God Save The King

[Oexmelin]

I figured there was zero chance of him not conveying it on William.... why would he not?  In an attempt to placate Welsh republicans?

Oh, that he would recreate the title was pretty much a given. I was wondering if he would let some time pass before doing so (though probably not four years, as was the case for himself).

[Barrister]

I figured there was zero chance of him not conveying it on William.... why would he not?  In an attempt to placate Welsh republicans?

Oh, that he would recreate the title was pretty much a given. I was wondering if he would let some time pass before doing so (though probably not four years, as was the case for himself).

If I was the Royals I'd give it a bit of time just so it could be it's own "thing" in the media, rather than get lost in the funeral or coronation.

[Oexmelin]

If I was the Royals I'd give it a bit of time just so it could be it's own "thing" in the media, rather than get lost in the funeral or coronation.

The investiture will probably play that role.

[Sheilbh]

Ok, but then what is wrong with a Presidential system (even though it wouldn't be my preference)? The way I see it the only thing stopping a PM from acting like a US president is reluctance to do so.

Also I saw this as a semi-related conversation was happening on Twitter by people who know a lot more than me, apparently there's a bit in a book by Giovanni Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering, where he discusses how the US is the only long term successful Presidential system and suggests it's because "the American people are determined to make it work"

[Tamas]

Ok, but then what is wrong with a Presidential system (even though it wouldn't be my preference)? The way I see it the only thing stopping a PM from acting like a US president is reluctance to do so.

I think these are all standard reasons for a parliamentary system to be honest. I think you basically are at risk of ending up with referendums every four years for the soul of the nation - France and America for the forseeable are deciding for Trumpism or Le Penism v an alternative. I don't think that's great because I think they might win if they haven't already. Which matters because in a presidential system the ceremonial stuff, the relationship with the military, the speaking for the nation side of things is entangled with that political figure - in a parliamentary system (whether constitutional monarchy or republic) you separate that out from politics. So the "sentimental loyalty" doesn't go to the leader of a political faction - they are interchangeable (or as the Queen told Ted Heath, "you're expendable"). Hate Johnson as much as you like he can't pretend or try to embody Britain while the Queen's on the stage, or now the King.

Also I think presidents with power and a direct electoral mandate are and should be really difficult to get rid of, because they have that direct mandate. So there is a bit more of a crap shoot about it, while in a parliamentary system they're easy to replace (as we've seen - and in the post-war era only Attlee and Wilson I think came to and were removed from power by an election). In theory you should be able to get rid of the bad ones - though this hasn't recently worked in the US - but there's not really a solution for an incompetent president until the next election.

The other point is about how you balance powers which I think requires attention in a system with a powerful president. Personally I think if you're going to do it you should follow the French and create a system that gives clear precedence to one branch and reinforces that. I think if they are equal there are always risks of different branches with legitimate claims to power conflicting or deadlock between branches, both of which have been common in those systems and normally end with either a coup or one branch taking over.

I can't really agree with that. We can't move from "the monarch has no influence" to the monarch being the balance of power.

I also think parliamentary elections are perfectly fine for fighting for the soul of a nation. In the UK mean increasingly far right Tories keep winning so maybe that's the soul of this nation. In Poland there is no Presidential system but the soul of the country has very much been in stake, even more so in Hungary.

And on the other hand its not like monarchs could stop dictators from creeping up.

And, frankly, are we REALLY going to point at the USA and France from Britain and say they have had a more chaotic, unpredictable, self-damaging political life in recent years?

Monarch is an outdated system keeping on high pedestal ideas woefully in direct opposition to what otherwise is (should be) the very basis of modern democracies.

[crazy canuck]

As an outsider, my perspective is the value of the Commonwealth was primarily in being "something" to put in place of the outright Imperial form, a way for countries to have true independence but still feel a shared sense of belonging to something bigger. I think that was probably important through the 1950s and 1960s, especially, not every country in the Commonwealth is Canada / Australia / New Zealand, i.e. stable, rich, Western countries with firm institutions long before the Commonwealth was created. It probably felt as an important binder during WWII for sure.

I think in that sense it's probably best understood as a "transitional" vehicle, and in most respects has exhausted its core purpose. Which is fine. I am not convinced any of its members or the country whose monarch is its head, gets any vast benefit from it. The UK likely gets much bigger benefit from its more powerful intelligence and military alliance structures with former colonies (like the Five Eyes) than it does the Commonwealth.

I think in terms of the monarchy, it would be a good move for countries like Australia / Canada / New Zealand to move away from it. I know less about all the other countries involved, but it seems like the Caribbeans are mostly keen to move away from it which is reason enough to do it. The anglo countries seem to get along fine with Governor Generals already, I think the last one to have any controversy related to their role was in Australia some 40 or 50 years ago, right? Otherwise that system seems to work fine for having a mostly inoffensive apolitical person holding some constitutional reserve powers.

I think Britain going to a Republic would be more difficult which means I am a little less warm to that despite my natural antipathy towards monarchy. I worry that almost anyone who could be picked as an apolitical Head of State would potentially lead to more division between the constituent countries of the UK, and the monarchy as it is constituted right now has an almost unique role with deep ties to all the constituent countries. I think the British legal and constitutional system is also a little more cumbersomely tied into many of the organs of monarchy, which obviously is fixable, but with perhaps more trouble than you'd see in Australia or Canada.

The Commonwealth has been a meaningless concept for at least a couple of decades now.  The concept of the Commonwealth is not connected with whether the Monarch should continue to be the head of state.  Removing the Crown from our constitution, laws, traditions and norms would be absurdly difficult to accomplish - and for what?  There is also the problem of the risk that any replacement would become political.  No one in Canada wants to emulate the American system. 

[Sheilbh]

I can't really agree with that. We can't move from "the monarch has no influence" to the monarch being the balance of power.

I wasn't meaning monarchy v presidentialism. I meant a powerful presidential system (France, US, Turkey) v a parliamentary system whether with a constitutional monarch or a more limited president (UK, Germany, Ireland).

It's not about monarchy - personally I'd rather a system like the German or Irish president where they have a very limited constitutional role and are normally respected figures who are expected to be broadly non-partisan.

I also think parliamentary elections are perfectly fine for fighting for the soul of a nation. In the UK mean increasingly far right Tories keep winning so maybe that's the soul of this nation. In Poland there is no Presidential system but the soul of the country has very much been in stake, even more so in Hungary.

Absolutely. No constitution matters they're all pointless. All that matters is the political culture and willingness of the people to keep a system going.

My point is that by design presidential systems have a candidate A v candidate B to be head of state, commander in chief etc every electoral cycle. I don't think you could design a system better to eventually result in polarisation over who speaks for/is the nation. It is or should be easier if you remove the symbolic stuff from politics to have real political fights between different views without turning opponents into enemies.

And, frankly, are we REALLY going to point at the USA and France from Britain and say they have had a more chaotic, unpredictable, self-damaging political life in recent years?

In relation to the US, yes. I think Trump is far more worrying. On France - and Italy, I'd add - not yet, but I think the popular social unrest we've seent here and the real possibility of a post-fascist is far more dangerous than Brexit Britain.

It is a very unpopular opinion but ultimately I think the past six years were the system working as it should. It's just my side lost, repeatedly. But it was democratic and validated with multiple democratic events. Democracy can be chaotic, unpredictable and  self-damaging because it is about how you contest competing visions and ideologies. It is a way of making social and regime change without violence. A system defined by stability, order, progress is probably not particularly free.

What I would say is that when I look at the choice voters were given since the war, with a couple of exceptions I think they probably got it right the vast majority of times.

Monarch is an outdated system keeping on high pedestal ideas woefully in direct opposition to what otherwise is (should be) the very basis of modern democracies.

Oh couldn't agree more. They should be exiled absolutely - I don't agree with monarchy.

But my preferred model is still fundamentally parliamentary just with a president who is not engaged in day to day politics.

The Commonwealth has been a meaningless concept for at least a couple of decades now.  T

As I say I agree - but new countries are joining. Countries that are kicked out want back in (South Africa, Pakistan, Fiji). Republican leaders say it has value. I don't know how or what it is or why anyone is interested but it makes me think there must be something - part of me wonders if it's just one of those rare international forums where it's not a club of countries that are relatively similar?

[OttoVonBismarck]

In Africa and Asia, I think British colonialism (which is mostly what I was talking about), actually introduced things like literacy, modern medicine, infrastructure, and most importantly a sort of free market business and legal climate and certain conceptions of rights and liberties that have been helpful throughout the last 150 odd years. It was not without flaws.

It was not without flaws is a understatement.

Britain wasn't interested in mass education and providing mass access to modern medicine. The colonies were run on the cheap and in terms of human capital investment, the focus was on military training of loyal local units and educating small cadres of locals to fill subordinate positions.  Infrastructure investment followed the same principle - the focus was on projects that served the imperial interests or the interests of British investors in country. 

I don't believe I ever spoke to motivation, one of the things that I personally think has worked well for the British and to some extant the American "system" of economic development is it was not central government driven. There were divergent groups advocating for and pushing various things. Sometimes a byproduct of capitalist interests would be development that had lasting benefits, sometimes not.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Commonwealth has been a meaningless concept for at least a couple of decades now.  The concept of the Commonwealth is not connected with whether the Monarch should continue to be the head of state.  Removing the Crown from our constitution, laws, traditions and norms would be absurdly difficult to accomplish - and for what?  There is also the problem of the risk that any replacement would become political.  No one in Canada wants to emulate the American system.

I don't think it would be that hard, you just declare the office of Governor General has legal equivalence to the former sovereign.

I'm confused about "No one in Canada wants to emulate the American system", is that just part of your psychopathic need to attack the United States, if so whatever. But I clearly never suggested anything remotely like that, what I said was the Anglo democracies do fine with Governor Generals fulfilling most of the role of the monarch and could pretty easily just switch to that as the entire thing.

[Barrister]

The Commonwealth has been a meaningless concept for at least a couple of decades now. 

Mostly meaningless, but I agree.

At least it's more meaningful than La Francophonie.

The concept of the Commonwealth is not connected with whether the Monarch should continue to be the head of state.

Agreed.

Removing the Crown from our constitution, laws, traditions and norms would be absurdly difficult to accomplish - and for what?  There is also the problem of the risk that any replacement would become political.  No one in Canada wants to emulate the American system.

Absurdly difficult?  It would require a constitutional amendment.  I was just looking at the Constitution Act 1867 - it has 53 references to the Queen.  I feel like a team of lawyers could bang out a replacement text over a weekend removing references to the Queen.

But a Constitutional Amendment takes 7/50 as you well know.  While I don't think it would be impossible to get agreement on replacing the monarchy, once you touch the constitution you'd have to resist the urge to start tinkering with other areas.  And once you do that the whole thing will fall apart spectacularly.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The U.S. system has "worked" because it is a culture built on private locuses of power as opposed to government ones, to some degree that was the core dispute between Patriots and Loyalists in the Revolution, and was the core dispute between the Hamilton and Jackson wings of the polity forever after.

That's also why the concept of the Trumpists being a risk to American democracy is, imo, and always has been, massively overblown. Their side winning is not really going to be an end to democracy, it will just be a rollback of government power to restrain private locuses of power. Most of the serious misdeeds in American history have involved private power that government allows to happen--much of the campaign to dispossess and steal land from the Native Americans was actually through private endeavors. The government was regularly signing treaties to stop it, and then doing nothing to stop private endeavors to violate those treaties. Slavery was perpetuated by private landowners. Jim Crow was almost wholly perpetuated by private business owners, and where government was involved, it was generally local governments especially school boards.

The real risk of Trumpism is a return to the time when private powers were more able to suppress the non-powerful (at least, more so than they can right now.)

[Barrister]

I don't think it would be that hard, you just declare the office of Governor General has legal equivalence to the former sovereign.

Definitely not that easy.

Again, I've been looking at our Constitution Act - in particular the sections I normally never look at (in my line of work only really concerned with the Charter of Rights).  It's spelled out right in section 9:

9 The Executive Government and Authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen.

There are many other sections that speak of doing things "in the Queen's name", but it's in black and white that the buck stops with the monarch.

Now an interesting side question of whether it might be easier to just name a new, Canadian monarch, but I don't think that's what anyone's really going for.

So what we'd need to do is pass a constitutional amendment.  If there's general consensus in Canada that wouldn't be that hard, but it's a lot more than just a declaration passed in Parliament.

[crazy canuck]

The Commonwealth has been a meaningless concept for at least a couple of decades now. 

Mostly meaningless, but I agree.

At least it's more meaningful than La Francophonie.

The concept of the Commonwealth is not connected with whether the Monarch should continue to be the head of state.

Agreed.

Removing the Crown from our constitution, laws, traditions and norms would be absurdly difficult to accomplish - and for what?  There is also the problem of the risk that any replacement would become political.  No one in Canada wants to emulate the American system.

Absurdly difficult?  It would require a constitutional amendment.  I was just looking at the Constitution Act 1867 - it has 53 references to the Queen.  I feel like a team of lawyers could bang out a replacement text over a weekend removing references to the Queen.

But a Constitutional Amendment takes 7/50 as you well know.  While I don't think it would be impossible to get agreement on replacing the monarchy, once you touch the constitution you'd have to resist the urge to start tinkering with other areas.  And once you do that the whole thing will fall apart spectacularly.

Yeah, that is what I was getting at when I said it was absurdly difficult - I think non-Canadians like Otto don't appreciate what disaster awaits as soon as we start talking about any constitutional reform, and that is not even considering the difficulty of acquiring enough support to amend.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, because in America we trivially change our constitution, and it never causes any problems.

But I think you're both being fairly pollyannaish, the Queen has served no real constitutional role in Canadian society and what you're quibbling about are literally matters of wording. The Governor General's title could be transposed for "monarch" in every spot it appears in the constitution, and you'd be perfectly fine.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, because in America we trivially change our constitution, and it never causes any problems.

But I think you're both being fairly pollyannaish, the Queen has served no real constitutional role in Canadian society and what you're quibbling about are literally matters of wording. The Governor General's title could be transposed for "monarch" in every spot it appears in the constitution, and you'd be perfectly fine.

No need for sarcasm.  You suggested it would be easy to do.  I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you did not appreciate how impossible the task really is.  Your second paragraph indicates you still have little understanding how difficult it would be to amend our constitution.  It is NOT simply a question of changing a few words here and there.