Rome did alright before a crazed general took over.
Buckingham palace is a bit crap
Nothing compares to the Royal Yacht Britannia. The 'staterooms' in that wouldn't have looked out of place in a cheap 1970's motel.
Its good to have a HoS who doesn't have a real job who can spend their time attending pointless ceremonies and wander around the globe shaking hands with people and attending functions whilst the PM gets on with actually running the Govenrment of the country.
jhinwxm
Free Member
I like dissonance. But the flag wavers don’t like it when you bring up the dark side of the Royals. So be prepared for the incoming attacks.
According to you "the dark side of the royals" includes Charlie choosing Camilla instead of Diana, you weirdly claimed that Charlie has "questions to answer".
Although you never did explain what these questions were when I asked you.
jhinwxm
Free MemberImagine choosing Camilla over Diana? That need serious questions asking for starters.
Posted 6 days ago
Can you explain why you are bothered who Charlie Windsor ended up with and what serious questions need answering?
Well it was traditional up until the 60s. So why shouldnt we keep it? Unless you want to come up with a better argument than “traditional”.
The OP's question was "why." It's a reason. It might be a crap reason, but it's a reason.
Those absolute monarchies who tend to like their fellow monarchs.
Right.
At the risk of repeating myself, which countries are you referring to?
All would be preferable than sending Andrew as a trade envoy.
A role he hasn't played for over a decade. (And I think I'd probably still send Andrew ahead of his late dad or Boris.)
This argument is always confusing since we still send the actual PM to do anything important. So do you really feel the other heads of states think “well mays is a muppet but thank god for charlie?”
Your guess is as good as mine. Well, possibly. But the Queen was symbolic, I expect most "heads of state" on diplomatic missions to have their photo taken with other heads of state are similar.
whilst the PM gets on with actually running the Govenrment of the country.
Sadly our PMs dont always get the message. See Johnsons cosplay habit and Sunak isnt adverse to it either. A lot of his need to use helicopters seem based around him doing photo ops.
jhinwxm
Free Member
I like dissonance.
Well, you've got a confidence vote there.
Remember when I said a while back, if someone ever need a moral steer then just look who you're getting in bed with?
Imagine choosing Camilla over Diana?
Well, one is currently significantly warmer than the other.
#muttleys****
England was a republic with no monarch as head of state for 11 years between 1649 and 1660 after King Charles I was executed. King Charles II was made monarch after it'd all gone to shit.
I think the historical argument for having the monarch as head of state was that republics were considered to be inherently unstable, either ending up run by a tyrant or collapsing into anarchy. Having some sort of semi- benign head of state who was above the day to politics was considered to have some sort of benefit. Whether that still makes sense in 2023 I'm not sure but I can sort of see how it makes sense.
I think having absolutely no head of state at all is impossible - the role will get filled but you definitely don't one person running all the branches of the state.
I think having absolutely no head of state at all is impossible – the role will get filled but you definitely don’t one person running all the branches of the state.
When was the last time the head of state here interviened, it's either never or every week in meetings with the pm depending on who you listen to
England was a republic with no monarch as head of state for 11 years between 1649 and 1660 after King Charles I was executed. King Charles II was made monarch after it’d all gone to shit.
I think the historical argument for having the monarch as head of state was that republics were considered to be inherently unstable, either ending up run by a tyrant or collapsing into anarchy. Having some sort of semi- benign head of state who was above the day to politics was considered to have some sort of benefit.
When was the last time the head of state here interviened, it’s either never or every week in meetings with the pm depending on who you listen to
The role doesn't have to have executive power to be important - it's the difference between Liz Truss having to swear an oath to the Queen and us having to swear an oath to Liz Truss. Yes it's symbolic but it is important. Definitely far from perfect. I think I'd definitely prefer a well functioning republic, but the risk is you end up with an extremely divisive "political" head of state (US today) or you end up with a weak and ineffectual president (e.g. Weimar republic).
The comparisons with the US system don't really stack up:
USA
President - directed elected by populace
Cabinet positions - Chosen by President, and confirmed in a senate hearing
Congress - Directly elected
Senate - Directly elected
UK
Monarch - Hereditry position
PM - Chosen by party in power, and can be changed by that party.
Cabinet - Appointed by PM
House of Commonons - Elected
House of Lords - Hereditry or awarded.
To call our system democratic falls a bit thin.
I've never seen the need for a head of state myself.
Just to be clear, before this gets diverted into “why do we need the Monarchy?”, that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking why we need a Head of State as well as a PM?
Simple answer to a simple question, we don't.
And yet we have one. I don't think the UK does sudden, major change very well (I shall not envoke the B word) so I can't see us changing the situation any time soon...
I’ve never seen the need for a head of state myself.
I think the Irish model works perfectly fine - having some likeable punter wander around opening primary schools, meeting dignitaries at the airport, and Tweeting congratulations for winning flower shows is a nice enough thing. https://twitter.com/PresidentIRL
The idea it needs to be a job for life and inherited from your dad to avoid literally Hitler is just nuts though.
Floella Benjamin for President!
USA
President – directed elected by populace
That's not correct. In 2000 and 2016, the less popular candidate was elected, and it was a fairly rubbish outcome: Bush and Trump.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College
England was a republic with no monarch as head of state for 11 years between 1649 and 1660 after King Charles I was executed.
Yes after he, due to his belief in being chosen by god, plunged us into the war of the three kingdoms after trying to tell the Scots how to pray and after they invited him to go whistle annoying the English by demanding money so he could attack the Scots.
Even then parliament on the whole would have preferred to have kept him with more limited powers. Problem was his belief in the divine right of kings meant he couldnt accept that and after provoking parliament once too often lost his head.
A few decades later it was almost repeated but stopped by the Dutch invasion (mostly anyway). Which given William wasnt overly interested in the UK meant parliament was left to its own devices.
I think the historical argument for having the monarch as head of state was that republics were considered to be inherently unstable, either ending up run by a tyrant or collapsing into anarchy.
A rather weak one unless you go for a constitutional monarchy and even then its questionable whether if the politicians do go rogue whether they could stop them.
Otherwise especially with hereditary (as opposed to elected) monarchies every new generation is a roll of the dice which may well end up with war as a cursory look through European history shows.
The idea it needs to be a job for life and inherited from your dad to avoid literally Hitler is just nuts though.
Charlie Windsor inherited his job from his mum and Adolf Hitler won an election, apart from that good point 👍
Edit: And Hitler only ever received a minority of the votes cast in elections, so if you don't support PR you are as bad as the Nazis, probably.
Why do we need nation states?
A lot of the answers about governability etc died with improved technology and communications. We're let with the same old war-mongering nationalistic crap without any real pros apart from the Eurovision Song Contest.
Why do we need nation states?
Because we haven't evolved sufficiently
Because we haven’t evolved sufficiently
To do what? You could argue that the reason we haven't 'evolved sufficiently' is because of the anachronistic existence of nation states. Circular argument I know. Just imagine if someone had created a federation, say, of European states that we could be part of? Inconceivable I know.
Wouldn't a federation of European states totally defeat the object?
Edit: Btw the federal United States of America has a head of state.
Wouldn’t a federation of European states totally defeat the object?
Not necessarily, it would potentially be part of a gradual evolution away from nation states. Note the 'potentially'. How else do you evolve? It's unlikely that there's ever going to be a grand abolition of statehood, more likely is gradual creep towards larger confederations and cooperation. I don't see how else it happens.
In a similar way to the manner that England was a bunch of disparate kingdoms - Mercia, Wessex etc - or Italy or Germany. It's a slow ongoing process enabled by communications and technology - and power I guess - that makes it feasible to coherently run an area larger than a small estate. Or something like that.
What could the alternatives be?
Ah you want smaller nation states replaced with bigger nation states.
That's not the way forward for me. Democracy and autonomous self-government, plus an end to class antagonism and all forms of tribalism is.
Definitely no place for a head of state under those circumstances.
Ah you want smaller nation states replaced with bigger nation states.
That’s not the way forward for me. Democracy and autonomous self-government, plus an end to class antagonism and all forms of tribalism is.
Definitely no place for a head of state under those circumstances.
Wouldn't you want that for everyone in the world and without nation states and nationalism? Isn't nationalism, perpetuated by the existence of nation states, one of the worst and most destructive forms of tribalism, not least because it potentially transcends other tribal divisions - which is why it's so dangerous?
It's all very well saying you want all those things and dismissing any practical interim steps in the mean time, but how do you evolve away from nation states without workign with other nation states to achieve that?
Why do we need nation states?
What we have is an international system that has evolved out of kingdoms that were established through war. From a purely logical point of view, there are many undesirable things about the current system, but trying to abolish nation states and set up some utopian world order would just result in enormous bloodshed, which would be far worse than what we have. All the democracies have problems, but they are still far better places to live than the non-democracies.
So it's not a matter of needing nation states, it's a matter of the current system being better than the realistic alternatives. Which, obviously, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve the current system, but abolishing based on a utopian dream is a non-starter.
Which, obviously, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to improve the current system, but abolishing based on a utopian dream is a non-starter.
Which is why I'm wondering if a trend towards larger confederations of states is a more realistic pathway towards the diminished influence of nation states, which is historically what's happened in, say, Germany or Italy - though I guess the Soviet Union is/was the opposite. I'm not suggesting you can simply abolish nation states, but they do seem responsible for a lot of bad shit in the world.
And of course they have a complex relationship with nationalism, which is a really unpleasant, corrosive force in many instances. Obviously they're not the same thing, but I'm not sure nation states based on ethnicity are a good thing. Or, for that matter, nation states which override ethnicity and unite people by facing outwards aggressively.
I hope that in the extreme long term, if we manage not to destroy ourselves first, we move away from both nationalism and nation states, but I'm not saying you can do that instantly, there has to be a process no? Getting rid of the Head of State might be a good start?
The UK isn't a nation state. In Italy and Germany, the state came first and the nation was invented after.
the nation was invented after.
All nations are basically an invention.
Why do we need nation states?
Because
1) it's important to people
2) different countries have different world views
3) who would govern?
On 1) there was a multi-page shitstorm of a thread on STW a couple of weeks back over the renaming of a national park. Folk in Wales want to keep Welsh alive for no practical reason other than cultural. It's not required for communication, having different languages in the world makes it more difficult to talk to each other in fact, but it's essential to their identity and heritage.
Meanwhile, over in France French is legally protected. I was in a supermarket over there one time, some bloke came over and started barrelling something at me in French. I have a smattering of GCSE French but it was so fast and unexpected that I didn't get a word of it. I panicked and said something like "sorry mate, I don't understand," he threw his head back with a sniff (yes really), retorted "en France!" and marched off. Well, I'm terribly sorry that I haven't become fluent yet in the two days I've been here.
On 2) how can that possibly align? Can you imagine say the untied kingdoms of Canada and China? Or Russia and, well, anyone?
On 3) we had brexit at least in part because people didn't want to be ruled by those pesky bureaucrats in Brussels.
That's certainly the traditional Andersonian position, and it's very plausible to me esp. when you consider the Scots or Croats or whatever. It's just interesting that arguably it's mostly a case of nations wrapping a state around themselves, in Germany and Italy the state needed to create a nation for itself!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_Communities
(united, not untied. Blast.)
when you consider the Scots or Croats or whatever.
That'd make for an interesting name if they merged.
on a more practical level - remember when JRM and Bozo got parliament closed to avoid scrutiny of the brexit deal ? Prorogue is the term they used.
They went to queen Brenda to ask permission, knowing full well she wouldn't say no even though she should have - and it took a judge to get them to reopen parliament.
the Head of state should be doing that job properly. A properly functioning head of state should be backing up the speaker of the HoC to make them answer questions properly, get rid of those who break the rules - actually having working rules not 'code' that allows ludicrous stuff like braverman trying to dodge points on her licence or all the other stuff - and forcing a GE instead of one useless PM handing over to another like Johnson followed by Truss followed by Sunak
the Head of state should be doing that job properly. A properly functioning head of state should be backing up the speaker of the HoC to make them answer questions properly, get rid of those who break the rules [etc]
It's an interesting point.
There's complaints on this thread and elsewhere about the royals "interfering" and "meddling" in politics. But isn't that exactly what they're supposed to be doing? Isn't that the point of a head of state? Do we complain that the House of Lords meddles with the House of Commons?
This is increasingly feeling a bit like Daily Mail cherry-picking, we object when they interfere with things we like and also object when they don't interfere with things we don't like.
IHN - I think it is a really interesting question. I thought there were more countries who's HoS and HoG was one and the same person, but I googled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_heads_of_state_and_government and it looks like almost all of them are not countries that could really describe themselves as strong democracies. So I suspect that giving too much power to one person works out bad, or has the risk of working out badly. The secondary question then is, if the HoS actually does something useful as balance why do we insist that our monarchy are neutral and it was unthinkable that HRH might refuse to prorogue parliament etc; and under what circumstance would HRH actually intervene to stop the PM acting like a dictator?
But isn’t that exactly what they’re supposed to be doing? Isn’t that the point of a head of state? Do we complain that the House of Lords meddles with the House of Commons?
1) No, not in the present system, because they're unelected.
2) No.
3) Sometimes, and the HoL's ability to block legislation from the HoC is limited by convention and statute, because they're unelected.
if the HoS actually does something useful as balance why do we insist that our monarchy are neutral
The HoS in our current system is not supposed to balance anything. The monarchy is required to be neutral because it is unelected.
This is increasingly feeling a bit like Daily Mail cherry-picking,
Odd you mention that given your previous comment about who you are in bed with and their liking for the monarchy.
we object when they interfere with things we like and also object when they don’t interfere with things we don’t like.
If you put it like this its so simple. However like most simple things its wrong.
The obvious flaw is that we might disagree with them interfering at all even if, in some cases, we would agree with their actions.
That people point out the failure to deal with Johnson doesnt mean they actually would have been happy if they had interfered them but just that it undermines one of the claims about them keeping politicians in check. They didnt, we had to rely on the courts.
I would prefer for them not to interfere at all regardless of whether it is something I agreed with.
The house of lords has its own set of problems.
Exactly right. It would have to be a radically bad existential situation for me to be in favour of the monarchy intervening in government in a practical sense.
They didnt, we had to rely on the courts.
...which is exactly what is supposed to happen!
In a properly functioning model, the president should be making sure that parliament is operating, the replacement for the HoL should be approving or throwing out legislation as it goes through.
Example being the law to limit protest, the HoL should be able to block stuff like that - any argument between HOC and HOL is the job of the president to adjudicate on.
Too much is expected of the speaker of HOL at the moment because the structure and the rules are badly defined, and all those standards committees would be more powerful for having a President because that is the day-to-day mechanism for their role
{EDIT} I see what you mean Cougar - to me the 'royal interference' argument is the fact that Brenda, and now Charlie, got advance view of all the laws and are able to write their own personal exemption like land laws, IHT etc. A president wouldn't be able to do that.
In a properly functioning model, the president should be making sure that parliament is operating...
You're saying this like there's only one way of arranging a country. It depends what you want from a president: do you want one that has an active role in government or do you want one that's ceremonial?
Good point - If the system worked then the president should be basically ceremonial other than a breakglass option for exceptional circumstances. I agree that there's different models like RoI vs France vs US, my view is that UK should design a system that works for us - and to a wider point; get rid of FPTP, a better regional model, chuck out the HOL and start again are all more important than the royal vs president argument (although we should be getting rid of the royals too)
Presumably the real answer is twofold.
1. We can't be arsed to do anything meaningful about it.
2. Any move to do anything about it stokes the gammons up to the point of forming an armed wing.
🤦♂️
Why do we need a head of state?
Is it because, if we divide the world up into us and them, then we need to be on top, but, if we are all equal, then we cant divide the world into us and them. Therefore a head of state is required. So you can have a pecking order.
If there were no poor people, who would keep the rich rich?
Why do we need a state?
