Elected head of state is a terrible idea

I wonder if correspondent

Ralph A Tebbutt has paused for thought about his ‘republican’ letter being published the day before the announcement of the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. After the palpable sadness and the hundreds of tributes paid, Mr Tebbutt must surely be aware by now that the great majority of the British public simply do not share his view on ending the monarchy. It is now so embedded in our culture and history that despite his wishful thinking about equality for all, it will endure and rightly so. I say that because what the line of succession gives us is a continuity and stability that no transient elected figure can ever hope to achieve.

I do not believe either that the younger generation is hungry to change the status quo. They might well be active and feel strongly on issues such as climate change and protection of the environment but on the matter of abolition of the monarchy in favour of the UK becoming a republic, I think he would find the majority are content to leave it as it is. After all, in the event of a referendum on the issue, all it would need would be to toss into the debate a few names of some recent politicians and young people would soon be convinced that having an elected head of state is a thoroughly bad idea.

Picture this scenario: The country has decided we should have an elected head of state, so the royal family has been consigned to private life. A man has been chosen (yes, it would be a man!) Then he must decide from where he will lead the land. Somewhere commensurate with his enormous ego. ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘Buckingham Palace. That’s vacant. I’ll live there.’ Then, once ensconced, he will begin to build his empire. That will include a veritable army of ‘advisers’ and ‘consultants’, a significant number of whom will be sycophants and cronies, and all will be imbued with a sense of similar entitlement, so they will also begin appointing vast numbers of staff to manage their affairs. Within three years the cost of running this ‘fiefdom’ will have soared into the multimillions, dwarfing what it costs us taxpayers to finance the Crown, and all to achieve a pale comparison to that which the country had rejected.

It will never happen because Mr Tebbutt’s dreams of equality for all, which are really communism with a bit of window dressing, is a fundamentally flawed system that creates the regime of Animal Farm where the masses are ‘equal’ but they have the elite managing their equality for them!

To quote the Rev William Boetcker, ‘You will not help the poor by destroying the rich.’

And changing the United Kingdom to the United Republidom is as dumb as it sounds. That’s why it will never happen. Because most British people are not dumb.