One of the long standing arguments against British Republicanism (and, by extension, Scottish Republicanism in a post-Independence Scotland on the current prospectus) is that the monarch has no actual power.
To quickly deal with a few other arguments:
- Nobody actually comes to the UK to see the Queen, she isn’t publicly accessible at Buckingham Palace. We could use it for other things, like housing the homeless.
- Yes, it will mean that we need to come to an accommodation about the current Crown estates and other assets. That’s ok. They didn’t earn them. Those assets were acquired illegitimately through violently undemocratic means. There’s a national debt somebody mentioned we have to deal with and surely it’s better to appropriate unearned wealth that should be held for the nation from the ultra-rich rather than punish the least well off and ruin the economy?
- The head of state being head of an established national church is clearly problematic in a multi-religious nation, never mind the rise of secularism, agnosticism and atheism .
- Yes, the Queen is very old and does a lot of public engagements. So what?
Leaving aside those and other arguments against a constitutional monarchy, such as the inherent injustice and preservation of unearned privilege, the absence of real power has always been one of the central arguments on the pro-monarchy side. It is an argument which is now demonstrably false. A series of stories in the Guardian have exposed that, far from the legally inert and ceremonial role the Queen and her heirs and successors are said to enjoy since the mid 70’s (between the Australian constitutional crisis and the rather murky goings on around Alec Douglas-Home she played a role in appointing the executive up until then), the monarchy has clearly continued to play some sort of active part in government legislation and policy up until… errr… now.
The “oh, but they don’t really do anything, it’s purely ceremonial” argument prioritises the admittedly useful political and legal fiction of the dignified part of government over the varied and often unclear, vague and nebulous alternatives presented. Admittedly most of the alternatives have drawbacks: an effective President either elected or selected by lot undermines the supposed legitimacy of the Prime Minister (those of an avowedly Nationalist bent can substitute First there and carry on regardless); a Prime/First Minister accountable to no one save the legislature they control by definition may grow over mighty; a ceremonial President changes little in practice except the abolition of the hereditary principle although I’d argue that this would be worth the candle in and of itself.
The fact the monarchy does do things, and apparently does so with notable frequency and vigour, rather torpedoes that argument for inertia.
However, the current situation has by and large served us well. An elected President, on either the Franco-American or German-Italian models, would fundamentally change the way the country works. One selected by lot, while appealing to my Erisian sensibilities, doesn’t really change much. And it is actually quite useful to have a Crown which, in the idealistic conception advanced by constitutional monarchists, acts as a proxy for the best interests of the people.
Those who protect us from threats mundanely domestic and exotically foreign do so in the name of Her Majesty. The civil servants and elected members who write the laws and the police officers, tax inspectors, lawyers, judges and prison officers who enforce them serve the Crown. They do these things not in the name of the government of the day, although obviously they are accountable to them to a greater or lesser extent.
One of the things that being a programmer has taught me is that when you have a functioning system, and you don’t want to disrupt your existing users unnecessarily, small incremental improvements are better than rewriting from scratch. Given that the Royalist argument that the monarchy doesn’t actually play a role in the government is clearly untrue (and disregarding the counter argument that who cares, they theoretically could and that’s not ok) but removing them would mean unpicking some fairly useful conventions a simple solution occurs to me.
Keep the crown, dispense with the wearer.
If the monarchy doesn’t play a (fundamentally undemocratic) part in government that won’t affect things. If she does play an undemocratic part in government removing her is a clear win. She does, her heirs and successors will. Time to be rid.
#1 by Commenter on January 21, 2013 - 9:26 am
So are we talking… Animatronics?
#2 by Doubting Thomas on January 21, 2013 - 11:57 am
There is the Swedish model where the crown exists as a ceremonial point but all formal and informal powers have been removed so there is no trip on a Tuesday to the palace to brief the monarch and so on. I can live with this and with, as you say, all the prerogative powers and privileges removed.
Failing that, I rather hope that Kronprinz Karl will be the ending of it; if not, when his son succeeds we will be stuck with them whether alone or in a UK.
#3 by BM on January 21, 2013 - 1:21 pm
I’m a bit confused by exactly what Aidan is proposing here, but I think what he’s suggesting is that we become like the Kingdom of Hungary between WWI and WWII, or Spain under Franco, where the position of King/Queen exists, but no monarch has been selected (I’m sure the association with dictatorships is purely coincidental).
I believe it is useful and desirable to distinguish between a Head of State and Head of Government, and that each of these roles should be occupied by someone capable of agency. I like the Swiss model, whereby the entire membership of the Federal Council are considered to be the collective Head of State. Perhaps it might be useful to resurrect (not literally) the “Guardians of Scotland” in a similar fashion to the Swiss Federal Council, who act as Head of State on behalf of the people while the position of Monarch is (perpetually) vacant.
#4 by Gryff on January 22, 2013 - 7:49 pm
Call it a privy council? Give it the power to act on behalf of the Crown, set out the powers it has, and the circumstances it exercises them, and staff it with relevant worthies ex officio. I’d have no problem with staffing it with ex politicians, former FMs and POs perhaps, as long as they were not the only members.
#5 by Craig Gallagher on January 21, 2013 - 7:57 pm
There is historical precedent for an elected monarch, which might neatly get at the interstice between your proposed solutions. The Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth both convened councils to elect a head of state in the eighteenth century whose power was largely ceremonial (especially in the case of the former, since the Empire was never actually a state). Denuded of all actual power by then, the Emperor or King of Poland-Lithuania nevertheless became a useful defence against the charge of republicanism, the adoption of which back then was enough to bring the full might of the Bourbons and the Habsburgs down upon your head.
Obviously, republicanism is now the order of the day in Europe but that doesn’t mean that a more palatable solution to the Crown-In-Parliament wouldn’t be the Crown-By-Parliament. In other words, empowering the legislature to elect an heir, rather than having it be hereditary, when Lizzie, Queen of Scots pops her clogs.
In fact, the 1703 Act of Security passed by the Scottish Parliament explicitly gave the Scottish Parliament the power to choose and impose limits on the successor to Queen Anne (who died in 1714, post-Union and therefore rendering the Act meaningless). Such an action would not be historically unseemly by the sitting legislature when Lizzie ceases to go on, endlessly. If we must have monarchy, we at least needn’t inflict another King Charles on ourselves (the previous two having now exactly been Scottophiles).
#6 by Indy on January 21, 2013 - 10:43 pm
Is there any reason why the monarch has to be human?
I just throw that out there.
I mean, if people are impressed by a cat merely playing a piano …….
#7 by Grahamski on January 22, 2013 - 7:56 am
What does having a head of state who is there only because of who their parents are say about that state?
We don’t need a head of state.
#8 by Topher Dawson on January 22, 2013 - 8:32 am
We could privatise the Scottish monarchy, and award a fixed term contract of say 7 years to the best bidder, specifying the number of public appearances, ships launched, etc. Free accommodation at Holyrood and all the Scotch pies they can eat. Proven ability to ride a bicycle a must.
Then invite tenders from the houses of Stewart, Romanoff, Connery, Connolly, and Windsor.
England has done this at least twice in the past when the existing monarch was unable to produce heirs.
I’ve always thought that having a purely ceremonial head of state frees the First/Prime Minister to actually run the country, and as long as the monarch has no real powers, who cares?
#9 by Indy on January 22, 2013 - 11:49 am
Yes on a serious level that is what I see as the issue. An elected head of state would inevitably end up being some kind of rival to the head of government. People may argue that does not happen elsewhere and maybe it doesn’t but this is Scotland.
A head of state who is purely ceremonial but is intelligent, charming and pleasant and generally able be an ambassador for Scotland and promote the country is what I would like to see. Shereen Nanjiani would be rather good at it I think if she ever decided to retire from journalism. Or, to show I have no party prejudice, Liz Cameron who was formerly Lord Provost of Glasgow has all the attributes necessary for the job.
#10 by peter on January 22, 2013 - 11:18 am
if we’re going to have a monarchy, why don’t we go the whole hog and have pluto, mickey mouse and the rest of these Walt Disney characters
#11 by Doug Daniel on January 22, 2013 - 1:16 pm
The only problem I can see with having an elected president is the fact that we only ever seem to hear about presidents from presidential or semi-presidential republics. We know all about the US president, a fair bit about the French president, and we sometimes at least hear about the presidents of the Latin American countries. All exercise executive power, which we don’t want, because we want the leader of parliament to be the head of government.
But why is it, as is so often the case, that we ignore the working example right on our doorstep, across the Irish Channel? I’d be happy with a president like Ireland.
Or here’s an idea that takes a few of other folk’s suggestions together. Why not have a Presidential Lottery (or Monarchy Lottery), where anyone who fancies being the (ceremonial) head of state buys a ticket, and the winner is selected from a tombola? This would solve the problem of presidents tending to be ex-statesmen who might try to politicise the role. We just make some random person our representative to the world – just to highlight the fact that no one is better than anyone else in Scotland, and all people are equal (until they become president and go on to live a life of semi-celebrity afterwards.)
It’d be a good laugh. And if anyone’s worried that we’d end up with someone with completely undesirable views representing us, just remember – we already have Prince Phillip, the daft racist.
#12 by Gryff on January 22, 2013 - 6:52 pm
If we had to have a president, or possibly if we were starting a state from whole cloth, and had no precedents to follow, I think I would be tempted by the German model.
Otherwise, if we are going to pick a figurehead in a daft way, what is wrong with the traditional daft way?
#13 by Doug Daniel on January 23, 2013 - 2:41 pm
Well, the main problem is nobody “chooses” with the traditional daft way!
#14 by David Lee on January 22, 2013 - 2:27 pm
I quite like the idea of, post-independence, remaining the Kingdom of Scotland but leaving the throne vacant. An elected Guardian could act as a ceremonial head of state, with a nice nod to Scotland’s history.
#15 by Douglas on January 22, 2013 - 3:06 pm
I have long thought that any elected presidential figure for Scotland should be offically named ‘Guardian of Scotland’. it’s a nice nod to history and the constitution can state, using historical precident, that the Guardian is elected ‘until such a time that a monarch is appointed’, a time of course, which is commonly understood never to arrive – the position of monarch will be left perpetually vacant, but we can still continue to be styled a kingdom, as a nod to historical continuity.
#16 by Doug Daniel on January 22, 2013 - 3:07 pm
Actually, we should make this guy the King: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz,_Duke_of_Bavaria
#17 by David Lee on January 22, 2013 - 9:38 pm
We could make the Guardian sit beside the vacant throne like the Steward of Gondor…