Her Majesty the President?
GELB, NORMAN
BRITAIN'S ROYAL DILEMMA Her Majesty the President? BY NORMAN GELB London Several years ago the late British writer Malcolm Muggeridge, poking innocent fun at the British monarchy,...
...Antimonarchist sentiment is, of course, nothing new here...
...In short, Queen Elizabeth is an unlikely target for revolution...
...Although his comment was made in an article he did for an American magazine (Esquire), word of it quickly spread to Britain, with ugly consequences...
...A bitter article in the Guardian, for example, declares that "Once one accepts the monarchy, other ludicrous survivals are easily swallowed: the honors system, calculated to create layers of quite unnecessary deference (and its companion, condescension...
...The Prime Minister would continue to be the true head of government, the person in charge...
...In addition, the high cost of maintaining the monarchy is an undeniable mockery at a time when so many people in this country are in deep trouble because of a protracted economic slump...
...She must agree to what her ministers "advise," whoever they may be, and then issue "commands" as if she were exercising the royal prerogative...
...No Bill of Rights exists to protect her, and there is no automatic right of appeal to the High Court...
...But the mood today is such that an often heard question asks whether the time has not come to revise the British Constitution and abolish the monarchy altogether—as was proposed a while back in the House of Commons by Left-winger Tony Benn, who renounced the peerage he inherited in 1960 because it barred him from staying in Commons...
...Discussion of the House of Windsor's current spate of troubles is larded with scorn for members of the British royal family...
...Many Britons still believe the monarchy is a valuable political institution that serves to provide continuity and cohesion regardless of the political differences or physical conflicts across the land...
...Particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, British writers and cartoonists waxed lyrical and satirical on the eccentricities and scandals of the royals...
...Muggeridge later said the whole experience helped him understand what it must have been like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany...
...Some members of Parliament, like Roy Hattersley, want the monarchy streamlined and modernized...
...By then they hope to have persuaded the nation that after the Queen has served out her reign, she should be succeeded by an elected president who would be a ceremonial head of state—much like, say, Germany's President...
...Few would deny that she has served her people well for four decades, visiting hospitals and schools, launching ships, supporting worthy causes, receiving visiting heads of state—and bearing with quiet dignity the domestic unhappiness that has afflicted almost every member of her family in the full glare of the press and television...
...Nor is the end in sight...
...The BBC decided it was advisable to have him take a break from his frequent broadcast appearances...
...She is admired by the vast majority of Britons and considered inoffensive by the rest...
...The sprawling British Empire is long gone, and the Commonwealth it was transformed into has removed the word "British" from its name...
...The main focus of attention, however, remains the monarchy itself...
...an education system to make one weep...
...The surge of antimonarchist feeling extends to what some have described as an environment of antiquated tradition...
...Indeed, the endless stream of headlines blaring the latest details of the breakup of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and those tabloid photographs of the Duchess of York (aka Fergie) frolicking topless with a male friend, culminating in her separation from Prince Andrew, have diminished the royals' worthiness...
...Yet the long-running fairy tale, attended by glittering pageantry, is usually heartily enjoyed by most of the Queen's "subjects...
...But reality (or unreality), alas, should not be confused with logic...
...The Constitution is not a document...
...Despite Britain's thousand year history of royal reign, doing away with the Crown would not involve a very complicated procedure...
...Yes, everyone knows the Queen has no power...
...The English decapitated one of their monarchs long before the egalitarian French got around to hauling one of their own to the guillotine...
...There is much talk about the greater simplicity and smaller budgets of other European royal families, notably in the Netherlands and Sweden...
...And who knows...
...But probably the simplest, smoothest, quickest way to put the once beloved monarchy peacefully to sleep would be for Parliament to act right now and name Elizabeth Windsor President of the First British Republic...
...Any one of them can bealtered by Parliament, the supreme authority in the land...
...BY NORMAN GELB London Several years ago the late British writer Malcolm Muggeridge, poking innocent fun at the British monarchy, suggested that its ways and very existence were reminiscent of comic opera...
...Betty Windsor, and should move out of Buckingham Palace into a modest semi-detached abode in a London suburb, she would have to comply...
...After all, its days of grandeur are not about to recur...
...people who share that view, though, tend to be long on generalities and short on specifics...
...Charles just might win...
...It would be a mistake to think the sansculottes are on the march in London town...
...Especially now that irreverent media treatment has largely stripped the monarchy of its mystique, one might therefore expect it will shortly disappear from the scene...
...The Royal Navy, once ruler of the seas, is a shadow of its mighty self...
...He was spat on in the street...
...it is an accumulation of laws, judicial decisions, usages, and custom...
...Even the recent offer by the Queen—the richest woman in the country—to pay income tax was not received appreciatively by the public...
...about the kind of monarchy our country needs...
...Norman Gelb writes regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...
...The initial popular election for the office could be held later, when President Elizabeth decided to retire...
...The Observer echoes a deeper concern in urging "a serious debate...
...It is astounding how the climate has changed...
...The marital problems of the Prince of Wales have stirred an open debate about whether he should step aside so that his son, 10-year-old Prince William, could instead succeed the Queen on the throne a decade or two down the road...
...it was seen, rather, as having been dunned out of her by the growing outcry over the hefty cost of sustaining the scandal-stained royal household...
...Spitting linage, a popular TV puppet show, portrays Queen Elizabeth as a frump and the Prince of Wales as a dunce...
...Similarly, a campaign for the adoption of a Bill of Rights has been reactivated...
...restrictions on Parliament are limited to those it chooses—for reasons of the public good, tradition or whatever—to impose upon itself...
...God Save the Queen" is sung as lustily as ever...
...a legal system in which the practitioners dress like walk-ons in an 18th-century costume drama and use forms of speech unused elsewhere in the culture for 100 years...
...It is not only Her Majesty's Government that runs the country, it is also Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition that is striving to take over...
...He received hundreds of hate letters...
...In any case, the Court would have to bow to Commons' decision...
...If a majority in the House of Commons voted that Queen Elizabeth II should be known as Mrs...
...Renewed calls also have been issued for American-style "freedom of information" legislation that would deny ministers and many civil servants the power they now enjoy to decide, often purely by whim, what news of official actions or procedures should be released to the public...
...As for the growing number of people here, including devotees of the Queen, who recognize that the monarchy has outlived its usefulness, they appear to accept that it will survive at least until the conclusion of Britain's second, far less glorious Elizabethan era...
...It was service on behalf of "King and country" during the two great wars of the 20th century that generated the intense loyalty to the Crown aroused by the hapless Muggeridge...
...More damage is expected to be done by Kitty Kelley's forthcoming biography of the Queen's husband, the Duke of Edinburgh...
Vol. 76 • January 1993 • No. 1
