Vote for Exbrit won’t wait for King Charles
Oz and NZ itch to ditch royals with UK President in prospect
WHILE the UK is obsessed with Brexit, on the other side of the world Australia and New Zealand are laying plans for Exbrit.
The Brit they want to extricate themselves from is the Queen.
I’m not sure how to put this, Your Majesty, but they’re a bit miffed that at 91 you’re still alive.
Republican movements in both countries have itched to get rid of the British monarch as their head of state for decades.
But Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull didn’t want to push for another referendum until Her Maj was dead, confident he’d then win it.
Polls show 55 per cent of Aussies don’t give a XXXX for Prince Charles.
Justify
Now politicians in Australia and New Zealand are getting impatient with the Queen’s ongoing good health – and referendums could be held Down Under within two years.
This would reignite Republican sentiment at home.
We’ve got enough uncertainty over Brexit without t urning our constitution on its head as well. It’s why we keep hereditary peers in the House of Lords, to justify a hereditary sovereign.
And because the sovereign is head of the Church of England, bishops must also stay in the Lords so the church doesn’t separate from the state, which would further undermine the Monarchy. It’s why Lords reform keeps hitting the buffers. Most people think the alternative as head of state must be an elected president. But is anyone inclined to vote for the has- beens Tony Blair or David Cameron? There’s another option, though. The Queen’s constitutional function is to sign off laws once they’ve been passed by Parliament.
Commons Speaker John Bercow could easily do that job. And take over some of the ceremonial gubbins the Queen has to put up with like hosting state visits for distasteful heads of state.
Through gritted teeth she has welcomed former enemies such as Japan’s Emperor Hirohito and grisly Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.
Now she is threatened with ghastly Donald Trump. Let Bercow suffer instead.
And of course his wife Sally, who would be the world’s first First Lady to have cavorted about on Big Brother. But it might stop her being tempted to strut her stuff on Strictly.