Rule Britannia

Last week saw the celebrations of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and among all the flag waving, fireworks and renditions of Land of Hope and Glory – kudos to the members of the Royal College of Music Chamber Choir who kept on singing despite being on top of a boat in the middle of a downpour during the river pageant – there was also a sudden upsurge in the number of republicans showing up in the media. That’s republicans with a little r by the way; people who wish to abolish the monarchy, not republicans with a big R. That’s the American political party.

In the name of accuracy I should probably point out that republicans have been around for a while. It’s just that the Jubilee – a celebration of everything that they can’t stand – gave them an excuse to make a fuss. Not that it did them much good. Apparently those who attempted to protest at the river pageant last Sunday were heckled by pro-monarchists and subjected to continuous renditions of God Save the Queen.

Republicans claim that the monarchy is an outdated and archaic institution, a relic of a more unequal time which has no place in modern society. They claim that the only way for a country to grow up and move forward is by having a democratically elected head of state. They argue that the monarchy is unequal and unrepresentative and they don’t understand why power (not that the royal family has that much power) should be concentrated in the hands of an unelected minority through an accident of birth. There are two major snags with their arguments.

1: More Democracy is better.

Republicans claim that having an unelected head of state no longer works in modern society. As they see it, in a time where everyone has a vote it is illegitimate to have authority because of the circumstances of your birth rather than because you have been elected and thus have a mandate from the people. These are interestingly the same arguments used by those seeking to reform the House of Lords. It is argued that more elections make for a better democracy.

The key problem with this argument is that the British public don’t like to vote as it is. A mere 30% of the electorate turned out for the recent local elections and it is only slightly better than that in general elections. There is a serious problem with voter apathy in this country that needs to be dealt with first. If people want this country to be more democratic than they need to find a way to get people involved with politics.

Simply having more elections will not solve this problem. All that will happen is the same small number of people will turn out and therefore the MPs, Senators (or whatever they end up being called) and the elected President, far from being representative of the nation as a whole, will face the same problem as our current politicians and end up representing a tiny minority. This leads nicely into my next point.

2: Equality and Representation

Another argument is that an elected President would allow for more equality and a wider representation of British society as anyone would have the opportunity to become head of state rather than this possibility being confined to the members of one family. However, is this really true?

If we take the US Presidents as an example, there is one thing you notice very quickly. They all tend to come from the upper classes. While it is true that Abraham Lincoln never went to college and Lyndon Johnson graduated from Texas State, the majority of Presidents have attended privileged Ivy League institutions such as Harvard and Yale. Whilst it is also true that Presidents Clinton and Obama did not have the best starts in life, they did drag themselves up and by the time they were elected to office, were at least a little bit removed from the lower classes of American Society.

It seems that apart from the constitutional requirements that a potential President has to fulfil – being over thirty five and a natural born American citizen - there are certain unofficial requirements relating to class, wealth and education that have to be fulfilled as well. If you come from a big political family such as the Kennedys or the Bushes you have an even bigger advantage. As much as it appears that anyone can become President, the fact remains that it is the preserve of a very small minority of the citizenry. It is unlikely you’ll see a President elected who graduated from Ohio State. In fact far from being more equal and representative, the American presidency is quite hypocritical, claiming to be something it obviously isn’t. Whatever sins the Royal Family have committed they have never claimed to be anything other than what they are. 

The same would be true here. The government and politics as a whole is already dominated by rich, white Oxbridge educated males. Why do we assume that having an elected head of state would suddenly mean that everyone would have a shot at the role? The same group of people who already control British politics would simply have a new role to fill.

The monarchy may not be perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got. It transcends every day party politics, acting – if I may borrow a line from the Spanish constitution – as the living embodiment of Great Britain. I believe that it would take a scandal of mammoth proportions before the British public would even consider getting rid of it. No matter what the republicans say.