Edmund Burke was a great political thinker of the eighteenth century and one of his key tenets was that constitutional change should be gradual. As a result he is often used to support conservative policies, even though he approved of the American revolutionary principle of no taxation without representation. I would contend that the removal of so many of the monarchy’s powers over the past few centuries has been such as to render it of little use constitutionally and harmful ideologically. It would be a small step to abolish it now and one Burke, the great conservative thinker, might have approved of.
I start from the observational premise that conferring positions of state on hereditary grounds is childish and socially divisive. This is especially so in modern Britain where the monarchy is embedded in a ludicrous class system and accompanied by bowing and scraping of Lilliputian proportions.
You need pretty good reasons to carry on with an institution that starts off with such a handicap. The two most cited defences seem to revolve around money and the constitution.
First, the claim is often made that the British (and Northern Irish?) monarchy does tradition and ceremony very well and brings in a lot of tourism money. I don’t have figures on the amount of cash we get from royal-related tourism. Indeed no one has since we don’t know how many overseas visitors who visit Buckingham Palace and other royal inspired events (none of which, by the way, depend on having a sitting monarch) would have visited the UK in any case. Moreover, do we really want to be seen as an outdated nation stuck in the past that is dependent on showing off outdated pomp and ceremony to get by. Perhaps just as important is that anyone who has visited, for example, the daily Wagah border ceremony on the India Pakistan crossing will have seen a thrilling display of colourful swagger with a large crowd participating to the full. Compare that with the changing of the guard which only a few people at the railings can see and the British ability to put on a show is seen as the empty boast it really is. As an Indian visitor said to me as we watched in frustration a line of soldiers on horseback disappear from view, “Why are they having it in there when we’re all out here?”
But whatever people think about this facet of the argument the will often say we need the monarchy because otherwise we would have the horrors of a President Blair or a President Johnson. This is to misunderstand the constitutional role of the monarch as head of state. In modern times this has in essence reduced to two functions: to sign bills passed by Parliament so that they can become law and, secondly, to appoint the prime minister. I believe neither of these functions is carried out by the Swedish royal family and there is certainly no need for them to be here. On the matter of signing bills into law it is commonly conceded that no British (and Northern Irish) monarch has the power to refuse to do this. If that is so then anyone could perform this duty. More to the point, why on earth does it need to be signed if the Speaker of the House of Commons is satisfied that the bill has indeed passed: it is an utterly unnecessary administrative ritual.
Now we come to the role of the monarch in appointing the prime minister. From time to time this can be a real power. There was some doubt, for example, as to whether the Queen should have called on Sir Alex Douglas-Home to have first dibs at forming an administration in 1963 when Macmillan resigned, and the Conservative party lacked a clear method for selecting its leader in such circumstances. More notorious still was the actin of the Queen’s representative in Australia replacing the elected Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam in 1975 with the Leader of the Opposition who was unable to command a majority of the lower house. These two examples show that this is a real power and that it may have to be wielded again in circumstances that are hard to predict. At present the procedure for dealing with such a crisis have been set out in a memorandum put together some years ago by the Head of the Civil Service and one of the chief flunkies at the Palace. It may have been passed into law since them, I’m not sure. Whether or not that is the case we have a procedure for dealing with such a situation: why should it be carried out by an hereditary monarch for heaven’s sake. What would be wrong with someone with a bit of democratic legitimacy or legal expertise carrying out this duty. The Speaker of the House of Commons or the President of the Supreme Court spring readily to mind.
So, if there are no constitutional reasons for maintaining this divisive hereditary institution, why would we continue with it, especially since various of its members have demonstrated such human weaknesses over the last few years. It is by and large a hollow office that is based on an unacceptable class system: where it seeks to exercise any power whatsoever such powers should be removed from its harmful reach. Would a modern-day Burke argue against this?
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