A queen dies. What changes?
I'm not even really much of a democrat or republican. I just really don't trust the "Windsors".
Queen Elizabeth 2 is dead. No surprise, she was very old and, even with the extremely tight media management that we see working so well just now, the palace was unable to entirely conceal her health issues in recent months. We knew this was coming.
For the most part she lived a life of extreme luxury and privilege and, given the power she had in British life, did very little for her subjects. She and, as far as I can tell from the behavior of her mostly media-interested relatives, did the job and had little to offer otherwise.
Some who know me might peg me as an anti-monarchist republican democrat. As a young person that might have been the case. But I’m not young any more and haven’t been for a long time. And it’s been clear since the ancients that democracies generally degenerate into oligarchies. It’s also obvious that it would be possible, if perhaps unlikely, for a monarch to govern better than Truss, Johnson, Starmer, Trump or Biden. (For the politics of the liberal democracy you know best, please comment below. Do these complaints sound consonant or foreign?)
It’s one thing to hate these ghastly “Windsor” people and entirely another to insist that democratic republics are superior to monarchies.
To make this argument more real, let’s go through a thought experiment, an exercise in fantastical imagination, just to see where it gets us.
Imagine Prince William was a strong-willed man with a good and true moral compass, so unafraid to make his meeting with destiny that he doesn’t care if he is beheaded if he fails. In this fantasy….
Prince Billy goes to the new King Charles 3 and says that if he doesn’t abdicate tomorrow then he will spill the beans. Chas 3 knows what that means and agrees. King Billy then refuses Truss’s parliament opening speech without the following change: nationalize electricity and gas generation and distribution and control prices so they are affordable to all.
Truss of course objects on the grounds that the monarch in the UK is a purely ceremonial role. Billy responds saying that he will take his policy agenda to the people. Truss may be an idiot but few people are so idiotic they can’t see that’s a fight they lose so she agrees.
Now, if that were to go down then I’d be a monarchist and a supporter of King Billy for at least as long as he keeps this up. It may be unlikely but it is at least theoretically possible for a monarch to be an empathetic and kind person who cares about the lives of the people in the sovereign domain. This is more than can be said for most modern politicians.
Given the above, it seems I’m not actually much of a believer in the ideological superiority of liberal democracy over monarchy. I care about the material conditions of people’s lives. And I am not so much of an idealist or theorist that I will look a gift monarch in the mouth.
But what are the chances? Pifft. William is, after all, a Windsor. So what can we realistically expect? Fuqall.