Having muttered the other day about disliking being turned from a “subject” into a “citizen”. A recent post over at Old Holborns reminded me of a video linked to by Archbishop Cranmer:
So the alleged cost of the Monarchy is no reason to get rid of them, as they don’t cost us anything. Mind neither is the loss of income a reason not to get rid of them. I unlike OH and many people I know am not a republican. I quite like the monarchy, I don’t think it’s fair to say they stole their lands any more than accusing anyone in this country of having done so, it’s been invaded and carved up so many times how far would you go back?
The reason I remain in favour of the monarchy is because our entire legal system and all of what rights and constitution we have is based upon them. Removing them, at least with any rapidity, would cause an awful mess and I don’t trust any of the people currently proposing that they be removed to sort that mess out in anyway that would improve the situation. Which is really my problem with the whole republican argument they don’t seem to be proposing anything that would be an actual improvement, all the problems that exist with our current system (which has worked tolerably well for quite a while) don’t seem to get fixed with the suggested alternatives.
There does of course remain the principled objection to “to the very concept that one human may rule over another” and yet most of the proposed alternatives don’t remove that, they just change the frequency with which that person changes and how they get picked. I don’t see that as a terribly huge improvement and until we have people that would recognise a principle if it smacked them in the mouth in a position to negotiate a new political settlement that in shrines the freedoms that have been whittled away over the years, well I’d rather try and patch up our old and creaking system.
(This post was brought to you with the help of several pints of untaxed home brew)
