The monarchy you could argue is not meritocratic or classical liberal, but to have someone politically neutral to offer my patriotism to is much preferred.
Here I will offer a personal perspective. Anybody who doesn’t like such things need not read on. This is chiefly for my own purposes anyway, to collate my thoughts.
This post prompts in me a feeling of ambivalence, which I think might be the typical disposition of an Englishman in matters of patriotism. I am self-educated in Marxism, which caused the scales to drop from my eyes pretty early on. I accept the power and force of Marx’s historical materialism as an epoch-changing perspective. I don’t venerate the nation-state at all, and try as I might, I can’t quite shake off the Marxian mental framework and terms of reference in these matters – though I have had cause recently to undertake a critical reassessment of my views on this subject.
Is Britain ‘special’, of civilisational significance, in the sense that Rome once was? I think maybe we are, or were, and the decline (and what I see as the wilful destruction) of Britain in the racial and cultural senses cannot be seen as the fall of just another tin-pot country or outpost of international capitalism. Britain is a unique island nation, and the British people are genetically distinct with a story that stretches back thousands of years to the primitive age of Man. I am part of that story and cannot let that go.
I am now quite torn over the Monarchy. I have always been a convinced republican (or as I see it, Parliamentarian), but time has moderated my position as I have reflected more deeply on the subject and come to see the nuances involved in the subject and the historical reasons for having and retaining a monarchy.
I must be blunt in the matter of Elizabeth Windsor. I am not proud of our Queen. I think she has failed in her duties. It is true that her actual powers as a constitutional monarch may be severely circumscribed, and any public resistance on her part to mass immigration and other disastrous policies might have threatened the existence of the Monarchy itself, but I think she should have resisted anyway and sacrificed herself if necessary. She didn’t, and so – fairly or not – I think she will be remembered as one of our worst monarchs.
Am I right in believing that a certain Professor Kersey is trying to restore the monarchy of Belarus? It would be interesting to hear Sean Gabb’s or Keir Martland’s views.
Also I should point out that the now former heir to the Romanian Monarchy (should it be restored) is a British man who went to school in the North East. Check this out:
I do not regard Michael as the genuine King of Romania. I am more inclined towards the claim of the Carol II’s eldest son, Carol Lambrino, who won two court cases proving his legitimacy; these rulings have also withstood numerous appeals by “King” Michael. If the annulment of the marriage of Carol II and Zizi Lambrino was not legal, as it has been claimed, then Carol II’s subsequent two marriages were void, in which case “King” Michael is illegitimate (not that this issue would matter anyway as long as his elder half-brother, Carol Lambrino, was legitimate, as the courts have confirmed).
Carol Lambrino’s died in 2006 and his eldest son, Paul-Philippe Hohenzollern, would, in that case, have ascended to the Romanian throne. Hohenzollern has stated that he accepts Romania as a republic and has stood for democratic election. I believe this move, given that he would be the legitimate King, is tantamount to relinquishing the monarchy altogether according to the ground-breaking book The Entitlement to Rule. Similarly, I regard all claims to the Bulgarian throne to have died when the former King Simeon became the country’s elected Prime Minister; monarchy and acceptance of democratic/republican power cannot co-exist.
It is true that The Queen has, more or less, done nothing to reverse various acts and nastinesses – mostly emanating from the European Landmass – and the consequences of which we, her Subjects, now have to live. Either she was silently complicit, which I would like to doubt, or else she was “badly advised” on each occasion, which I would suggest is more probable.
She is the last English Monarch to have been privately tutored as opposed to being exposed to post-war-British schooling, so therefore she must have some firm grasp of proper joined-up-history. It is unimaginable that any teacher engaged to see to her education, at that time, would have told her any of today’s lies, which we who teach have to combat unfailingly. We see the baleful effects on us all, of her eldest son having been sent to places like Trinity, to do “Anthropology”, whatever that might be.
That said, I think we’d have been rather worse off today than we currently are, if, for example, Edward VIII had not been vouchsafed his amorous and marital misfortunes in 1936.
It is in the nature of a modern English (that is to say; the last 800 years) society that we agree to revere and respect a constitutional monarch – at least in name – who in turn agrees to the Law and is subject to it himself, and tries to uphold it, more or less. In name also, WE Tell HIM what the Law is, because we have known what it is, for centuries.
it was a very long process, almost two millennia, and finally we almost got there. But there were worms and beetles, many of which “came from outside”. And today, the worms and the beetles are winning.
Oy! I’m a Trinity man, too. Charlie Chump was mad before he ever went there; it isn’t Trinity’s fault.
But seriously… Have you considered a third possibility, that Lizzie is as much a victim of these goings-on as we all are? Perhaps she’s been blackmailed, or worse? That might help to explain her long-term quiescence.
I’m old enough to remember the Coronation in 1953, I was at school at the time. The nation celebrated in a way that few could imagine possible today. Twenty four years later, on the occasion of her silver jubilee in 1977, the celebrations were once again widespread and sincere.
But it wouldn’t happen today, and rightly so. No doubt that there would still be enough misguided sycophants to fill a few village halls or to wave their little flags down the Mall, but the great respect and love that the nation had for the Royal Family has largely been dissipated – and they deserve it to have been.
There are many reasons for this, some of which have been alluded to above, but chief among them must surely be that ‘her maj’ has betrayed us. She has betrayed us not once, but six times. Six times she has signed EU treaties that have effectively abolished our nation, and she broke her Coronation oath on every occasion.
There is a word for this, which I shall refrain from using, the reward for which in the past was something a long way from having God’s blessing conferred upon the perpetrator.
Two words, royalist and hope, cause him to throw up more than most. He reckons ‘King This’ and ‘Queen That’ spell hope and hope is the most hopeless of all human emotions. Snails have no time for hope. Those who suffer from hope do nothing but talk. Mostly they hope that things very obviously worsening will eventually turn out ok.
Oliver says that’s the reason he’s so often sick. He hates it that England, now owns hope but very little glory. It wasn’t always so he says – Oliver remembers when glory meant everything and hope was considered an expletive. People yelled at people who mentioned the word hope.
Although he’s very, very old, he’s a nice snail. He seems to be throwing up more than usual lately which is worrying. Poor little Oliver. If he was dead he’d be busy spinning in his grave.
Well said Charles G.
I was too was there – in The Mall with my father on leave from Hong kong in 1953,
What is so horrifying is that she carries on now as if nothing has happened even though challenged by the British Constitution Group to make amends for her failings.
In fact I deal quite extensively with the Queen breaking her coronation oath in my website http://www.camrecon.demon.co.uk.
In so doing I do explain that the convention that a “democratically elected government” can do as it likes, as did Heath,is very strong. If the Queen had refused to sign there would have been uproar from the media and politicians.
I put it like this in a letter to a newspaper recently: Instead of the Queen saying “Mr Heath, not only do the ancient laws of England forbid my transferring our sovereignty to a foreign power but also at my Coronation I promised the English people that I would govern according to “their laws and customs”, therefore on both grounds I cannot sign” she went ahead and signed. In so doing she made our laws and customs redundant. so, we want them back.
Readers might like this quote from the Belgian MP in Financial Times 21 June 2004:”Europe’s power is easy to miss. Like an “invisible hand” it operate through the shell (sic) of traditional political structures. The British House of Commons.,British law courts and British civil servants are still here, but they have become agents of the European Union, implementing European law. This is no accident. By creating common standards which are implemented through national institutions, Europe can take over countries without necessarily becoming a target for hostility”.
Gentlemen, we have lost our precious Common Law. European law reigns supreme including the EAW!! Also: Mr Gorbachev former Soviet leader said this”The most puzzling development during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western leaders to recreate the Soviet Union in Western Europe” Interesting, especially as we were told in 1970 that we had to be in the EC as a “bulwark against communism”.!!! so there. IT IS THAT SERIOUS,
I disagree that ‘Europe’ is some kind of foreign plot (not that I’m suggesting that’s exactly what you think). The truth is that the European Union is a domestic plot, in all its Member States, to internationalise government and remove democratic decision-making from populations via their national political structures. If we leave the European Union, this will not affect the type of decisions made, since all the elites in the Member States are of much the same background and attitude, though it will possibly open the way for more fundamental change in the future.
Regarding Elizabeth Windsor, I’m tempted to draw the same tentative conclusions as those above who, I think rightly, speculate that the problem with Missus Windsor is more to do with her personal qualities and that she has not been maliciously involved in any designed scheme to destroy the country.
What we have is a doormat for a Monarch. I have stood near her, ‘in real life’, so to speak. I expected to tremble, but she has no presence at all. It dawned on me that she is basically just an amiable non-entity – a perfect, unwitting tool for certain people. She looks like one of these old women from a small town in the Scottish Borders, who drives a Land Rover, enjoys the outdoors and maybe works as a Tupperware agent for extra cash. Not just physically weak but also intellectually weak, with fairly inoffensive political views of the kind found in a liberal/left-wing Tory aristocrat. Her personal qualities make her pliable. Her disposition is unfortunately not suitable for a Monarch during these times. Notice how she is constantly lauded and praised for her Stoicism and ‘dignity’, her supposed ‘impartiality’, and her God-fearing Calvinist faith, etc. and so on, but these attributes are convenient for those who have an agenda of rail-roading the country’s institutions into submission to a corporate and internationalist agenda.
[quote]”If the Queen had refused to sign there would have been uproar from the media and politicians.”[unquote]
My guess is that she would have had to abdicate, with the public reason given that she was ‘ill’. She would then have been replaced with her eldest son, Prince Charles.
Interestingly, shortly after Elizabeth Windsor’s accession, Parliament passed the Regency Act 1953, which codified the regency arrangements to apply in the event the Monarch was too ill or too young to reign, updating the 1937 Act. The heir apparent was Prince Charles, at the time a minor, and it must have been thought necessary to put in place contingent measures for a young female monarch of child-bearing age, circumstances that were not addressed in the earlier Regency Act of 1937. What’s interesting about it is that prior to 1937, all Regency Acts were enacted to cover specific situations.
The 1937 Act deals not just with regency arrangements, but also with the succession. I had always assumed that it is Parliament that formally decides such things as regency and the succession ad hoc, and Parliament does retain this power in that it remains able to pass further legislation repealing or amending existing codified laws, but Parliament seems to have codified these powers with rules to apply generally in Acts of Parliament, meaning that specific decisions about who is to reign are no longer made by MPs ad hoc, but determined by pre-fixed rules.
I draw no firm conclusions from this, I just wonder why it was thought necessary to generalise the statutory regency provisions and also codify the rules of succession. This seems to be part of a broader trend for Parliament, which is supposed to run the country, giving away its powers to others: whether it’s domestic Ministers and civil servants or international bodies. Has Parliament put the real power (or say) over regency and succession in the hands of Government Ministers and civil and Crown servants and other people of influence (albeit with the ability to claw the powers back)?
In much the same vein, we also now have the Succession to the Crown Act 2013, which introduced absolute primogeniture, removing preference for the male line. Again, why? Was it just what it appears to be: an empty-headed equality measure, or something more sinister?
The Queen performs her role as constitutional monarch almost flawlessly. I think criticisms of her in the spirit of what you said above are really misdirected criticisms of the institution of constitutional monarchy, which is tellingly described as “crowned republicanism”. If the Queen is an amiable, pliable, harmless doormat, it is only because she is supposed to be.
Perhaps her detractors should offer a solution. Republicanism proper? Absolute monarchy? I am rather favourable to the executive monarchies of Monaco and Liechtenstein.
Sorry of chap or old girl since you wish to hide behind anonymity. You were quite right. She is a crowned republican (see Bagehot quote on my website) What she is NOT is a constitutional monarch because if she were this thing would have been impossible. By that I mean the law should have forbidden Her to do what she did. In fact She did it though the law DID forbid it.
Why? Because it was required of her – as you correctly say – by what we are persuaded to call “democracy” . In m humble opinion a PROPER constitutional monarch is one who is bound by the law, which law ensures the separation of powers between the three institutions, so that no law may be passed without the consent of the three separate and FREE institutions. None of the three institutions are FREE: the Queen has to do as she is told (by Convention NOT law) The Commons is whipped by the party whips to toe the party line,and the Lords has limited powers and is .also whipped in part, save the Cross Benchers. It ought to be very difficult for legislation to be passed – it is not and as a result legislation is churned out, to the detriment of our liberty. ]
All this is done under duress from a certain group of people but this site does not permit to say who is responsible though the evidence is overwhelming.
Ignoring the aspect of duress which drives everything, the reason it is all like this is due to our false “democracy” or should I say “elective dictatorship” (Hailsham) which is the conspiracy’s way of keeping us trapped without realising it. (“divide and rule” – set one section of society against another- see my website home page cartoon. ) ALL political PARTY (sic)manifestos are “packages” and as soon as you vote for any part of that manifesto you HAVE to have the rest of it. So, they persuade you to vote and in so doing you handover your liberty to the government, which has a policy on everything under the sun. When you vote for a PARTY (sic) you are deemed to have consented to the whole package even though you have no idea or care what is in the rest.The result is totally binding because the government can they say it has the mandate of the people.
Hence the EU. Work it out for yourselves. It is not difficult, If you say “liberty is the freedom to accept or reject one policy at a time” and use that as your yardstick versus a party manifesto you see what the trap is. Simple as that.but devilishly subtle.
[quote]”The Queen performs her role as constitutional monarch almost flawlessly.”[unquote]
I agree. The Queen performs her role as a doormat almost flawlessly, but this is not what she is supposed to be.
Constitutional monarchy is, I’m afraid, a much misunderstood concept, not least by Elizabeth the Worst herself. As you know, a constitutional monarchy simply means that the monarch reigns within the constraints of constitutional laws. This stands in contrast to an absolute monarchy, in which the monarch reigns and rules in a way that is much less constrained by law, and maybe even without a rule of law at all (though in reality there will be numerous practical constraints on even an absolute monarch’s actions).
However a constitutional monarchy does not mean the things that conservatives think it means. It doesn’t mean that the Queen ought simply to do as the government of the day wishes. The power to veto parliamentary bills remains entirely constitutional, albeit susceptible to public feeling in the more democratic climate that exists today, and the government of the day, and Parliament, serve the Queen, not the other way round.
The existence of a democratic climate in modern society is often used as the basis for suggesting that, in practice, a veto can no longer be exercised in the Westminster system, but the notion is misconceived. The argument actually points in the opposite direction. Certainly a vetoing Monarch would have to take account of democratic scruple, but this itself is entirely consistent with how things have always been. The Monarch, as the embodiment of the Crown ( a distinct institution to the Monarch), is the representative of the people’s will. Even a despotic Monarch cannot last in the long-run without, at the very least, broad public acquiescence.
Constitutional conservatives and traditionalists are often little more than bastardised liberals when it comes to these issues. They are forever occupied with the conveyor belt status quo and the mores of the time, and will even defend treason and neglect if it is in line “with the way things should be properly done”, whatever that means at whatever moment in time it is. The misunderstanding about constitutional monarchy, and all this nonsense about ‘crowned republics’, is a perfect example of the way the conservative mind works and its susceptibility to manipulation by enemies who want to destroy the country by manipulating and twisting simple ideas and concepts.
I disagree with your assertion that Britain has a system of “crowned republicanism”. I know what you are getting at, but the concepts of a ‘crowned republic’ (which I will assume is what you mean by ‘crowned republicanism’) and a ‘constitutional monarchy’ are two different things, are not quite aligned, and should not be conflated.
We are still a monarchy. We still have the basic principle of a fusion of powers (in contrast to the republican principle of a separation of powers). I accept we have some of the superficial characteristics of a republican system, but the basis of a constitutional monarchy is still there. The Queen, as ‘Crown-in-Parliament’, still delegates political authority to Peers, Members of Parliament and her Ministers, etc. She has not given those powers away.
[quote]”Perhaps her detractors should offer a solution. Republicanism proper? Absolute monarchy? I am rather favourable to the executive monarchies of Monaco and Liechtenstein.”[unquote]
The solution would have been for the Queen to do her duty and refuse to give Royal Assent to the relevant Acts of Parliament. A bill of abdication would have almost-certainly followed, but at least by sacrificing herself she would have set an example. I am also not certain that public outrage would have followed a veto or attempted veto of, say, the European Communities Bill. The point is that a veto would have been entirely constitutional and would have at least prompted a debate.
For the above reasons, I think Elizabeth Windsor is out of her depth. I think a suitable position for her would have been something like secretary of the Kelso Tupperware Society. That’s more Missus Windsor’s level in life. That would be right up her street, I imagine. She could even open a nice little shop up there: “The Tupperware Queen”, or some such. And with that chippy husband of hers, she could go round the Cumbrian flea markets, flogging the stuff. There would be time for horse racing and various country pursuits.
Quite a nice lady really. I can’t take her seriously as a monarch, however.
Pretty much so, Sir. The fact that we gathered 1/2 million signatures on our petition to the Queen in the belief that, to use a cricketing term, she was a long stop was a bitter appointment. The fact that she did not refuse to sign also disappointing. Our right to petition the Crown signifies that the monarch IS constitutionally entitled is entitled to listen to our wishes and not that of the government. I repeat – the problem is this “worship” of democracy which far too many of us believe is the best thing since sliced bread and “aren’t we lucky to have the vote”!! However, I do believe that a constitutional monarch (operating under the law) includes the separation of powers so that the three institutions are FREE to disagree, agree or to take note of the wishes and liberties of the people according to law – the Common Law of the people!! That is why we have trial by jury and “jury nullification” or “legal democracy” so that if a government gets too powerful the individual may be acquitted by a jury, no matter what the judge directs as to the law. This follows the famous William Penn case, well-known to barristers but kept rather hush hush as we would not want the plebs to defy the government, now, would we?
Question: what Oath will Charles take should he ascend the Throne?
Elizabeth the Worst ignores letters and petitions from her humble peasant subjects. It would be beneath her to reply to members of the unwashed masses with their really quite awful provincial sensibilities and bigoted views.
Writing to or petitioning Missus Windsor is thus a waste of time – and a waste of good paper.
How nice for the Establishment that they have managed to keep her alive all this time.
[quote]”However, I do believe that a constitutional monarch (operating under the law) includes the separation of powers so that the three institutions are FREE to disagree, agree or to take note of the wishes and liberties of the people according to law – the Common Law of the people!!”[unquote]
The three main branches of government can disagree, but I personally don’t consider that a formal separation of powers applies in Britain on the whole. I do accept that the judiciary has become more separate in recent years due to constitutional reforms, and it’s probably fair to say that we retain a fused legislature and executive, but the judiciary is now largely separate (though whether the judiciary can be said to be truly ‘independent’ is another matter). However, this is still a fused system and not characteristic of a system with a formalised separation of powers. There is also another factor has to be considered.
In Britain, we have a fourth branch of government that is rarely mentioned and often overlooked: the Crown. The Crown is distinct from the British Monarchy, from the Queen herself, from the state and from any branch of government, though it does overlap these. This is possibly a unique system of government. It is from the Crown that all legitimacy and authority in government flows and derives. Judges act in the Queen’s name, as do Magistrates, military officers, Crown servants, etc. Others act under delegated authority from the Monarch: namely civil servants, MPs, Government Ministers, salaried criminal prosecutors, and so on. This is a fused system. It requires a collective folk identity.
‘The Crown’ can be seen crudely as just another phrase for ‘The People’, and though this is not strictly accurate, it’s useful analogically for understanding the situation. We might say that the Crown is acting under the will of the people by default in the sense that we, the People, choose not to overthrow whomever is the present Monarch (the Monarch being the individual who embodies the Crown). Thus the Crown is the source of all legitimate political and legal authority in the country, and it cannot really be said that we have a ‘separation of powers’ in the classical republican sense.
A system in which all power is derived from the Crown requires a collective folk identity. In its proper form, there are no political and civil rights, as such, for the most part, as we now understand the concept. Instead, the limits of government are defined and everything that falls outside government’s remit is liberty. This works because everybody is genetically similar and related and shares a racial and ethnic bond. The Monarchy is the living embodiment of this bond, and represents the shared identity of the nation projected both into the distant past and, one hopes, the future.
The republican system works differently, in that philosophically everything starts with the individual, and there is no requirement for a shared identity in the folkish sense. Thus ‘rights’ are defined and circumscribed by man-made laws. The law is not just a statement of the limits of power and what officials cannot do, but must actively regulate relationships between people who do not share any common bond. In such a system, protections such as a formal separation of powers and a codified constitution become very important.
[quote]”Question: what Oath will Charles take should he ascend the Throne?”[unquote]
I think it will be much the same oath, but the problem is that there has been a desubstantiation of tradition and an attempt to make the monarchy entirely ceremonial in practice. The oath has been stripped of its meaning and heritage and is now just a form of words, rather like stanzas recited in a play that nobody pays serious heed or recognises.
Hello Neil. Thanks for the small bouquet.
Leaving aside the monarchy question, because in theory the monarch is one third of the governing but separate powers and should be made to obey the law or be punished,(Bring back the Barons of 1215?) “democracy” is the cow shit in the yard. We often hear our brainwashed politicians say “in this free and democratic country of ours” as if the two are synonymous.
May I try to prove why they are not. Democracy involves this dratted “package” manifesto system for which they want us to vote. Say you vote Labour (nice Mr Millband or Corbyn? take your pick) because you are passionate about the NHS. (me too since I use it occasionally) then unfortunately you have unwittingly consented to all the other rubbish,, including continued mass-immigration etc which they will throw at you (“rub their noses in diversity” Blair/Roche). So you try the Tories, etc etc or Lib Dems.same set up applies. It is a very clever trap. Even poor Russell Brand gets someone’s manifesto even though he refuses to vote. There is no opt out of the bits you do not like and without an opt out there is no control. i.e the lady who refused to pay her taxes over Blair’s attack on Iraq went to prison. Freedom, by one definition being the “ability to accept or reject one policy at a time” is the reason democracy is lethal crap.Democracy FORCES you to take the whole package!!! As dear old Oswald Spengler says on my website home page” The will to power operating behind a democratic disguise has so perfected its…. the most thorough-going enslavement ever”.
If anyone would like to know more about the “Simple Manifesto Trick” please e-mail me at martin.cruttwell@orange.fr. Just to whet your appetite.It is copyright in that you may not use any of it to make money but free to use it for political purposes. Your MP does not and cannot represent you. He/she is the representative of the Tory or Labour party etc and that is his/her official description.
You had better believe it. Now do you know why it is a waste of time writing to your MP. He can make “presentations” to the government for you. Otherwise, tough shit,mate. You have consented to the whole programme, that is what you get. Of course, there is an alternative………I would like to think. but you would have to be fiercely determined. I am to old otherwise I would be up front.
Hail our Queen in all her regalia! One foot in Canada, the other in Australia!
My pet snail’s just thrown up….
The monarchy you could argue is not meritocratic or classical liberal, but to have someone politically neutral to offer my patriotism to is much preferred.
I neglected to mention France among her possessions. Apologies to our frog-eating brethren.
Here I will offer a personal perspective. Anybody who doesn’t like such things need not read on. This is chiefly for my own purposes anyway, to collate my thoughts.
This post prompts in me a feeling of ambivalence, which I think might be the typical disposition of an Englishman in matters of patriotism. I am self-educated in Marxism, which caused the scales to drop from my eyes pretty early on. I accept the power and force of Marx’s historical materialism as an epoch-changing perspective. I don’t venerate the nation-state at all, and try as I might, I can’t quite shake off the Marxian mental framework and terms of reference in these matters – though I have had cause recently to undertake a critical reassessment of my views on this subject.
Is Britain ‘special’, of civilisational significance, in the sense that Rome once was? I think maybe we are, or were, and the decline (and what I see as the wilful destruction) of Britain in the racial and cultural senses cannot be seen as the fall of just another tin-pot country or outpost of international capitalism. Britain is a unique island nation, and the British people are genetically distinct with a story that stretches back thousands of years to the primitive age of Man. I am part of that story and cannot let that go.
I am now quite torn over the Monarchy. I have always been a convinced republican (or as I see it, Parliamentarian), but time has moderated my position as I have reflected more deeply on the subject and come to see the nuances involved in the subject and the historical reasons for having and retaining a monarchy.
I must be blunt in the matter of Elizabeth Windsor. I am not proud of our Queen. I think she has failed in her duties. It is true that her actual powers as a constitutional monarch may be severely circumscribed, and any public resistance on her part to mass immigration and other disastrous policies might have threatened the existence of the Monarchy itself, but I think she should have resisted anyway and sacrificed herself if necessary. She didn’t, and so – fairly or not – I think she will be remembered as one of our worst monarchs.
I am an ultra-monarchist-I want to see all republics restore theirs.
Am I right in believing that a certain Professor Kersey is trying to restore the monarchy of Belarus? It would be interesting to hear Sean Gabb’s or Keir Martland’s views.
Also I should point out that the now former heir to the Romanian Monarchy (should it be restored) is a British man who went to school in the North East. Check this out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Medforth-Mills
I do not regard Michael as the genuine King of Romania. I am more inclined towards the claim of the Carol II’s eldest son, Carol Lambrino, who won two court cases proving his legitimacy; these rulings have also withstood numerous appeals by “King” Michael. If the annulment of the marriage of Carol II and Zizi Lambrino was not legal, as it has been claimed, then Carol II’s subsequent two marriages were void, in which case “King” Michael is illegitimate (not that this issue would matter anyway as long as his elder half-brother, Carol Lambrino, was legitimate, as the courts have confirmed).
Carol Lambrino’s died in 2006 and his eldest son, Paul-Philippe Hohenzollern, would, in that case, have ascended to the Romanian throne. Hohenzollern has stated that he accepts Romania as a republic and has stood for democratic election. I believe this move, given that he would be the legitimate King, is tantamount to relinquishing the monarchy altogether according to the ground-breaking book The Entitlement to Rule. Similarly, I regard all claims to the Bulgarian throne to have died when the former King Simeon became the country’s elected Prime Minister; monarchy and acceptance of democratic/republican power cannot co-exist.
John Kersey claims the Belarusian throne as Czar-in-pretence.
It is true that The Queen has, more or less, done nothing to reverse various acts and nastinesses – mostly emanating from the European Landmass – and the consequences of which we, her Subjects, now have to live. Either she was silently complicit, which I would like to doubt, or else she was “badly advised” on each occasion, which I would suggest is more probable.
She is the last English Monarch to have been privately tutored as opposed to being exposed to post-war-British schooling, so therefore she must have some firm grasp of proper joined-up-history. It is unimaginable that any teacher engaged to see to her education, at that time, would have told her any of today’s lies, which we who teach have to combat unfailingly. We see the baleful effects on us all, of her eldest son having been sent to places like Trinity, to do “Anthropology”, whatever that might be.
That said, I think we’d have been rather worse off today than we currently are, if, for example, Edward VIII had not been vouchsafed his amorous and marital misfortunes in 1936.
It is in the nature of a modern English (that is to say; the last 800 years) society that we agree to revere and respect a constitutional monarch – at least in name – who in turn agrees to the Law and is subject to it himself, and tries to uphold it, more or less. In name also, WE Tell HIM what the Law is, because we have known what it is, for centuries.
it was a very long process, almost two millennia, and finally we almost got there. But there were worms and beetles, many of which “came from outside”. And today, the worms and the beetles are winning.
Oy! I’m a Trinity man, too. Charlie Chump was mad before he ever went there; it isn’t Trinity’s fault.
But seriously… Have you considered a third possibility, that Lizzie is as much a victim of these goings-on as we all are? Perhaps she’s been blackmailed, or worse? That might help to explain her long-term quiescence.
I’m old enough to remember the Coronation in 1953, I was at school at the time. The nation celebrated in a way that few could imagine possible today. Twenty four years later, on the occasion of her silver jubilee in 1977, the celebrations were once again widespread and sincere.
But it wouldn’t happen today, and rightly so. No doubt that there would still be enough misguided sycophants to fill a few village halls or to wave their little flags down the Mall, but the great respect and love that the nation had for the Royal Family has largely been dissipated – and they deserve it to have been.
There are many reasons for this, some of which have been alluded to above, but chief among them must surely be that ‘her maj’ has betrayed us. She has betrayed us not once, but six times. Six times she has signed EU treaties that have effectively abolished our nation, and she broke her Coronation oath on every occasion.
There is a word for this, which I shall refrain from using, the reward for which in the past was something a long way from having God’s blessing conferred upon the perpetrator.
For those interested my snail’s name’s Oliver.
Two words, royalist and hope, cause him to throw up more than most. He reckons ‘King This’ and ‘Queen That’ spell hope and hope is the most hopeless of all human emotions. Snails have no time for hope. Those who suffer from hope do nothing but talk. Mostly they hope that things very obviously worsening will eventually turn out ok.
Oliver says that’s the reason he’s so often sick. He hates it that England, now owns hope but very little glory. It wasn’t always so he says – Oliver remembers when glory meant everything and hope was considered an expletive. People yelled at people who mentioned the word hope.
Although he’s very, very old, he’s a nice snail. He seems to be throwing up more than usual lately which is worrying. Poor little Oliver. If he was dead he’d be busy spinning in his grave.
Well said Charles G.
I was too was there – in The Mall with my father on leave from Hong kong in 1953,
What is so horrifying is that she carries on now as if nothing has happened even though challenged by the British Constitution Group to make amends for her failings.
In fact I deal quite extensively with the Queen breaking her coronation oath in my website http://www.camrecon.demon.co.uk.
In so doing I do explain that the convention that a “democratically elected government” can do as it likes, as did Heath,is very strong. If the Queen had refused to sign there would have been uproar from the media and politicians.
I put it like this in a letter to a newspaper recently: Instead of the Queen saying “Mr Heath, not only do the ancient laws of England forbid my transferring our sovereignty to a foreign power but also at my Coronation I promised the English people that I would govern according to “their laws and customs”, therefore on both grounds I cannot sign” she went ahead and signed. In so doing she made our laws and customs redundant. so, we want them back.
Readers might like this quote from the Belgian MP in Financial Times 21 June 2004:”Europe’s power is easy to miss. Like an “invisible hand” it operate through the shell (sic) of traditional political structures. The British House of Commons.,British law courts and British civil servants are still here, but they have become agents of the European Union, implementing European law. This is no accident. By creating common standards which are implemented through national institutions, Europe can take over countries without necessarily becoming a target for hostility”.
Gentlemen, we have lost our precious Common Law. European law reigns supreme including the EAW!! Also: Mr Gorbachev former Soviet leader said this”The most puzzling development during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western leaders to recreate the Soviet Union in Western Europe” Interesting, especially as we were told in 1970 that we had to be in the EC as a “bulwark against communism”.!!! so there. IT IS THAT SERIOUS,
I disagree that ‘Europe’ is some kind of foreign plot (not that I’m suggesting that’s exactly what you think). The truth is that the European Union is a domestic plot, in all its Member States, to internationalise government and remove democratic decision-making from populations via their national political structures. If we leave the European Union, this will not affect the type of decisions made, since all the elites in the Member States are of much the same background and attitude, though it will possibly open the way for more fundamental change in the future.
Regarding Elizabeth Windsor, I’m tempted to draw the same tentative conclusions as those above who, I think rightly, speculate that the problem with Missus Windsor is more to do with her personal qualities and that she has not been maliciously involved in any designed scheme to destroy the country.
What we have is a doormat for a Monarch. I have stood near her, ‘in real life’, so to speak. I expected to tremble, but she has no presence at all. It dawned on me that she is basically just an amiable non-entity – a perfect, unwitting tool for certain people. She looks like one of these old women from a small town in the Scottish Borders, who drives a Land Rover, enjoys the outdoors and maybe works as a Tupperware agent for extra cash. Not just physically weak but also intellectually weak, with fairly inoffensive political views of the kind found in a liberal/left-wing Tory aristocrat. Her personal qualities make her pliable. Her disposition is unfortunately not suitable for a Monarch during these times. Notice how she is constantly lauded and praised for her Stoicism and ‘dignity’, her supposed ‘impartiality’, and her God-fearing Calvinist faith, etc. and so on, but these attributes are convenient for those who have an agenda of rail-roading the country’s institutions into submission to a corporate and internationalist agenda.
[quote]”If the Queen had refused to sign there would have been uproar from the media and politicians.”[unquote]
My guess is that she would have had to abdicate, with the public reason given that she was ‘ill’. She would then have been replaced with her eldest son, Prince Charles.
Interestingly, shortly after Elizabeth Windsor’s accession, Parliament passed the Regency Act 1953, which codified the regency arrangements to apply in the event the Monarch was too ill or too young to reign, updating the 1937 Act. The heir apparent was Prince Charles, at the time a minor, and it must have been thought necessary to put in place contingent measures for a young female monarch of child-bearing age, circumstances that were not addressed in the earlier Regency Act of 1937. What’s interesting about it is that prior to 1937, all Regency Acts were enacted to cover specific situations.
The 1937 Act deals not just with regency arrangements, but also with the succession. I had always assumed that it is Parliament that formally decides such things as regency and the succession ad hoc, and Parliament does retain this power in that it remains able to pass further legislation repealing or amending existing codified laws, but Parliament seems to have codified these powers with rules to apply generally in Acts of Parliament, meaning that specific decisions about who is to reign are no longer made by MPs ad hoc, but determined by pre-fixed rules.
I draw no firm conclusions from this, I just wonder why it was thought necessary to generalise the statutory regency provisions and also codify the rules of succession. This seems to be part of a broader trend for Parliament, which is supposed to run the country, giving away its powers to others: whether it’s domestic Ministers and civil servants or international bodies. Has Parliament put the real power (or say) over regency and succession in the hands of Government Ministers and civil and Crown servants and other people of influence (albeit with the ability to claw the powers back)?
In much the same vein, we also now have the Succession to the Crown Act 2013, which introduced absolute primogeniture, removing preference for the male line. Again, why? Was it just what it appears to be: an empty-headed equality measure, or something more sinister?
The Queen performs her role as constitutional monarch almost flawlessly. I think criticisms of her in the spirit of what you said above are really misdirected criticisms of the institution of constitutional monarchy, which is tellingly described as “crowned republicanism”. If the Queen is an amiable, pliable, harmless doormat, it is only because she is supposed to be.
Perhaps her detractors should offer a solution. Republicanism proper? Absolute monarchy? I am rather favourable to the executive monarchies of Monaco and Liechtenstein.
Sorry of chap or old girl since you wish to hide behind anonymity. You were quite right. She is a crowned republican (see Bagehot quote on my website) What she is NOT is a constitutional monarch because if she were this thing would have been impossible. By that I mean the law should have forbidden Her to do what she did. In fact She did it though the law DID forbid it.
Why? Because it was required of her – as you correctly say – by what we are persuaded to call “democracy” . In m humble opinion a PROPER constitutional monarch is one who is bound by the law, which law ensures the separation of powers between the three institutions, so that no law may be passed without the consent of the three separate and FREE institutions. None of the three institutions are FREE: the Queen has to do as she is told (by Convention NOT law) The Commons is whipped by the party whips to toe the party line,and the Lords has limited powers and is .also whipped in part, save the Cross Benchers. It ought to be very difficult for legislation to be passed – it is not and as a result legislation is churned out, to the detriment of our liberty. ]
All this is done under duress from a certain group of people but this site does not permit to say who is responsible though the evidence is overwhelming.
Ignoring the aspect of duress which drives everything, the reason it is all like this is due to our false “democracy” or should I say “elective dictatorship” (Hailsham) which is the conspiracy’s way of keeping us trapped without realising it. (“divide and rule” – set one section of society against another- see my website home page cartoon. ) ALL political PARTY (sic)manifestos are “packages” and as soon as you vote for any part of that manifesto you HAVE to have the rest of it. So, they persuade you to vote and in so doing you handover your liberty to the government, which has a policy on everything under the sun. When you vote for a PARTY (sic) you are deemed to have consented to the whole package even though you have no idea or care what is in the rest.The result is totally binding because the government can they say it has the mandate of the people.
Hence the EU. Work it out for yourselves. It is not difficult, If you say “liberty is the freedom to accept or reject one policy at a time” and use that as your yardstick versus a party manifesto you see what the trap is. Simple as that.but devilishly subtle.
[quote]”The Queen performs her role as constitutional monarch almost flawlessly.”[unquote]
I agree. The Queen performs her role as a doormat almost flawlessly, but this is not what she is supposed to be.
Constitutional monarchy is, I’m afraid, a much misunderstood concept, not least by Elizabeth the Worst herself. As you know, a constitutional monarchy simply means that the monarch reigns within the constraints of constitutional laws. This stands in contrast to an absolute monarchy, in which the monarch reigns and rules in a way that is much less constrained by law, and maybe even without a rule of law at all (though in reality there will be numerous practical constraints on even an absolute monarch’s actions).
However a constitutional monarchy does not mean the things that conservatives think it means. It doesn’t mean that the Queen ought simply to do as the government of the day wishes. The power to veto parliamentary bills remains entirely constitutional, albeit susceptible to public feeling in the more democratic climate that exists today, and the government of the day, and Parliament, serve the Queen, not the other way round.
The existence of a democratic climate in modern society is often used as the basis for suggesting that, in practice, a veto can no longer be exercised in the Westminster system, but the notion is misconceived. The argument actually points in the opposite direction. Certainly a vetoing Monarch would have to take account of democratic scruple, but this itself is entirely consistent with how things have always been. The Monarch, as the embodiment of the Crown ( a distinct institution to the Monarch), is the representative of the people’s will. Even a despotic Monarch cannot last in the long-run without, at the very least, broad public acquiescence.
Constitutional conservatives and traditionalists are often little more than bastardised liberals when it comes to these issues. They are forever occupied with the conveyor belt status quo and the mores of the time, and will even defend treason and neglect if it is in line “with the way things should be properly done”, whatever that means at whatever moment in time it is. The misunderstanding about constitutional monarchy, and all this nonsense about ‘crowned republics’, is a perfect example of the way the conservative mind works and its susceptibility to manipulation by enemies who want to destroy the country by manipulating and twisting simple ideas and concepts.
I disagree with your assertion that Britain has a system of “crowned republicanism”. I know what you are getting at, but the concepts of a ‘crowned republic’ (which I will assume is what you mean by ‘crowned republicanism’) and a ‘constitutional monarchy’ are two different things, are not quite aligned, and should not be conflated.
We are still a monarchy. We still have the basic principle of a fusion of powers (in contrast to the republican principle of a separation of powers). I accept we have some of the superficial characteristics of a republican system, but the basis of a constitutional monarchy is still there. The Queen, as ‘Crown-in-Parliament’, still delegates political authority to Peers, Members of Parliament and her Ministers, etc. She has not given those powers away.
[quote]”Perhaps her detractors should offer a solution. Republicanism proper? Absolute monarchy? I am rather favourable to the executive monarchies of Monaco and Liechtenstein.”[unquote]
The solution would have been for the Queen to do her duty and refuse to give Royal Assent to the relevant Acts of Parliament. A bill of abdication would have almost-certainly followed, but at least by sacrificing herself she would have set an example. I am also not certain that public outrage would have followed a veto or attempted veto of, say, the European Communities Bill. The point is that a veto would have been entirely constitutional and would have at least prompted a debate.
For the above reasons, I think Elizabeth Windsor is out of her depth. I think a suitable position for her would have been something like secretary of the Kelso Tupperware Society. That’s more Missus Windsor’s level in life. That would be right up her street, I imagine. She could even open a nice little shop up there: “The Tupperware Queen”, or some such. And with that chippy husband of hers, she could go round the Cumbrian flea markets, flogging the stuff. There would be time for horse racing and various country pursuits.
Quite a nice lady really. I can’t take her seriously as a monarch, however.
Pretty much so, Sir. The fact that we gathered 1/2 million signatures on our petition to the Queen in the belief that, to use a cricketing term, she was a long stop was a bitter appointment. The fact that she did not refuse to sign also disappointing. Our right to petition the Crown signifies that the monarch IS constitutionally entitled is entitled to listen to our wishes and not that of the government. I repeat – the problem is this “worship” of democracy which far too many of us believe is the best thing since sliced bread and “aren’t we lucky to have the vote”!! However, I do believe that a constitutional monarch (operating under the law) includes the separation of powers so that the three institutions are FREE to disagree, agree or to take note of the wishes and liberties of the people according to law – the Common Law of the people!! That is why we have trial by jury and “jury nullification” or “legal democracy” so that if a government gets too powerful the individual may be acquitted by a jury, no matter what the judge directs as to the law. This follows the famous William Penn case, well-known to barristers but kept rather hush hush as we would not want the plebs to defy the government, now, would we?
Question: what Oath will Charles take should he ascend the Throne?
Elizabeth the Worst ignores letters and petitions from her humble peasant subjects. It would be beneath her to reply to members of the unwashed masses with their really quite awful provincial sensibilities and bigoted views.
Writing to or petitioning Missus Windsor is thus a waste of time – and a waste of good paper.
How nice for the Establishment that they have managed to keep her alive all this time.
[quote]”However, I do believe that a constitutional monarch (operating under the law) includes the separation of powers so that the three institutions are FREE to disagree, agree or to take note of the wishes and liberties of the people according to law – the Common Law of the people!!”[unquote]
The three main branches of government can disagree, but I personally don’t consider that a formal separation of powers applies in Britain on the whole. I do accept that the judiciary has become more separate in recent years due to constitutional reforms, and it’s probably fair to say that we retain a fused legislature and executive, but the judiciary is now largely separate (though whether the judiciary can be said to be truly ‘independent’ is another matter). However, this is still a fused system and not characteristic of a system with a formalised separation of powers. There is also another factor has to be considered.
In Britain, we have a fourth branch of government that is rarely mentioned and often overlooked: the Crown. The Crown is distinct from the British Monarchy, from the Queen herself, from the state and from any branch of government, though it does overlap these. This is possibly a unique system of government. It is from the Crown that all legitimacy and authority in government flows and derives. Judges act in the Queen’s name, as do Magistrates, military officers, Crown servants, etc. Others act under delegated authority from the Monarch: namely civil servants, MPs, Government Ministers, salaried criminal prosecutors, and so on. This is a fused system. It requires a collective folk identity.
‘The Crown’ can be seen crudely as just another phrase for ‘The People’, and though this is not strictly accurate, it’s useful analogically for understanding the situation. We might say that the Crown is acting under the will of the people by default in the sense that we, the People, choose not to overthrow whomever is the present Monarch (the Monarch being the individual who embodies the Crown). Thus the Crown is the source of all legitimate political and legal authority in the country, and it cannot really be said that we have a ‘separation of powers’ in the classical republican sense.
A system in which all power is derived from the Crown requires a collective folk identity. In its proper form, there are no political and civil rights, as such, for the most part, as we now understand the concept. Instead, the limits of government are defined and everything that falls outside government’s remit is liberty. This works because everybody is genetically similar and related and shares a racial and ethnic bond. The Monarchy is the living embodiment of this bond, and represents the shared identity of the nation projected both into the distant past and, one hopes, the future.
The republican system works differently, in that philosophically everything starts with the individual, and there is no requirement for a shared identity in the folkish sense. Thus ‘rights’ are defined and circumscribed by man-made laws. The law is not just a statement of the limits of power and what officials cannot do, but must actively regulate relationships between people who do not share any common bond. In such a system, protections such as a formal separation of powers and a codified constitution become very important.
[quote]”Question: what Oath will Charles take should he ascend the Throne?”[unquote]
I think it will be much the same oath, but the problem is that there has been a desubstantiation of tradition and an attempt to make the monarchy entirely ceremonial in practice. The oath has been stripped of its meaning and heritage and is now just a form of words, rather like stanzas recited in a play that nobody pays serious heed or recognises.
Nice discussion, Tom and Martin.
Tom says: “Elizabeth the Worst ignores letters and petitions from her humble peasant subjects.” So does “my” MP.
Is there actually any real difference between monarchy and “democracy?”
Hello Neil. Thanks for the small bouquet.
Leaving aside the monarchy question, because in theory the monarch is one third of the governing but separate powers and should be made to obey the law or be punished,(Bring back the Barons of 1215?) “democracy” is the cow shit in the yard. We often hear our brainwashed politicians say “in this free and democratic country of ours” as if the two are synonymous.
May I try to prove why they are not. Democracy involves this dratted “package” manifesto system for which they want us to vote. Say you vote Labour (nice Mr Millband or Corbyn? take your pick) because you are passionate about the NHS. (me too since I use it occasionally) then unfortunately you have unwittingly consented to all the other rubbish,, including continued mass-immigration etc which they will throw at you (“rub their noses in diversity” Blair/Roche). So you try the Tories, etc etc or Lib Dems.same set up applies. It is a very clever trap. Even poor Russell Brand gets someone’s manifesto even though he refuses to vote. There is no opt out of the bits you do not like and without an opt out there is no control. i.e the lady who refused to pay her taxes over Blair’s attack on Iraq went to prison. Freedom, by one definition being the “ability to accept or reject one policy at a time” is the reason democracy is lethal crap.Democracy FORCES you to take the whole package!!! As dear old Oswald Spengler says on my website home page” The will to power operating behind a democratic disguise has so perfected its…. the most thorough-going enslavement ever”.
If anyone would like to know more about the “Simple Manifesto Trick” please e-mail me at martin.cruttwell@orange.fr. Just to whet your appetite.It is copyright in that you may not use any of it to make money but free to use it for political purposes. Your MP does not and cannot represent you. He/she is the representative of the Tory or Labour party etc and that is his/her official description.
You had better believe it. Now do you know why it is a waste of time writing to your MP. He can make “presentations” to the government for you. Otherwise, tough shit,mate. You have consented to the whole programme, that is what you get. Of course, there is an alternative………I would like to think. but you would have to be fiercely determined. I am to old otherwise I would be up front.