A REPUBLICAN would argue that in an age of equality it can’t be justifiable to raise one particular person above all others, purely by advantage of their beginning. Aren’t all of us born equal within the sight of God? Or for those who’re an atheist, don’t we come into this world with the identical ethical price? How can purpose and rationality permit a supposedly democratic nation appoint its head of state by a beginning lottery?
However these shouldn’t be the one measures by which we decide our lives. Human values, emotion and heat can trump logic and utility. The metric system is likely to be sensible with a justified place in science and engineering, however ounces, miles and pints are a lot extra human. There may be little or no rationality about falling in love, within the disinterested kindnesses we’d present to a stranger, or within the small issues that give us pleasure; however who cares?
Our present system has no logic in any respect. However it nonetheless appears way more pleasing than selecting our nationwide figurehead by way of the generally unsavoury processes of politics: favours given and acquired, affect traded and appeals to tribal loyalties. What are the possibilities that an individual chosen on this method can be any higher than than somebody chosen by an accident of beginning?
Anybody having fun with an election win as head of state would have had the votes of solely part of the voters. Might they actually signify us all or convey us collectively when nationwide unity is required? After all, the identical factor is true of heads of presidency, but when we’re to be ruled democratically there isn’t any actual alternative. Not {that a} constitutional monarch truly governs anyway. And the way pleasant that our Prime Minister, our strongest politician, has to bow or curtsy to somebody exterior the political course of who’s there to signify all of us.
Why although, the egalitarian in me asks, ought to any human need to bow or curtsy to a different? Servility is demeaning and robs of us of dignity. However our deference to the monarchy is voluntary. It’s possible you’ll stick your out tongue on the King if you want, or ignore him fully. Nobody will get despatched to the Tower any extra for republicanism.
Our loyalty to the wearer of the crown shouldn’t be subservience to an individual. The monarch is a illustration of our nation, historical past and the intangible half-grasped issues that make up our shared id. A symbolic position that no mere politician may ever fill. I’ve a deep-rooted aversion to snobbery, and a two-fingered angle to anybody who would possibly contemplate me their inferior for my very extraordinary earnings or council property background. But I don’t really feel as if I’m cringing obsequiously in recognising that the monarch has a particular place.
It’s true that democracy calls for we must always have a proper to determine on any side of how and by whom we’re dominated. So if our new King forgets his promise to rise above politics or resumes his generally annoying pontifications of earlier years, what can we do? I believe we may be pretty sure {that a} methodology can be discovered to dissolve the entire present. Are you able to think about the monarchy surviving in opposition to the favored will? A state of affairs the place a king or queen who had misplaced public help hides behind palace partitions, clinging to the throne whereas the mobs rage exterior?
The reality is that the establishment survives as a result of it’s the selection of the folks to have it, as opinion polls consistently present. An Ipsos ballot from Could this yr exhibits public help for the monarchy at 68 per cent. It stays and might solely achieve this as a result of we (or at the least most of us) need it. One thing Queen Elizabeth herself recognised in a speech in 1997, saying that the establishment rests on ‘the consent of the folks’.
She was proper. We have now a constitutional monarchy as a result of no matter its faults, it’s what we would like.
After all, I can’t think about if we have been designing a structure from scratch that anybody, besides romantics and the eccentric, would suggest something like our present system. However it works. You’ll be able to fill in one among your individual least favorite superannuated politicians right here, however higher to be headed by a unusual anachronism than by President Tony Blair.
