From a democratic/ideological perspective you might be right.
On the other hand, having a royal family it cute -- doesn't that count for something :)
I live in Denmark where we also pay the royal family some money, few privileges, etc..
My personal pocket philosophy is that the money we pay the royal family is the cost of a peaceful transformation to democracy.
A revolution like the French isn't free or without risks. Paying off the monarchy for generations to come is quite possibly cheaper.
A revolution would have incurred negative growth, and it's entirely possible that our economy would have been marginally smaller today, had we opted for a violent revolution.
Would be fun to see if anyone did that math? :)
In any case, if paying a bit of money and respect was the cost of a peaceful adoption of democracy it might have been worth it.
Just look to Syria, paying Assad an absurd amount of money to take a ceremonial role would probably have been a lot cheaper, and less risky.
Emphatic no from me on that one.
On the one hand, most of the physical tourist attractions could be maintained without monarchy actually owning or inhabiting them - indeed, the tourism value of Buckingham Palace would perhaps be improved if you could actually go inside.
On the other hand, perhaps that would ruin the mystique - and the mystique is certainly worth something too, as the wedding of William and Kate is estimated to have generated several billion pounds in tourist revenue all by itself, which is enough to pay for several decades of monarchy.
Versailles is one of the most visited places in the world. Having no royal people in there makes zero difference to that.
We could have the tourism without the actual royals, 100% no problem there
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/991925/visitors-palace-o...
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/373081/uk-royal-tourism-...
These are not the sorts of places that people typically visit on overseas holidays more than once. So once the ticket has been bought, whether or not it is "an actual royal palace" is irrelevant.
Of course people like to feel the glamour of being close to the mystique of living wealth, but once an attraction is firmly on the circuit it hardly matters. See Tower of London, Blenheim Palace, Edinburgh Castle, Hampton Court Palace, etc.
According to Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, Buckingham Palace would be around the 70th most visited attraction in the country, hardly a sign that you need a living monarchy to sustain tourism - https://www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=423
1. Versailles has a boatload of art in it and is massive.
2. Some rather dramatic things happened there.
Buckingham palace has plenty of art, but so does the V&A Museum.
And you can't re-create the historical drama and preserve stability.
Also see, from https://www.royal.uk/royal-finances-0
> The Crown Estate as a whole dates back from the time of the Norman Conquest.
In 1760, George III reached an agreement with the Government over the Estate. The Crown Lands would be managed on behalf of the Government and the surplus revenue would go to the Treasury. In return, the King would receive a fixed annual payment, which was called the Civil List. With effect from 1 April 2012, the Civil List was incorporated into a new system of funding referred to as the Sovereign Grant.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch. It cannot be sold by the Monarch, nor do any profits from it go to the Sovereign.
The Crown Estate is managed by an independent organisation, headed by a Board, and any profit from the Estate is paid every year to the Treasury for the benefit of all UK taxpayers. The Treasury is effectively the principle Government stakeholder and is kept informed of the estate’s overall business plans and strategies.
The Estates portfolio has a value of over £7.3 billion, from beef farms in the north of Scotland to Portland stone mining in Dorset. Windsor Great Park is the only Royal Park managed by the Crown Estate. All other parks are administered by the Royal Parks Agency.
Correct.
> “nor do any profits from it go to the Sovereign.”
Incorrect. Currently 25% of the Crown Estate’s profits are paid to the Monarch. This was raised from 15% in 2018, and is set to revert back to 15% in 2028.
”The palace, like Windsor Castle, is owned by the reigning monarch in right of the Crown. Occupied royal palaces are not part of the Crown Estate, but nor are they the monarch's personal property, unlike Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle.”
Occupied palaces, like Buckingham Palace, are owned by the reigning monarch ‘in right of the Crown’ (like you pointed out).
Similarly, the Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch ‘in right of The Crown’.
“In right of The Crown” means it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne.
So, you are correct (and I was wrong) that Buckingham is not part of the Crown Estate.
Notwithstanding this technicality, would you agree that the overarching point remains that it isn’t as if “the money goes to the monarch for their personal enjoyment” (which is what I interpreted you implied), but towards Buckingham renovations, which is a property of The Crown[1] (i.e the state) and which in turn is embodied by the reigning monarch.
It sounds to me as if the monarch is like a custodian/shepherd of these assets for the benefit of the state (the crown).
Being able to make laws helps with that.
Only because of Hollywood accounting.
Tourists don't come to England to see the Queen. Tourists can't see the Queen. Tourists come to see the Palace. The Queen doesn't own Buckingham Palace. The government does. If the Queen were to disappear tomorrow, tourists would still come to England to see Buckingham Palace.
Sure, but that's the metric you need to go by if you want to evaluate the tourism value of a "living" monarchy.
That tourists would continue to exist with or without the queen doesn't really tell us anything useful. It's a question of how many.
You could merge them, South Africa-style if you wanted, but it's pretty unusual. Most parliamentary systems separate the two.
You don't want one person having both.
Its the main reason royals serve in the armed forces.
Why does the armed forces need to pledge allegiance to a person?
> In the UK, it's the monarch, not the government. That balance of power (military v political/legislative) gives you national stability.
I don't think there's much evidence of that.
> You don't want one person having both
Why not?
> Its the main reason royals serve in the armed forces.
The main reason the royals serve in the armed forces is that the royalty (and even the broader nobility) is a remnant of what is notionally a warrior elite that is traditionally barred from servile labor but has position of authority ultimately grounded in military function. The substance of both the authority and the distinct warrior class is almost entirely extinct, but traditions remain, including the tradition that it's pretty much the only thing that looks like work that senior royals are permitted to do, as anything else in government would be seen to violate their distance from that function and anything else would be seen as demeaning the monarchy.
Mind you - he was an officer and from a rather posh guards regiment so that's kind of what I would expect him to say.
Mind you - the UK can only have a standing army with the express permission of Parliament:
This requirement only seems to apply to British Army, the Navy and Air Force are exempt. W good example of how unimportant the pageantry is.
In contrast, the 'Royal' Navy was created expressly by the monarch so allegiance is implied.
Under the Westminster system of government, I cannot see any alternative to having a seperate head of state that is not part of the government, even if they do nothing more than wake up every 5 years, appoint a prime minister and go back to sleep again.
In a parliamentary system, the legislative body selects a head of government using a negative process, i.e. they choose the first best alternative that won't lose a vote of no confidence. You don't need 51% approval from parliament, you need to not get 51% disproval.
And depending on country, there are rules for in which order the various players are asked and how much time is allowed to pass for horse-trading and coalition-making, but generally the order is that you first ask the incumbent if they want to continue governing, and thereafter each party leader in order of size in parliament if they have an alternative that they think can pass a vote.
Also, in countries where coalitions are the norm, the various parties have aligned into blocks during the election campaign so that you can be reasonably certain that a vote for party A implicitly is a vote for their block.
We, here in the rest of the world, use a magic number to determine that. 51% (or 50% + 1).
Various factions horse trade until some coalition of parties has a majority, and then they rule as coalition. Members of both the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats had cabinet seats.
The main downside to this sort of process is that sometimes negotiations take a long time. Belgium spent nearly two years bickering over forming their coalition in 2010.
Form a coalition that does or have new elections. You can even set a timeline after an election for a coalition to be in place or new elections are mandated by law.
EDIT: which seems to have been introduced in 1993 and never removed :-/
Usually “smallest integer greater than 50%”, of which the other two are imperfect approximations.
Why do you need to have someone make a choice? Have a set timeline for one of the other to secure the support of a Parliamentary majority or new elections are called by operation of law.
It is however seldomly proven. Should that not be a requirement, like it is for the rest of us?
I think it's an interesting social experiment that may be worth the cost it requires to maintain.
Elsewhere, there are alternative viewpoints. The funny thing is that your proposed institution assumes the layman is the one who needs to be taught or reminded more often than not.
Ok, but how is that related to the political power of the monarchy?
I don't think tourists even know what powers the Queen actually holds.
The concept of personal property can perfectly accommodate of a limit in how much a individual person can personally own, especially in regard to the distribution of wealth in the whole population.
An Act of Parliament could just ascertain that the Windsors exempting each other from Inheritance tax was unlawful, and ask the new Republican Revenue & Tax office to assess 40% IHT on every historical generational transfer of assets.
Just redressing the historical injustices that the Windsors benefitted from would strangely make them much less rich.
Monarchy isn't a hot potato, that the current power-holder has to directly pass on lest it get "dropped on the floor" and cease to exist. Monarch is a belief of the people that a position of power exists and is "open" to be taken by a person with a claim on "right to rule." It's a thing you can convince people you deserve, at which point they put the crown on your head rather than shooting at you for wearing it. Succession gives a peaceful path for that transfer of power, but succession isn't the default; a power vacuum being grabbed at by random nobles—usually violently!—is.
If the current monarch stepped down, someone else without the same scruples would just step up. You'd have to, in effect, get every even-barely-theoretically-"righteous" noble to all agree to denounce the power, for the power to truly go away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rival_successions
Like there can be some guy living in another country who says "um, that monarchy no longer even exists" or "um, my ancestors lost that war a long time ago and I don't plan to reignite it", but still has some kind of association of enthusiasts who claim to actively want him on the throne. One such example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz,_Duke_of_Bavaria who insists that he doesn't actually think of himself as the King of England -- his relative who last actually exercised that position was deposed back in 1688 -- but that doesn't stop other people from thinking of him that way. :-)
Wikipedia has several dozen people listed in the official present-day line of succession to the British throne and notes that a genealogist has claimed to identify over 1,000 people in that line.
It's possible to imagine a France-like republican future for Britain in which people's elaborately detailed and extensively researched pretense claims are not very interesting news for the overwhelming majority of the population, but it probably wouldn't be something that would happen overnight in response to a couple of abdications when a huge number of British people and a substantial number of people with claims to the throne are actively enthusiastic about the monarchy.
In theory, it'd then be shared as belonging to the nation. In practice, you'd get the political class lining their pockets in the short term, and leaving us worse off in the long term.
Between letting successive populist governments have free reign over what happens to certain wealth, institutions and freeholdings and spunking it on policies during their 4 or 8 years in charge, and letting a somewhat stable (if sometimes self-serving) hereditary monarchy retain stewardship over the course of centuries - I'm inclined toward the latter.
Defending state supported inherited power, which has already shown to be corrupted and have abused that power, by saying it's "cute" is like saying pirates murdering and stealing are romantisised to being cute.
Don't confuse watching and enjoying Pirates of the Caribbean with thinking it's a good idea to murder and steal on merchant ships.
Russian oligarchs and mafioso also have their charm, but don't confuse The Godfather part II with a good idea.
And maybe one day it will be time to do away with it.. but it does have a cuteness factor to it.
And politicians are unlikely to want to burn political capital doing away with a popular cultural institution.
So as long as they behave, remain popular, I doubt the monarchy will go away.
And we've not even mentioned yet Prince Andrew's connections to Jeffrey Epstein, and how he's being allowed to get away with it because of his family.
I don't see it as cute, more as a cancer. Sometimes they are benign but you still want to get rid of it in-case it actually ends up killing you.
But I do agree with you that the concept of monarchy (hereditary power/wealth at taxpayers' expense) has run its course.
EU project is only partially compatible with monarchy, you either have the power or don't and monarchs can only slowly lose more and more power to bankers with time. Thus, the current anti monarchy trend in many countries of Europe would be expectable. British probably see it coming and jumped of the train.
Being exposed to the atrocities of /most/ (im no expert) modern day monarchs and being an arab in the middle east, i find it REALLY hard to call what they do cute, or something math and money could fix. These problems, even dänmarks, evolved through strife, injustice and corruption.
Monarchies are necessary as-long as the region needs them .. i see politics more like an evolutionary process where monarchy is part of a nations dev stages.
I actually wish you were right.
We now have a Queen, and the role of the monarchy is entirely ceremonial.
Back in 1849 the Danish king signed the constitution, making the role of the king ceremonial, and giving us democracy.
Sure, this was in the aftermath of the French revolution. And hadn't the Danish king signed away his power we would likely have had a revolution.
Yes, monarchy in it's original/natural form is horrific. It's essentially a dictatorship, no different. But I'd money and a ceremonial role can grease the wheels for a peaceful transition is that so bad?
In Britain they don't have a constitution the same way. But I see many events throughout british history where the crown gradually signed away power.
Not saying its bad, just saying they wont do it. Theyre already rich beyond imagining- sadism and abuse are rampant, and the public doesnt seem to care.
Like seriously, how much cash will it take to convince the saudis to go ceremonial? Meanwhile another gay person is hung and a dissident is assassinated. That all said .. seems to be what the region “wants” - displeasure isnt high enough yet for regular folk to demand change.
In arabic there is a saying “the people earn the ruler they deserve”.
Beyond the short term moral qualm .. its just a step in the development of these countries - it could - and i was - worse. Better wiser days will come.
But countries where the powers in charge are closely balanced enough that the transition away from a monarchy to something else slowly (maybe leaving the monarchy itself intact as in the UK) are much better than the ripping off the bandaid approach seen in Germany or France. Moderate political change is generally a better idea than radical change.
I'm not saying that's worth more than a fully functioning democracy, or that they couldn't monetise themselves, but I think this is what OP is referring to. Something can be both 'cute' and an ugly business.
If people want to go and look at the English and think that it is cute they can. But that shouldn't influence the local decision making.
And while nobody believes in that divine right nonsense any more, 99% of people who see the royals as corrupt and incompetent don't have anything better to say about our career politicians.
If the Queen had ever alienated the population the UK would have become a republic within a few years. Nobody actually thinks she rules anything which is why this article in the Guardian is news, and why it takes pains to point out how obscure this apparent veto actually is - apparently so obscure that even Parliamentarians themselves believe it's not used for anything!
I (name) do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that on becoming a British Citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law
After which the citizen is issued a passport by Her Majesty’s Passport Office.
If we compare and contrast with America, nobody needed to swear allegiance to Trump at the border. They let in a bunch of people who would have actively and publicly wanted him gone. One of these two countries is pretending that birth literally should confer special privileges.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/british-citizensh...
Reality: These things are actually more based in culture and tradition than law.
Spot on on the being based more on culture and tradition than law though.
Trump is not equivalent to the Queen in role. The Queen is supposed to be a figured head only, a bit like the American flag. That's why this news is controversial because it's an abuse of position.
Real power in the UK rests solely in the House of Commons.
The last monarch that forgot that publicly had their head cut off in 1649.
That fact is celebrated every opening of Parliament when they slam the door in the face of the Queen's representative Black Rod, exactly so that she remembers.
You might not like the unwritten rules that govern the UK but they've worked pretty well so far and have been malleable enough to be reformed whenever there's been a problem.
If you're a foreigner apparently you'll be pushed to the front for a good view.
Also cute!
I also forgot that if you think Queen Elizabeth II could be considered a tourist attraction in England you also have to think that public hangings are great and that Salman of Saudi Arabia is also a total babe.
What a silly comparison.
Royalty in Europe has abused their power. It's inherited corrupt power, that time and time again has shown that given this power they abuse it.
Is it the same? No. Just like how Anders Brevik is not as bad as Hitler.
But yeah, Anders Brevik's crimes are "cute".
Defending corruption and crimes because "at least it's not Saudi Arabia" is what's truly silly.
The implication that if you think the queen has touristic value you must also think that Andres Breviks crimes were great is just a silly false equivalency.
It’s possible to think that the queen has touristic value, could be considered cute, and probably needs to be further seperated from power, but I suspect that’s too much nuance considering we have already hit Godwin’s Law.
Well that's a straw man.
> It’s possible to think that the queen has touristic value, could be considered cute
It is. And one of the Boston bombers was considered cute. It has no baring on whether he's a good guy, or someone who should be stopped.
What we have in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Britain is a ceremonial monarchy. The article is about how queens assent still granted the crown some indirect power (mostly through access to politicians).
But in practice, the crown has very little power. And is a culture institution.
If the cost of peaceful transition to democracy, is paying the crown money for generations to come, and giving the crown a ceremonial role. The might be worth it, even if the current King is a murderous lunatic.
(Future kings will learn that the monarchy needs to be popular, or people will vote it out of existence)
Other parts of the royal family have claimed immunity when committing crimes (traffic violations), even though they don't actually have it.
So the king and his family have been abusing their power. It's a slap in the face of the whole country.
Look elsewhere in this thread for abuses of power from the British royal family. Also, you know, Prince Andrew…
Immunity from prosecution is hardly "some indirect ceremonial power", especially when it's has ACTUALLY been used to commit crimes and getting away with it.
Some are bringing up points on wealth and for me that feels like it stems from envy which is also pretty ugly. I postulate that striping the royals of wealth will make no one here materially better off.
It's an ad hominem attack, nonsensical, tired, and, as someone who has experienced a lot of wealth envy in the past, always strike me as so incredibly insincere.
This idea that criticism of wealth must be just down to envy is really quite a tired stereotype.
It makes even less sense when there's a hereditary class of people whose wealth and power is constitutionally guaranteed and, as we've discovered, who use corrupt means to maintain this by intervening in the lawmaking process to neutralise threats to their income.
It's not envy to realise that there must be a better system than this.
And it’s not like "civilization" was something one might really believe to stand on fairness, reciprocity and mutual care. That kind of things can survive in civilizations, and probably civilizations can’t survive themselves without leaving some room for these feelings.
It is possible to negotiate a deal where they have no power and get to keep their properties but they have to maintain it themselves.
Sure, it might be possible to get a better deal. Or it might not, is it worth the risk?
Giving a ceremonial role is a pretty solid carrot. And compared to violent revolution it's dirt cheap to offer :)
I'm sure it wasn't easy to convince the Danish king to sign the Danish constitution in 1849. It's not a given that it could have happened peacefully.
In the end, it might not last forever anyways. It'll last so long as the monarchy remains popular, because at the end of the day the votes can change the constitution.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Abney-Hastings,_14th...
Every single now living monarch sits on their throne because an ancestor of theirs took it from someone else. In this case, might makes right.
I'm looking at you, readers from Ireland and France. :) Have at it.
They've already had at it. The French in 1066 and the Irish have invaded Wales and Scotland. So have the Dutch, Germans and Scandinavians for that matter, it's time to give someone else a run.
A French or Irish monarch might also help bring UK back into the EU :)
Everyone's happy. Ireland and France have their democracies. England has its monarchy.
We can even draft a constitution with bounds on who can become monarchs. For example, they might need to be citizens of former British colonies. That might help keep the former colonies happy. Keep in mind both Ireland and most of France were, at one point, colonized by Britain (for France: See Hundred Years War, The Black Prince, and Joan d'Arc).
Edit: The election happened as the king before him had no heirs.
Well, Karl XIV became king because he was elected by parliament, and then Karl XIII formally adopted him to make him and his family royal, not the other way around.
Either way, his son and grandson both married women that were descendants of Gustav Vasa in an attempt to bolster their claims, and that guy definitely took the throne by force.
So yes, you're right in that not every current reigning monarch has their position due to conquest, but most of them. And then that doesn't really matter, because the point I was making is that "rightful" is actually bullshit, it's 100% made up. It's political theater created to make it harder for presumptive conquerors to keep a throne, even if they have the might necessary to take it.
You might probably buy far more and far better distributed amount of cuteness without a royal family.
> A revolution like the French isn't free or without risks. Paying off the monarchy for generations to come is quite possibly cheaper.
Nothing is without cost and risk. Keeping a royal family includes a cost and it rise the risk inherent with any concentrated political/wealth power. It is not absolutely safer on all regard to go for a different kind of government of course, it’s a different trade-off.
>A revolution would have incurred negative growth, and it's entirely possible that our economy would have been marginally smaller today, had we opted for a violent revolution.
First, one might be willing to destitute royal caste from its privileges without willing to shedding blood and make widespread violence arise. The question is, if the people decide by means of a referendum to get rid of privileges, will the privileged few accept without trying to use violence to maintain their position?
Actually in France, they are several pretender to the throne[1]. It’s just that virtually nobody care.
>Would be fun to see if anyone did that math? :)
Maths on what? Societies are complex systems with many parameters whose evolution is subject to the butterfly effect. You can throw numbers in-between to decorate any thesis you would like to defend, it doesn’t give it any meaningful scientific credibility.
> Just look to Syria, paying Assad an absurd amount of money to take a ceremonial role would probably have been a lot cheaper, and less risky.
You say that like there was some kind of strictly internal consensus in the people of Syria to go for what happened rather than paying Assad. That sounds like an absurdly simplistic exposition of reality.
[1] https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2019/07/08/qui-serait-l-...
How do you replace the people in power peacefully, if they don't want to go?
It generally works out best if you offer them a carrot.
My point was merely that if it avoids violent revolution, the size of the carrot your offering might not matter so much :)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Crisis
https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/danish-workers-str...
For instance, the monarchy didn't stop the rise of Mussolini or Franco.
But it might it improve the odds?
Starting with a violent revolution tends to put violent people in charge of your democracy.
I suppose it worked reasonably for the Americans.
True,
I don't think anyone was convinced Assad would step down if given more time or money.
Just saying, that in that calculus offering a ceremonial role is still a cheap bargain -- assuming you can get the people in power to take the offer -- that's not a given.
The transition is done, if you stopped now there would be no revolution to keep the monarchy.
True, now we're just paying interest on a purchase made generations ago.
Is that so bad? I assume it'll go away if the monarchy becomes unpopular.
Is funneling tons of taxpayer money to some useless family of millionaires bad?
Yes, I think so. It's a moral failure and should just stop.
It was considered a "bad move" and his son was restored to the role of head of state about 12 years later to correct it. :P
The idea of a powerless head of state has always appealed to me. I can't think of anything worse than someone like Johnson assuming that role.
In the sense that keeping the royals around probably is cheaper and creating less fuss than becoming a republic. Precisely as the monarch is not elected, there is (the odd left fringe aside) very little controversy to be had.
Rather than electing a president (which, of course, will lead to a fraction of the population seeing their candidate lose), we've got our (ceremonial) head of state and everybody just deals with it. The monarch is very much aware that the survival of the institution he represents relies on him being apolitical and not attempting to boss parliament around.
Heck, the grandfather of the current monarch even won over a lot of the left when pointing out (in the late 1920s sometime) that he was the king of the communists, too - not just the bourgeousie, and asked the head of the labour party to form a government when election results indicated that was what the electorate wanted - despite attempts from the establishment to have him appoint anybody but the election winners.
Basically, as long as the royal family are as well behaved as they mostly are, they are probably cheaper and less controversial than any alternative. (While still being outrageously undemocratic, of course).
The main argument for abolishing monarchy around here probably is on humanitarian grounds - basically, it is hardly fair to have one's life cut out for oneself from birth?
Preferential hiring if they want a job as a reenactor or tour guide.
It seems silly but the US has to have the President go to everything and time is money to the President.
Honestly would much rather be poor and free than be "royal".
I do think they serve a purpose, and tradition is important to many people (I know the progressive-types want to pull all that down).
From the other Guardian article:
"The number of tenants on Scilly caught by the exemption is not known but has been estimated at 100.
One of them is a 78-year-old retired oil executive, Alan Davis. He has been prevented from buying the freehold to his 1960s bungalow."
The Royal Family may not be to your taste but these two articles are hardly grounds for insurrection.
I am genuinely sobbing about Alan the retired oil executive's plight.
It is of course not the only reason to abolish the monarchy. Just one more for the list.
This is such a no-brainer, and I really don't understand why anyone anywhere in the modern world would want someone to rule over them.
However I find it hard to reconcile it with the fact that many/most of the nicest countries on earth to live in are constitutional monarchies. Including Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, UK, NZ and Japan.
I don't know why this is, but it gives me pause in overthrowing the monarchy. It might be the existence of a monarch unites society in some way, or it might be that socities that move slowly rather than with revolutions tend to be more stable and comfortable.
I think, as with most things in the UK, we will get rid of the monarchy when it causes a problem that can't be dealt with in an easier way.
Because it has nothing to do with wealth?
The detrimental financial costs of monarchies are a drop in a nation's budget.
Just as the prime minister gifting his best friend 1 million euro per year from the nation's budget wouldn't really impact matters much overall in a nation that deals with billions each year.
It would still be quite corrupt, of course.
> It might be the existence of a monarch unites society in some way
Of course not, it is almost always a decisive issue in countries that have a monarchy.
In republics, almost everyone agrees that republics are better, but in monarchies the issue divides the population, and those that are in favor of retaining the monarchy are almost always traditionalists who desire to do many senseless things simply because they are tradition and are afraid of change.
History has always sided with the progressives, for no man wants change for it's own sake. When a man desire change, he typically has thought well of it, and desires a change for a reason, but when a man desires that matters stay the same, he very thought little of it, and wishes that they remain so for their own sake.
When a person desires change, they either want it for their personal gain, or have seen the shortcomings of the current system and want change to get rid of them. Yet no system is perfect, and most changes have some tradeoff. When a person desires that matters stay the same, they are either profiting from the current state, or believe that the current system is better thought-out than it might seem at first glance, and are like this for a good reason.
This line of thought is based on Chesterton‘s fence [1]. Of course, a well thought-out change is still a good thing, and not all reasons for the current system are sensible. I count myself as a progressive as well, but it is not as clear-cut as you make it out to be.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton'...
The difference is that a man can rarely convince the others of a chance that is not in the interest of the many, but only in his own.
If there be legitimately flaws in the system that he wishes to address, it will be far easier to convince the collective by pointing out said flaws.
> When a person desires that matters stay the same, they are either profiting from the current state, or believe that the current system is better thought-out than it might seem at first glance, and are like this for a good reason.
And the big thing you leave out: that many, many men simply desire inertia for it's own sake and are afraid of change for no other reason than that it be change.
There are almost none in comparison who seek change for it's own sake, simply because they are afraid of matters staying the same.
So political propaganda rarely works? Every political action is sold as beneficial to the many, but how many of them actually are? I feel like political dynamics are rather a bit less straightforward than you're portraying.
Have you ever seen a republic successfully transition to a monarchy by will of the people because someone sold it as an idea in the people's interests?
You can probably squint at the Cambodian restoration and describe it that way.
While not a democratic republic, my understanding of the restoration of the Spanish monarchy to replace Franco’s fascist republic is that it essentially meets that description anyway.
There is no survivorship bias here without an argument that conservative societies do not die.
My argument that the progressives are usually right is not empirical, but rational.
disclaimer: I should note that with “conservative” and “progressive”, I do not mean the U.S.A. identity politics terminology, that has little to do with either conservation or progression, but the simple definition of aiming for change or for inertia.
A potential explanation for the phenomena you've observed is that it's uncommon for new monarchies to be started in the 21st century, so the countries that still have monarchies are all countries that for the most part have had stable forms of government for many decades if not centuries.
Also there are plenty of poorer countries with monarchies: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, North Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Bhutan, Lesotho, Oman, Qatar, etc. (I'll admit it's a bit suspect to label North Korea as a monarchy).
That's not true. The royal family of Sweden have immunity from prosecution, fines etc.
And not just in theory - there are actual examples of royal family members escaping speeding tickets, investigation into hunting accidents, illegally using the secret service to raid the homes of people suspected of possessing potentially embarrassing photographs etc etc. (see eg https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1326783/How-King-...)
They also enjoy diplomat status while traveling abroad etc etc.
A Crusader Kings mod that would focus on the internal & external struggles of a cloistered totalitarian regime, like North Korea, would be very interesting.
Qatar is absurdly rich, but the wealth is inequitably distributed (unusually so). Although the GDP per capita is ~60k, the median household income (and the median per-capita income) are considerably lower than the countries the parent comment mentioned.
Why are you mentioning nominal GDP, not PPP which is $55 grand according to CIA (which is more than Sweden's and UK's and just a bit less than US's)? If they raise their taxes to the level of Sweden they will have larger nominal GDP although without any increase in the purchasing power.
Also, you haven't mentioned Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. Are they not nice places, despite sharing the very same monarch?
Yeah, but all separate monarchies.
Also, Japan and the UK were not exactly nice when their monarchs had absolute power...
If conformity and deference are a necessary trait for survival that has to have some effect, even if it's a societal effect rather than a genetic one.
Tradition has always been worth more than sanity or even human lives to many men. — as man will resort to absolute madness, so long as the madness be a tradition that has gone on for long enough.
But I think a symbolic monarchy could serve a useful purpose by giving those people a ceremonial role in return for promising that they will never attempt to actually govern.
Edit: Deleted first sentence per comment below.
I have no idea if this is how the British monarchy works in practice, rather just the view from my side of the pond. In the US, we have the concept of career vs political positions in government agencies, but in practice, there is a great risk of interference between the sides.
I happen to agree with the GP that monarchies should be abolished outright, but it is clear that people feel strongly and build identities around ceremonial roles.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_and_image_of_Eliza...
It isn't welfare if the person works in an official capacity.
Almost everyone wants someone to rule over them, or at least over their neighbors.
Do you want someone to rule over you?
You can argue that the doctor is being helpful when they tell a four-year-old "this won't hurt a bit", but the naked truth is that it's a lie, and the child has no actual choice in the matter. Similarly, you can argue that your MP or state senator has your best interests at heart (and some may!), but that doesn't mean they don't rule you.
MPs are supposed to work for us, those with power wish to reduce the scope of "us" and some MPs are there specifically to enable that. But anti-democratic MPs doesn't alter the lack of rulers in a proper democracy it just changes whether our (UK) political system is a proper democracy or not.
I'm not saying it's a good reason, just that it's a reason.
The more absurd thing, in my mind, is that citizens of dozens of countries, including first world nations like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, consent to having the monarchy, even though it is largely ceremonial. Certainly no one believes it creates stability, nor that turmoil would ensue if they abandoned it.
I gotta say that I find the rabid anti-monarchal take a lot of americans have online kinda weird. I wouldn't say I feel "ruled" in any real sense by the British crown even though it is technically true. The Prime Minister and the House of Commons are where the actual legislative power rests and as much as the Governor-General is technically the commander in chief I highly doubt if she called for a revolution against the civilian government that would get any traction.
Furthermore I gotta say that given a lot of the other options I LIKE the hoky kind of odd but deeply rooted ceremony that surrounds our governmental proceedings.
Is it silly that the prime minister has to be presented to the Governor-General to get invested and leads a Privy Council (and for that matter is called a Prime Minister)? Yeah, but it's been WORKING that way for a long time and that inertia is important, especially I think nowadays with a lot of uncertainty from the largest democracy in the world.
If we just need somewhere for power to divest from, then hand it over to the royal Corgis. If you have to have the fiction of a figurehead to make your government function, better it be something that has no possibility of corruption.
But every time we bring it up for removal there are excuses why it cannot be done. The Governor General et all are a cost center - not just federally but in each province. Or worse two factions aligned to removing the monarchy don't disagree on how it should be done and the measure fails (Australia). At least the Australians managed to remove 'Queen/Heirs' from the citizenship pledge and acknowledged that many immigrants who want citizenship came from countries in Africa and Asia that were colonized, whose people were treated like shit, and had their natural resources stolen.
Cute and hoky to some... but others are being asked to pledge to an institution that subjugated many of their ancestors. For no good reason. Even if you have not been subjugated, there is no reason to pledge allegiance to her.
The article disagrees with you. Or at least points out where there isn't always true.
They could just as well polity said to her to pound sand.
Queen asked them, it was up to them to say yes or no. I imagine if some other party was in power back then results might be different
the UK left the EU in Jan 2020
We should take the opportunity to get rid of the position of monarch since we claim to be a democracy. We could also modernise parliament when it becomes ours - things like ejecting people for jeering and interrupting would be a start, close the subsidised bars, ... make it at least have a semblance of being a workplace.
As an Australian, wtf are we doing with a monarchy? Makes no sense, it's just a holdover from the colonial past, bring on the republic immediately. (Anecdotally, the general consensus amongst my peers is that the Queen's death will be the trigger for this - no-one wants King Charles again).
As an Englishman - it's too deeply part of our culture to remove just like that. What would we replace it with? A President? How would that be different from the Prime Minister? It's not obvious how it would work, and it's not clear what we'd gain from that (except not having King Charles again). Who would the military swear loyalty to? How do we transfer hundreds of years of strong tradition into a new structure without breaking things? I know that smart people have thought of good answers to all these questions, but they're not part of the public awareness, they haven't had time to steep into the public conciousness (unlike republican ideas in Australia, which are pretty well-formed and accepted).
If the crown was directly replaced with an elected president for instance, that would be an enormous amount of power for a populist leader to wield and the lack of policy responsibility would lead to populists leaders. If the president was appointed by parliament then there is opportunity for corruption.
So there would need to be far more drastic changes and many possibilities (like changing from a parliamentary system) would not be popular. Ideologically I don't think anyone should hold such power based on who their parents we're, but in practice I'm a soft-monarchists or conservative on the matter.
Edit - The powers don't have to be replaced, the holders of those powers do.
In practice, all of the powers of the Crown must be exercised, and must only be exercised, by the Monarch as directed by various configurations of notionally-subordinate officials (whether the Parliamentary majority or the Cabinet as executive committee of the Privy Council or...). Simply investing those powers formally in the institutions which direct them in practice would have no noticeable effect. Or investing them, with the same practical constraints, whether together or separately in, like, any random person chosen off the street. The advantage of a ceremonial Presidency in place of a monarch is that they could continue to do the ceremonial functions as well as signing where directed by the Cabinet, etc., without occupying the time of people with real and substantive responsibilities in government.
under the UK constitution Parliament is short for Queen-in-Parliament and all executive and legislative powers come from the sovereign
At this point people who think the monarchy should be abolished get filed under "malicious actor who wishes to put themselves, or their ideological co travellers, as my master instead, or wishes to use the de facto power vacuum to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense", i.e. they put themselves into the "I would probably be better off if this person were to be dead" category.
At least the new rich overlords wont ask me to pledge allegiance to them during a citizenship oath like the do in Canada. Not just the queen, but also to her heirs like the great Prince Andrew The Pedophile.
> The authoritarian personality is a personality type characterized by extreme obedience and unquestioning respect for and submission to the authority of a person external to the self, which is realized through the oppression of subordinate people
Considerably more so-called progressive folks (and others) put their faith in US Presidents they favour, than do subjects of most Monarchs, let alone the UK Monarch.
The level of demagoguery I witnessed around 2008 and 2016 in the US was ridiculous, people were spellbound as if their leaders were Disney characters brought to life.
Most Democratic Heads of State are elected on highly superficial and preformative presentations of themselves, effectively the result of giant PR and communications mechanations.
Other Heads of State - like Von der Leyen in the EU, have barely any democratic legitimacy.
QE2 has a narrow range of power, and she's actually done a pretty good job at it frankly, giving legitimacy to the notion that there is likely a lot that people can be brought up into. It's obviously not something that one would create from nothing in 2020, nor would anyone want more power bestowed than they have, but it works fine.
The US has Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, the UK is stuck with QE2 and Will and Kate. I'd take the later if I could.
First, I am sorry that you're offended by a statistical figure.
Second, the figure was from research that was done in my grandparents' era, about three quarters of a century ago. About 40% of Americans displayed authoritarian personality traits.
Any assumptions you've made are merely coincidental. Have a nice day.
Any bureaucrat of any government have more power in your life than you think. And over time, we're giving them more and more power to regulate our lifes. (I'm not even talking about politicians here, they're more powerful than any absolutist king of the history).
There's currently a government in Westminster making laws and dictating to us that the vast majority of the country didn't vote for. The public also has the power to change a monarchy, with the only real difference being that the "election" and transfer of power is less peaceful.
Democracy is of course better, but representative democracies in large nations are about as participatory as a monarchy.
There are any number of wrongs that can be corrected. Is “abolishing the monarchy” the best use of the limited budget for societal change?
And is it worth, on top of that, the risks of unintended consequences?
I’d feel similar being implored to surgically remove my appendix and tailbone.
Let us not forget the diplomatic aspect they afford and I'd say from that aspect alone - done more good than the elected politicians. Whilst the media love to focus upon the negatives, you can't overlook the positives and initiatives - the prices trust and other chartable involvements and then tourism. Though the diplomacy aspect is something that you have to respect the Queen and been a national asset in that respect.
So far from a no-brainier as you say if you look at their involvements beyond the headlines.
As an aside - if America had a royal family, the prospect of Trump on legal currency bank notes would be zero.
TFA is literally about how it's actually not just a legacy rubber stamp, and the Queen gets involved more than a figurehead would.
> As an aside - if America had a royal family, the prospect of Trump on legal currency bank notes would be zero.
We don't know that. What if the Trump family was the royal family? I don't think this is an unfair question - Prince Philip is probably just as much of a racist as Donald Trump is, if not more so...
There is no happier afterlife once you get rid of a monarchy. You get a quasi-monarch with an opportunity to change him/her every X years and all the vile, disgusting, hateful polarization that comes with those elections in the era of Twitter.
If you kick out Elizabeth, I would probably offer her Czech throne in my turn. Can't be worse than who sits there today after winning a slim majority.
Doesn't that just shift corruption to the next party? I don't see why logically switching the ruling party would abolish corruption. It might even increase it.
What exactly is the justification for having those tasks, if they're deemed necessary, executed by some hereditary, secretive, uber-wealthy family rather than by someone who is actually a civil servant?
The easiest ways to corrupt someone are offering them wealth, opportunities for their children, or a popular reputation; the royals are relatively immune to all of those.
The government literally pays them and promotes them as a symbol of the nation - how is that not offering them "wealth, opportunities for their children, or a popular reputation"?
They have a tolerance of how much resource can be wasted. President's kickback isn't worth anything when the resource wasted can actually cause problem for the nation(Only at this point the monarch will start paying attention). So i am pretty sure they both are similar in this context.
This is categorically different from a democracy where the leadership's wealth is separated from the nation's. If the laborers die, the President is not impacted in the least. A President may choose to spend your life and money to take over new territory and increase their power, but they are spending your wealth to do it, not their own. If the resources are mismanaged you are harmed, not the President.
Next this doesn't even work out if we replace the monarch with an automaton which faithfully executes economic theory.
A monarch of 100M people might spend 10,000 people for some end that on net increases his wealth whereas a president of 100M might find the rest of the people so appalled at the 10k corpses that they vote him out of office.
If you look at how monarchs have actually and in fact spent the blood of their people historically we wouldn't have to argue theory. Throughout history monarchies have spent their people liberally in proportion to their ability to do so. You can look at recent history at a bunch of nations that are still technically monarchies you will note that their period of moderation directly coincides with the waning power of the very actor you claim somehow serves to moderate the state.
This understanding is completely outside of actual reality. The statement "Monarchy is superior to democracy in a very important way" goes on to explain why you believe the monarch has a greater incentive to avoid wasting the lives of his citizens. This isn't even close to true. A monarch who loses 1% of his "wealth" in the form of dead people still has the other 99%. A President can lose his job, his wealth, and his personal power for less.
A president is incentivized not to put upon the people more than they can bear with the understanding that all they have to do to be rid of him is check a different box next go round. A monarch faces the same risk but only if the anguish of the people is enough for them to spend copious amounts of their own blood in violent revolution.
This difference in resistance is the dominant difference in motivation NOT a proprietary feeling towards a kings subjects. This is well born out by an ocean of blood spilled foolishly by monarchies through history. I don't misunderstand you. I don't think you have properly understood history.
Also, the Monarchy is effectively a mechanism for it's powers to be controlled by ministers, this means parliament can and has been effectively shut down temporarily to avoid debate at the whim of Government Ministers against the will of parliament itself.
The monarchy in the UK only seems to benefit themselves and tabloid newspapers. While the Queen has been a dutiful monarch (whos work ethic I happen to respect), the rest of her family seem pretty terrible with their crazy shenanigans.
What work does the Queen actually do?
As an American citizen it is why I don’t mind presidents that I don’t like have a large secret service revenue, fat salary, and so forth both during and after their presidency.
She's like a grandma the nation respects, even though you suspect there might be a sinister side to her.
Also, the wider principle is that there shouldn't be an untouchable hereditary ruling class at all. It's an absolute nonsense.
One of the key problems in many human societies is that most of the wealth and power ends up concentrated in the hands of the undeserving few, who use it to further enrich themselves and their families, at the expense of everyone else.
"Targeted for removal" wasn't intended as a euphemism for death squads or anything like that.
Sure, that's a fine idea.
> Also, every member of the royal family should be stripped of their wealth and exiled.
Why, for using the power they rightfully have? Or just for the crime of having money? This seems very petty.
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9294955/queen-elizabeth-constit...
On what grounds exactly?
"For unknown reasons, Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home was not advised of Anthony Blunt's spying, although the Queen and Home Secretary Henry Brooke had been fully informed. In November 1979, then PM Margaret Thatcher formally advised Parliament of Blunt's treachery and the immunity deal that had been arranged"
Letting them stay and keep all their vast wealth would risk allowing them continued influence.
Also, the birth of the United Republic should involve a peaceful transfer of power, so doing this in the French style is completely out of the question.
I’m talking about what legal process is used, and what grounds are given for that process.
Of course, it would need a majority in both Houses, and in practical terms would require popular approval too.
What are their grounds for the power they currently wield??
In this case...Constitutional.
The grounds for the power they currently wield is that it’s the law.
Taking away their political powers / their status as royals is one thing, but exiling someone is punishment. You can't just hand out punishment for no good reason.
If they commited crimes that were illegal at the time they were commited they should stand trial for that, but I very much doubt any of those are serious enough to warrant exile.
While you can take away their powers pretty easily via a law everything else, such as striping their wealth, would be punishment that needs to be justified. The Queen hasn't started any wars or genocides as far as I am aware, so how would you justify this punishment?
Her being a royal is completely legal after all!
The people who bought a lease knew exactly what they were paying for, it’s not something you buy to “leave for your children”...
If the Monarch’s exemption to the normal leasehold laws was secretive and not known to buyers at the time, then it’s a problem.
>Not casting one's former monarchs under the guillotine.
Where is your joie de vivre, my friend?, for the revolution is at hand!
I'm guessing you're not a Brit? A problem with that is the British people support them - about 72% for 21% against and I think they've been clearly in favour for at least the last century. So you can't really do it unless you get a dictatorship in to go against the people.
Btw, Can the brit people name any other candidate to be the queen or the king? From the existing family or a new one?
That would be awesome, because there are some great. Brit scientists which would make a great king or queen.
Theoretically yes through parliament, who approves succession issues in a complex system with precedents that about 3 people understand. William of Orange becoming King is probably the most notable example. Recently there was a curios case where succession laws were change so that females inherit equally, but everyone with the Queen as their head of State hate to change their laws at the same time, had one country not done so, or the wrong gender babies been born at the wrong time along with a few untimely deaths, the countries would have ended up with different Monarchs.
Should this be extended to all families with significant hereditary wealth? Or just the royal family directly?
1. A new Royal Assent Act, that makes assent automatic upon a bill passing both Houses. Assuming this in itself receives assent, it would remove the monarch's power to veto or refuse a bill (a power that hasn't been used for over 300 years anyway).
2. A Republic Act, that transfers all powers, abolishes the monarchy, strips them of their wealth, exiles them, etc.
Where is the debasement here?
For instance, if parliament passed a law allowing “The Purge” to happen yearly, would murders committed on that day be “rule of law”? If you don’t think so, perhaps you agree there are some inherent principles to rule of law that aren’t simply a majority vote of a legislature. (For instance, perhaps there’s an assumption that exiling someone who hasn’t committed any crime is a violation of due process rights, rights as a citizen of the country, etc.)
While you could of course exile them like other countries have done in the past, why would you do that? What reasoning would you use to justify exiling them, striping them of their personal property etc. ?
Abolishing the monarchy is one thing, it can be justified pretty easily, the interests of the people. Anything beyond that however would be punishment, what have they done that is currently illegal that warrants that punishment? Punishing them simply "because they are royals" doesn't really work out, that isn't illegal after all.
Technically just abolishing the monarchy / taking away their powers would suffice.
> Technically just abolishing the monarchy / taking away their powers would suffice.
It wouldn't suffice, because they still derive a great deal of power from their inherited wealth. What's the point of abolishing the monarchy if we permit them to remain as landlords for huge swathes of the country? Then they're still lording it over people economically, even if no longer doing so constitutionally.
I am no fan of the royals and other nobles and look forward to the day when they all work for a living and wear seat belts like regular people. Yet, we must acknowledge that rule of law means law for the bad, the useless, and the rich. The ends don't justify the means.
This is not an intuitive concept by any means, but it helps to think about it in terms of the origins of the common law: the underlying idea is that the long acceptance of something or practice of something by regular people is a sound basis for its legitimacy. This still finds expression in the theory (in the US, anyways) that the speed limit should be the speed at which 85% of people drive. On this footing, the legitimacy of law is more about observation than about the decision of a particular person or administrative body.
Some things to contrast with the common law are "positive law" and "statute law". Legislation passed by Parliament is indeed statute law; it's not common law. Yet, to a significant degree, common law ideas and ways of judging remain prevalent in the United States, the United Kingdom and the other English speaking countries. It's the common law that defines most crimes with which you'd be familiar. It's more relevant than you think.
Although Parliament is indeed sovereign and Parliamentary sovereignty is said to mean that Parliament can not be bound even by Parliament, there are contemporary limits recognized to Parliament's law making authority. Sometimes they are even called "constitutional", referencing the unwritten English constitution; and sometimes they are clearly linked to the Convention on Human Rights. Either way, what we see here is an assertion of the old idea of "transcendent law" that binds everyone, even the law makers -- and that is what rule of law is really about.
With regards of being stripped of wealth, what makes the Royal Family different to other cases of inherited wealth? Should I not bother saving up money for my kids?
But, I think a lot of people are this extremist and abhor any form of inter-generational wealth. Basically, every individual should start from 0 and "prove" themselves. You are free to do anything except sacrifice and save for your own family.
As a more serious response to this: to do so is applying a law change retroactively and flies into the face of any semblance of a nation ruled by laws. — what they are doing is not illegal as they did it, a such, they cannot be punished for it by a retroactive law change.
A new Act of Parliament would be needed anyway to establish the United Republic, it could be included in that. Perhaps as a 100% wealth tax on the first X people in line to the throne, or similar.
- It's not not a criminal incarceration; it's an involuntary psychiatric commitment so your usual rights to due process don't apply.
- You see, we're not giving lesser rights to this group; we're simply giving more rights to the other, so it's fine.
- It's not a form of punishment; it's simply a procedural event to exile, so we can do it to someone who committed no legal crime.
And this is the grim, grim reality of human rights. — simply doing the same thing under a different name is enough to overstep them.
Also just to note this wouldn't be done arbitrarily, but within a specific purpose of abolishing the monarchy and removing all vestiges of their power.
The right to not be punished by the state for anything that was legal at the time one did it, by way of a future law change.
Saying “It is not a form of punishment; it is simply a procedural change.” can be used to enable any such matter.
> Also just to note this wouldn't be done arbitrarily, but within a specific purpose of abolishing the monarchy and removing all vestiges of their power.
The same can be said about anything.
Let us incarcerate all those that have removed the foreskins of their children in the past, when it was still legal to do so; — this is not a form of punishment; this is simply to remove all vestiges of involuntary foreskin removal.
Yes but the converse is also true, claiming that something is being done as an unfair punishment, as an argument against it.
In this case, it's also worth noting that most of the monarchy's private assets are vast amounts of property and land, of which they are the landlords. The state seizing and administering this property for the benefit of the country, rather than to perpetually enrich this elite, is a public good.
Rather than taking this to be a punishment on the royals, consider it an anti-punishment on the people afflicted by their predatory rent-seeking behaviour.
No, in this particular case, it can only be claimed if there be no law against it.
The principle is quite simple: no man can be punished for any act that was not illegal when he committed it, no matter the act.
No matter how unfair the punishment, if it were indeed legal as he committed the act, the argument cannot be raised.
> In this case, it's also worth noting that most of the monarchy's private assets are vast amounts of property and land, of which they are the landlords. The state seizing and administering this property for the benefit of the country, rather than to perpetually enrich this elite, is a public good.
Perhaps it is, and the same argument can be made for seizing the property of the very rich, but this is entirely unrelated.
The difference is that a new law can be passed that the rich should surrender their property, and if they not do so, then they commit a crime, at the time it is so written in the law books.
Likewise, the former monarchs can be punished for being unwilling to surrender their power if ever the law change, and it no longer permit them to monarch; — they simply cannot be punished for their time as monarch when this was still legal, under this scheme.
> Rather than taking this to be a punishment on the royals, consider it an anti-punishment on the people afflicted by their predatory rent-seeking behaviour.
The argument was about their exile, not their assets being seized.
Their assets can easily be seized without any retroactive application of the law.
Of course, if the new law target only the former monarchs, and not every similarly wealthy man, then it goes against the other human right of fair justice and æquality before the law.
A fair point, I did pivot back from answering this regarding exile.
If we consider why a set of international human rights principles were pushed in the first place, it was to act as a preventative measure against totalitarian governments abusing their citizens, and in particular, was a reaction to how the Nazis brutalized and killed millions of people during and prior to WW2.
What it wasn't intended for, is restricting how exactly to transfer power within a state.
Article 9 of the UHDR states that:
> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
The key qualifying word here is "arbitrary". For ordinary citizens, this is taken to mean that due process and the rule of law must be applied. For a head of state who is ordinarily immune from prosecution (as the Queen and her family are), it can't mean this, because the normal due process doesn't apply to them.
So if Britain did abolish its monarchy, the only interpretation of "arbitrary" that makes sense here is that the monarchy be treated according to the protocols decided for establishing the new republic. And if this statute outlines a process for exile, then so be it.
(Conversely, if it says nothing about exile, but the new government attempts to do so anyway, then this may well be in breach of Article 9.)
> Of course, if the new law target only the former monarchs, and not every similarly wealthy man, then it goes against the other human right of fair justice and æquality before the law.
As noted above, this already doesn't apply to the royal family. They are protected from any legal consequences for their actions that would apply to an ordinary citizen.
Targeting them specifically would simply be redressing this imbalance of justice and power.
What about billionaires?
You know, millionaires don't need all their money either.
How about we take all their money and exile millionaires, billionaires, and the monarchy?
For high-end millionaires (say $100 million or more), I can still get behind that.
For low-level millionaires who legitimately worked for their money and built their business, absolutely not. A million dollars is not a lot in 2021.
I say this as a not-millionaire.
She used her powers to get an exemption from transparency laws with regards to her personal wealth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que..., and Charles did the same to ban his tenants from purchasing freeholds: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/09/prince-charl....
This constitutional corruption of our laws by the most privileged family in Britain is indeed a bad thing, and one of the many reasons why the monarchy should be abolished.
Also, every member of the royal family should be stripped of their wealth and exiled.