I find "support of a monarchy" an indefensible position. Bonus points if your only argument is "well the current monarch is kind of nice and therefore we're not in a hurry to remove him" because that's literally one rotten apple away of exploding in your face (see Spain) and by then it's likely too late.
Talks to his plants though, allegedly.
It’s mostly meritocratic. Compared to many other systems, along with other comparable liberal democracies I’d argue it’s one of the most meritocratic systems developed so far. It’s also one of the most free, and the fact is free human beings don’t always make every decision based on merit. I think it’s clear if we chose to get rid of the monarchy we could do so through democratic mechanisms. So far we have chosen not to do so.
A little bit of strawmanning there, implying I'm insisting on an unblemished ideal system. I simply think there's plenty of room for improvement on what we have, and stripping one family of a birthright to rule would count towards it.
I don't think it's at all clear we could get rid of the monarchy through democratic mechanisms! But that's rather besides the point - we wouldn't try, because the amount of state & media propaganda shovelled at us will prevent most people from wanting that. Unless some troubling events fast-track Harry & Meghan to the top of the succession order, of course.
2. "That's just north koreans"
3. "North koreans aren't humans?"
Comment #3 is not a valid counterargument to comment #2. The point is that Scots may not be a representative sample of "all Brits", even if Scots are Brits.
In other words, people with an unambiguous stake in the outcome.
And I suppose we will see as the parade travels south and crossese the border, but I don’t think you will see the same sort of anti-Charles sentiment in Manchester or London.
Is that really what happens, though? And if so, what if the monarch isn't satisfied with the answer?
I know some believe that all government should be open/public but I suspect in many cases that means that real discussions don't take place out of fear of offence or backlash from the public. If you were toying with the idea of e.g. privatising the NHS or selling off a load of gold for raising funds, you might want to discuss these privately before they end up as a Headline.
If the monarch is competent. History shows that it happens, but is far from being the norm. Blood lines do not guarantee anything in that respect.
That's statistically rather unlikely if she were to actually have a choice. (It's even more unlikely given that group includes Boris Johnson and Liz Truss)
By all means, keep your pomp and circumstance. But don't pretend it has a useful function constraining politics when it's so blatantly obvious it doesn't.
So your line of argument is way off.
That's interesting - please could you give any pointers to who said this and when?
How on earth could you possibly know that?
England, I'll give you. We can ignore Peterloo. But everyone always forgets Ireland successfully leaving the UK through a combination of armed struggle and political action. Not so much the stabilizing influence of the monarchy as the willingness to shell Dublin or fire randomly into protests in Northern Ireland. And quite a lot of the Twitter anti-monarchism at the moment has been from Kenyans.
If we ever end up with a head of state that loses the trust of the people, then fine. On that day let’s ditch the monarchy. If it’s not working and we can’t fix it sure. At that point we should find a new way, and our monarchs should know that. I think so far the queen and our new King do know that. Until then as a pragmatist I see no need to upend the status quo.