The Monarchy

The monarchy and the Commonwealth. The British people

look to the Queen not only as their head of State, but also as the symbol
of their nation’s unity. The monarchy is the most ancient secular
institution in Britain. During the last thousand years its continuity has
only once been broken (by the establishment of a republic which lasted
from 1649 to 1660) and, despite interruptions in the direct line of
succession, the hereditary principle upon which it was founded has
always been preserved. The royal title in Britain is: ‘Elizabeth the
Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen,
Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith’. The form of the
royal title is varied for those other member states of the Commonwealth
of which the Queen is head of State, to suit the particular circumstances
of each. The Commonwealth countries where the Queen is head of State
include Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize,
Canada, Grenada, New Zealand, Solomon Islands and others. Some
member states of the Commonwealth are republics or have their own
monarchies.
The seat of the Monarchy is in Great Britain, while in other
member nations of the Commonwealth the Queen is represented by the
Governor–General, appointed by her on the advice of the ministers of
the country concerned and completely independent of the British
Government.
 The appearance. The position of the monarch in Britain is a
perfect illustration of the contradictory nature of the constitution. From
the evidence of written law only, the Queen has almost absolute powers,
and it all seems very undemocratic. The American constitution talks
about ‘government of the people for the people by the people’. There is
no law in Britain which says anything like that. If fact, there is no legal
concept of ‘the people’ at all.
Every autumn, at the state opening of
The house of Windsor
Parliament, Elizabeth II, who became Windsor is the family
Queen in 1952, makes a speech. In it, she name of the royal family.
says what ‘my government’ intends to do The press sometimes refers
in the coming year. And indeed, it is her to its members as ‘the
government, not the people’s. As far as the Windsors’. Queen Elizabeth
law is concerned, she can choose anybody is only the fourth monarch
she likes to run the government for her. with this name. This is not
because a ‘new’ royal family
There are no restrictions on whom she took over the throne of
picks as her Prime Minister. It does not Britain four reigns ago. It is
have to be somebody who has been because George V,
elected. The same is true for her choices of Elizabeth’s grandfather,
people to fill some hundred or so other changed the family name. It
ministerial positions. And if she gets fed was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, but
up with her ministers, she can just dismiss during the First World War it
was thought better for the
them. Officially speaking, they are all king not to have a German-
‘servants of the Crown’ (not servants of sounding name.
anything like ‘the country’ or ‘the
people’). She also appears to have great power over Parliament. It is she
who summons a Parliament, and she who dissolves it before a general
election. Nothing that Parliament has decided can become law until she
has given it the royal assent.
Similarly, it is the Queen, and not any other figure of authority,
who embodies the law in the courts. In the USA, when the police take
someone to court to accuse them of a crime, the court records show that
‘the people’ have accused that person. In other countries it might be ‘the
state’ that makes the accusation. But in Britain it is ‘the Crown’. This is
because of the legal authority of the monarch. And when an accused
person is found guilty of a crime, he or she might be sent to one of ‘Her
Majesty’s’ prisons.
Other countries have ‘citizens’. But in Britain people are legally
described as ‘subjects’ – subjects of Her Majesty the Queen. Moreover,
there is a principle of English law that the monarch can do nothing that
is legally wrong. In other words, Queen Elizabeth is above the law.

The reality. In practice, of course, reality is very different. In

fact, the Queen cannot choose anyone she likes to be Prime Minister.
She has to choose someone who has the support of the majority of MPs
in the House of Commons (the elected chamber of the two Houses of
Parliament). This is because the law says that ‘her’ government can only
collect taxes with the agreement of the Commons, so if she did not
choose such a person, the government would stop functioning. In
practice the person she chooses is the leader of the strongest party in the
House of Commons. Similarly, it is really the Prime Minister who
decides who the other government ministers are going to be (although
officially the Prime Minister simply ‘advises’ the monarch who to
choose).
It is the same story with Parliament. Again, the Prime Minister will
talk about ‘requesting’ a dissolution of Parliament when he or she wants
to hold an election, but it would normally be impossible for the monarch
to refuse this ‘request’. Similarly, while, in theory, the Queen could
refuse the royal assent to a bill passed by Parliament – and so stop it
becoming law – no monarch has actually done so since the year 1708.
Indeed, the royal assent is so automatic that the Queen doesn’t even
bother to give it in person. Somebody else signs the documents for her.
In reality, the Queen has almost no power at all. When she opens
Parliament each year the speech she makes has been written for her. She
makes no secret of this fact. She very obviously reads out the script that
has been prepared for her, word for word. If she strongly disagrees with
one of the policies of the government, she might ask the government
ministers to change the wording in the speech a little beforehand, but
that is all. She cannot actually stop the government going ahead with
any of its policies.
 The role of the monarch. What, then, is the monarch’s role?
Many opinions are offered by political and legal experts. Three roles are
often mentioned. First, the monarch is the personal embodiment of the
government of the country. This means that people can be as critical as
they like about the real government, and can argue that it should be
thrown out, without being accused of being unpatriotic. Because of the
clear separation between the symbol of government (the Queen) and the
actual government (the ministers, who are also MPs), changing the
government does not threaten the stability of the country as a whole.
Other countries without a monarch have to use something else as the
symbol of the country. In the USA, for example, one of these is its flag,
and to damage the flag in any way is actually a criminal offence.
Second, it is argued that the monarch could act as a final check on
a government that was becoming dictatorial. If the government ever
managed to pass a bill through Parliament which was obviously terribly
bad and very unpopular, the monarch could refuse the royal assent and
the bill would not become law. Similarly, it is possible that if a Prime
Minister who had been defeated at a general election (and so no longer
commanded a majority in the House of Commons) were to ask
immediately for another dissolution of Parliament (so that another
election could take place), the monarch could refuse the request and
dismiss the Prime Minister.
Third, the monarch has a very practical role to play. By being a
figurehead and representing the country, Queen Elizabeth II can perform
the ceremonial duties which heads of state often have to spend their time
on. This way, the real government has more time to get on with the
actual job of running the country.
 The value of monarchy. However, all these advantages are
hypothetical. It cannot be proved that only a monarch can provide them.
Other modern democracies manage perfectly well without one. The
British monarch is probably more important to the economy of the
country than it is to the system of government. Apart from this, the
monarchy is very popular with the majority of the British people. The
monarchy gives British people a symbol of continuity, and a harmless
outlet for the expression of national pride. Even in very hard times it has
never seemed likely that Britain would turn to a dictator to get it out of
its troubles. The grandeur of its monarchy may have been one of the
reasons for this.
Occasions such as the state opening of Parliament, the Queen’s
official birthday, royal weddings, and ceremonial events such as the
changing of the guard make up for the lack of colour and ceremony in
most people’s daily lives. (There is no tradition of local parades as there
is in the USA, and very few traditional
The economic argument
Every tourist brochure for
local festivals survive as they do in
Britain in every country in the other European countries.) In addition
world gives great prominence the glamorous lives of ‘the royals’
to the monarchy. It is provide a source for entertainment that
impossible to estimate exactly often takes on the characteristics of a
how much the British royal television soap opera. When, in 1992, it
family and the events and became known that Prince Charles and
buildings associated with the
monarchy help the tourist
his wife Princes Diana were separating,
industry, or exactly how much even the more ‘serious’ newspapers
money they help to bring into discussed a lot more than the possible
the country. But most people political implications. The Sunday
working in tourism think it is Times published a ‘five-page royal
an awful lot! separation special’. Since the Princes
“Wills” and “Harry” grew up, most of
the press has been more interested in
their love lives than in the implications
of their military roles in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
 The future of the monarchy. For the last 250 years, the
British monarchy as an institution has only rarely been a burning
political issue. Only occasionally has there been debate about the
existence of the monarchy itself. Few people in Britain could be
described as either ‘monarchists’ or ‘anti-monarchists’, in the sense in
which these terms are often used in other countries. Most people are
either vaguely in favour or they just don’t care one way or the other.
There is, however, a great deal of debate about what kind of monarchy
Britain should have. During the last two decades of the twentieth
century, there has been a general cooling of enthusiasm. The Queen
herself remains popular. But the various marital problems in her family
have lowered the prestige of royalty in many people’s eyes. The problem
is that, since Queen Victoria’s reign, the public have been encouraged to
look up to the royal family as a model of Christian family life.
The change in attitude can be seen by comparing Queen
Elizabeth’s 25th anniversary as Queen with her 40th anniversary. In
1977, there were neighbourhood street parties throughout the country,
most of them spontaneously and voluntarily organised. But in 1992,
nothing like this took place. On 20 November 1993, a fire damaged one
of the Queen’s favourite homes to the value of £ 60 million. There were
expressions of public sympathy for the Queen. But when the
government announced that public money was going to be paid for the
repairs, the sympathy quickly turned to anger. The Queen had recently
been reported to be the richest woman in the world, so people didn’t see
why she shouldn’t pay for them herself.
It is, in fact, on the subject of money that ‘anti-royalist’ opinions
are most often expressed. In the early nineties even some Conservative
MPs, traditionally strong supporters of the monarchy, started protesting
at how much the royal family was costing the country. For the whole of
her long reign Elizabeth II had been exempt from taxation. But, as a
response to the change in attitude, the Queen decided that she would
start paying taxes on her private income. In addition, Civil List
payments to some members of the royal family were stopped. (The Civil
List is the money which the Queen and some of her relatives get from
Parliament each year so that they can carry out their public duties).
These events are perhaps an indication of the future royal style – a
little less grand, a little less distant.
 Britain needs to talk more – and talk more publicly and seriously –
about what should come next. As a nation, we are not good at doing this,
partly out of deference to the Queen. The family dimension of the Windsors’
lives is endlessly reported and discussed in the media, while television
dramas like The Crown generate vast audiences. But the practical
constitutional questions about how this monarchy should work in a modern
democracy are still treated as almost completely taboo.
This is a humiliating situation. The role of the monarchy and its place
within democracy, the state and the rule of law are serious questions. They
are, in their way, as important as questions about the electoral and
parliamentary systems, the powers of government and how laws are made
and changed, all of which intersect in various ways with the monarchy. The
monarchy enjoys enviable public support, in part as the embodiment of
national stability, but the public also wants it to be a modern
monarchy, embodying today’s values. There is a need to talk about all this,
and to talk about it before the change happens, not after it has already
happened.
A question for modern Britain
The best way for this to start is in Britain’s parliament, through a select
committee – possibly specially convened for the purpose – that can take and
collect evidence in public, including from members of the royal family and
household if necessary, about a large range of issues. These could include
the appropriate constitutional, political and military roles of the monarch,
including with other nations; the regulation, financing and accountability of
the monarchy; the size of the royal household maintained by the state; the
laws of succession and the appropriate ceremonies for the inauguration of
the new monarch, including their religious dimension, the coronation and
the coronation oath.

The oath that the new monarch swears embodies issues of church and
state that are especially problematic in a nation with an established church,
and in which less than half of the public describe themselves as religious
believers of any kind. The sacral anointment behind a screen of the
monarch as a person set apart from the nation and its laws is an especially
remarkable challenge for a multi-faith and often largely secular nation. No
other constitutional monarchy in Europe attempts all this any longer. Most
have decided that the succession is for parliament to decide and administer.
Why not Britain too? Let’s at least talk about it.
If there is not a serious effort in the very near future to formulate and
discuss these questions about the new reign in public, we will one day find
that they have already been answered without any public involvement. That
contains risks, including for the monarchy, which Britain is unused to
confronting during the Queen’s long reign. What should happen in future to
our constitutional monarchy is an entirely proper question for modern
Britain to consider…

(adapted from the Guardian)