble beginnings to positions of power, or indeed, to fall from positions of power to a humble end) has decreased massively under the present government, which came to power on a ticket of promoting meritocracy. Meritocracy is not achieved by dismantling all the things which differentiate us from one another. Meritocracy is not achieved by making elite qualifications easily obtainable by all. Meritocracy is achieved by making such qualifications as difficult as possible to obtain in terms of the amount of work and brainpower needed to obtain them, but by removing social barriers to making the attempt.

Similarly, the idea of getting rid of the monarchy to promote meritocracy seems to be putting the cart before the horse, to me. If you believe that to achieve meritocracy we must have a directly elected president then you believe that there is something to aspire to in the position of head of state; that the more merit you have, the greater suited you are for the position of head of state. This might be true under a system in which the head of state has some power, but under the current system? With the greatest respect to her Majesty, it doesn't require any great skill or talent to sign things and cut ribbons. There is no inherent merit to being a figurehead. Any idiot could do it. So why elevate it by making a big fuss about electing somebody to that position when it's vestigial and quite happily filled by members of the royal family?

An executive president, on the other hand, absolutely needs to be chosen by merit. I'd quite like someone to point me to a system where this happens. I can think of several directly elected executive presidencies. None of them seem to be meritocracies, and the one that's looming large in my mind at the moment has even bigger and more entrenched social division than we do, albeit that they have the illusion of possibility. If any of you can point me to a country where someone has, entirely on merit (i.e. not by military coup, or by being groomed by a rich political party, or by having a father who was president before him), risen from the gutter to become head of state, I'll happily concede that republicans might have a point in meritocratic claims.

Electing one's head of state is a basic right

We have the power, currently, to elect a party to government which makes the laws and administrates them. The Queen just signs the paperwork. At the moment, we therefore have the best of both worlds: an elected executive branch of government, and a traditional figurehead to smile and wave and sign bits of paper.

Hereditary monarchy is racially discriminatory

Apart from the merit argument I went into above, this makes the assumption that royalty will only marry/procreate with people of their own race. Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, anyone?

Having an Anglican head of state is unrepresentative of a nation where the majority of citizens are non-religious

Well, yes, and I deal with this in the first paragraph of this entry. The monarch should not be forced to follow a particular religion, or any religion at all, just because their greatgreatgreatetc. grandfather wanted to establish his own church so he could divorce a wife or two. It's stupid, and divisive, and illiberal. Prince Charles, current heir to the throne, has professed a desire to be known as "defender of faiths" rather than "defender of THE faith" if and when he ascends to the throne. This points to a certain reluctance, on his part at least, to be forced into the CofE.

The monarch should have the same freedom of religion (or lack thereof) as the rest of us. Again, removing the monarch so we don't have a Christian head of state seems to be rather putting the cart before the horse. Why not disestablish the church of England instead? Much simpler, and wouldn't cause nearly as much constitutional upheaval.

Tangent: it is rather interesting that only Roman Catholics are barred from holding the throne, though. I wonder what would happen if Charles were to openly declare himself an Atheist? Would he still be head of the CofE? Or what if he were to convert to Judaism or Islam or any of the other religions? It would be interesting, to say the least.

A monarchy demands deference

Does it bollocks. From time immemorial it has been the British way to poke fun at the royal family (and, indeed, any other people in the public eye), even when they were capable of demanding our heads be lopped off. Why get rid of that rich comic tradition?

An hereditary system condemns each heir to the throne to an abnormal childhood that produces an abnormal individual as Head of State

1, What is normal, anyway?
2, Point me to any other head of state in the world and persuade me that they are normal. Go on.

Monarchs are not accountable

I may be bursting a few bubbles here, but being directly elected does not guarantee accountability. I'll give just one example: Tony Blair. He was directly elected. He did some good things (instituted the minimum wage, for example), some bad things (pushed through SOCPA) and some awful things (took us into an illegal war of which we are still reaping the whirlwind now). Has he been held to account for his actions? Nope. He held on as long as he could, resigned when he had no other option or his own party would have forced him out (note, his own party, not the British public), got himself a cushy and well-paid job as a peace envoy in the very region he was instrumental in starting the war in, and remains completely out of reach of the people he governed for ten years.

A lot of the claims of the republican movement strike me as similarly cloud-cuckoo-landish in nature. Take this one:

The new office of President would represent a new political culture - social inclusiveness would replace social hierarchy, mutual respect would replace deference, genuine intellect would replace the spurious wisdom of princes

... and lions would lie down with lambs and world peace would reign. You don't kill a hierarchy by removing it's head, you have to dismantle the entire structure, and that is a painful and long process, and does not necessarily have a happy populace at the end of it (Communist Russia, anyone?). Similarly, you don't induce mutual respect by forcibly removing people from their jobs, no matter how unfairly you think they obtained them.

The Monarchy is expensive

Show me a replacement for the monarchy which would be more frugal, and I will happily concede this point. Yes, the Queen costs us money. So would a president. The same ceremonial duties would need to be performed, and we would have the added expense of an election every few years. And don't give me the "yes, but all those palaces!" response, unless you're seriously advocating tearing them all down. You ecological and architectural vandal.


Put simply, my view on the monarchy is the same as Winston Churchill's view of democracy. He said that democracy is the worst system, apart from all the others. Yes, constitutional monarchy has it's flaws, and yes, our system is not perfect. But none of the things we can do to make it better (STV!) necessarily involve any removal of the monarchy or dismantling of our rich and comforting centuries-old traditions. It seems to me that the only real reason for removing the monarchy is outdated political dogma. The Queen doesn't have any real power, and she, and her trappings, bring pleasure to a lot of people. People like a good spectacle. They like pomp and ceremony. Allowing people to enjoy these things isn't harming anyone. The benefits of a republic do not outweigh the harm and upheaval that would be necessary to create one. So why bother being a republican?


ETA: coming soon: SB's guide to the British Constitution for the Hard of Thinking (and journalists). This is another one of my bugbears: yes, actually, we do have a constitution and just because it isn't codified in one document doesn't mean we don't have one.