Quote:
Originally Posted by ianch99
You are being very silly. Going back to a time, nearly 400 years ago, when we still burnt witches at the stake for a comparison?
What you are not addressing is the moral failure of endorsing a monarchy. The wish to place an entitled, ultra wealthy, selected by birth, individual in a position where you are required/encouraged to literally be subservient to them, bowing in their presence. This is a point of principle: one man/woman is more equal than any other. The Americans got the right idea.
It really is a point of principle, not money and not imperial nostalgia. Some people voted for Brexit on principle, knowing that they, and the country, would be poorer but still were happy to do so. The whole thing, in the 21st century is an historical anachronism.
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Well I know I am.
. It was the protectorate was problematic rather than the concept of republic. Even in 17th century England there was a deep understanding of how the relationship between a monarch and parliament should work, grounded in history and tradition. No such understanding existed with the protectorate and Parliament at one stage offered Cromwell the crown, probably because it saw the looming risk of continental style absolutism and thought a constitutional monarchy was safer all round. As it happened, Oliver died and his son Richard inherited the protectorate much as a monarch would, but was then so useless the restoration soon followed.
I don’t accept that selection by birth is a moral failure. It may or may not be a constitutional failure; it may or may not be regarded an anachronism or a failure of democracy, but ‘moral failure’ is a very strong charge and I don’t think it sticks in a society where preference for one’s own family is part of the fabric of life. We do it all the time so if it’s flawed as a fundamental principle our whole society is on thin ice.
It is vastly unlikely that if we were setting up a new British state today that we would appoint a family to provide our heads of state. But to make that argument is to ignore the context in which we live. We are not setting up a new state. We inhabit what is arguably the world’s first modern nation state, governed by a democracy that has been continually developing and extending over that period and has had universal adult suffrage for a century. All of that, plus the inherited position of head of state which is its keystone, rests on a millennium of tradition, convention and precedent. One of the reasons we haven’t seriously discussed changing that is that unpicking it would be a fraught process whose outcome would be unclear and benefits questionable. You have asserted a moral argument but I don’t think you’ve actually demonstrated it. That leaves us with practical questions. Would it be better than what we have in any practical way? A political head of state is a divisive figure by definition. It can (and does) go wrong.