Weak monarch the greatest gift

When something works, the burden of proof rests with those seeking change. The desire by a disgruntled few for a republic continues to percolate but their aspirations fail to confront a central feature of a constitutional monarchy: its success.

In 1688, the English nobility conspired to expel the reviled Catholic King James and install his protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange on the throne.

This may seem harsh, but as Charles’ father had been removed by means of beheading, this approach had the merit of requiring less clean up.

From that time to this there has been a clear understanding in the Westminster system that parliament rules, the monarch reigns and tyranny is forever kept from any man’s grasp.

This self-evidently obvious regime was not reached with equanimity. The English monarchy can trace its roots back to the line of Wessex kings, including Alfred the Great, whose authority was briefly reduced to a few Somerset marshes. It arguably reached its apogee in the reign of Richard the Lionheart whose rule extended to the Pyrenees even as he battered the gates of Jerusalem.

The sea of blood was spilt over which descendant of Edward III should reign, and the English Civil War seems incomprehensible today, but it has led us to this benign point: a monarch with a few reserve powers, who serves ultimately at Parliament’s pleasure.

An impotent sovereign is the greatest gift the Empire has bestowed on her former subjects. As Lord Weatherill, a former speaker of the British Parliament, declared: the monarchy exists not to exercise power but to prevent others from having it.

A governor-general is a pathetic thing – an empty ceremonial place-holder for an absent monarch with no real powers of their own. As I type this, I confess, I cannot recall the incumbent’s name and few readers will do better. No risk to our liberty can ever come from such an office. In the United States, the prospect that any native-born child can aspire to the presidency is upheld as a virtue of their system. It isn’t.

The swelling power of the US executive and the erosion of Congressional and judicial authority is a direct result of the exalted legitimacy a president can achieve regardless of the constitutional limits imposed.

By contrast, it is the very illegitimacy of the British sovereign that is its genius. Ultimate power rests with someone lacking the moral authority to use it.

It’s brilliant. It’s taken over 1000 years to perfect. We tamper with it at our peril.

God Save the Queen.

An impotent sovereign is the greatest gift the Empire has bestowed on her former subjects.