Should Britain Scrap the Monarchy?

The succession to the monarchy puts sons before daughters which is primitive & backwards in modern times of gender equality. Sons inherit before daughters, even if the daughter is older. This principle is called male primogeniture. This could be changed by an Act of Parliament. Some constitutional experts believe this could put the role of the monarch at risk.

The Act of Settlement restricts anyone from succession who is not a member of the Church of England, this restricts the royal family from marrying a Catholic. The most recent victim to this sinister law was Autumn Kelly, who in 2002 renounced her Catholic faith so she could marry Elizabeth Windsor’s eldest grandson.

Republicans tend to argue the only way to establish what 61 million people think is to ask 61 million people as opposed to cheap media polls. They would have still been spirited to see in a 2009 BBC/ICM poll, 81% want to see reformation, the very same reformations constitutional experts fear will jeopardise the role of Monarchy. In another 2009 poll by YouGov, 54% wanted to see Monarchy reformed or abolished.

No other establishment would be able to to discriminate along these lines in a lawful manner. The outdated laws reflect how out of touch British Monarchy is.

The monarchy is obviously not democratic, the people have no say whatsoever which is unfair, because of the hereditary nature of the monarchy it means that the best person can never be picked for the job.

The Queen may have the power to sign off all legislation before it becomes law but she does not decide whether or not to pass laws. She is obliged to say yes to any law brought before her by the Prime Minister as the parliament who have proposed it have been elected by the people, whereas she has has not.

The Crown creates also creates all peerages and awards other honours, but peerages and most other honours are granted on the advice of the Prime Minister. Foreign dignitaries may come to visit the Queen on trips to the UK, but these visits are usually no more than photo opportunities, the Queen has no influence over foreign policy decisions.

Gordon Brown had to go and ask the queen to dissolve parliament before announcing the date of the general election, but this action was purely ceremonial. The Queen would not refuse to dissolve parliament and most people had been predicting a May 6th election for a long time before the Prime Minister emerged from Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.

The British tax payer pays about £75,000,000 a year to support the royal family. The royal family is one of the richest families in Britain and although no real figures exist for their wealth Forbes estimated that they are worth $650 million. The money we waste funding the monarchy could be used to provide free university education for the poorest students or to build affordable housing, something Britain is seriously lacking at present. During harsh economic times such as these people who are struggling to keep their jobs should not be paying taxes to maintain the life of luxury that the royal family live in.

The abolition of the Monarchy is an issue of liberty, equality and democracy. It cannot simply be dismissed because it ‘makes us money’.

A system of inherited authority reduces the democratic system in the UK to a secondary or, if you separate the House of Lords from the Monarchy, tertiary tier of authority. This may be symbolic but it reinforces the belief in this country that voting wont change anything. The Monarchy represent the glass ceiling. Symbolically this country’s system does not support the idea of freedom of collective determination which we call democracy and so many have fought and died to preserve or spread

The existence of royalty automatically creates sub classes among the general population. This promotion of class division runs counter to a meritocracy – by skewing socio economic progress in favour of who you know rather on what you know. We now have a kleptocracy with the rich taking from the poor (eg taxpayer bailouts). On any metric (other than wealth) the monarchy is not elite and should be abolished without delay. Unfortunately – the aristocracy – those to whom power and wealth accrue – depend on the presence of the royal ‘benchmark’ at the top of this obscenely unfair state of affairs for their survival – if the monarchy goes so could they.

I read my history in college. And there’s no doubt that there were a lot of childish games being played out around the world since the beginning. We are much more capable of being an intelligence above these games. But the modern day “children” in politics have a status quo that justifies the existence of a monarch. At least in their own eyes. I for one think a monarch is still a childish game that sucks a society dry of much higher potential for quality of life for the entire population.

If you choose to holiday in either Tunisia or Morocco, would you really be wooed by Mohammed VI being on the throne?

And does anyone TRULY believe Americans go up the Peak District because Charles Windsor is going to take over the firm when his mother dies?

Would the Chinese stop taking photos of our capital if they thought Camilla Parker Bowles wasn’t going to be the next Queen of England?

Despite its bias to London, and the consequential failure to properly promote British coastlines, the tourist board never uses Monarchy in any of its promotional materials.

This is because they know Britain has an image problem abroad. Some nations percieve Britain to be stuffy because of traditions like Monarchy. This is why considerably more people visit Legoland Windsor than Windsor Castle.

Most British landmarks has little or no reference to Monarchy, and where they do, there is no credible evidence whatsoever to support the ludicrous claim those tourist came here to catch a glimpse of Liz Windsor peaking out of her curtains.

If there is anything the tourism argument DOES prove, it proves Monarchists are prepared to use cheap arguments to support a supposedly majesterial institution that is supposed to be above it all.

In both France and Germany people still visit palaces such as Versailles and Charlottenburg, despite the fact that neither country have a monarchy any more. Not having a monarch would not stop people from visiting the royal palaces. In fact it would allow them to open up more of the rooms in the palaces making them more visitor friendly & create the necessary jobs & revenue.

The changing guards would probably still continue in a British Republic, as it does in Greece.

This is utter nonsense. To begin with, the Queen’s heritage stems from Germany. In addition, Britain has always been a coloniser; it has taken over states and ran their countries. This is historical. This is why Britain is such a multicultural nation. What Britain most signifies is the mixing of races and religions. We are still working out how to do this, but there is steady progress. The monarchy does not represent this feeling of unity. Much to the contrary, they stand as a stark reminder that Britain used to rule other countries in subordinate ways. Integration and therefore morale in Britain would be much improved with the abolition of the monarchy.

“Never in the field of human existence has so much been taken from so many, by so few.”
The royals have been collecting other peoples wealth for generations.

In the British isles the queen owns the crown estate – almost 120,000 hectares of seized agricultural land, dating from 1066 at an estimated value of £7,300,000,000 in 2010.
This wealth must be returned to the citizens of the country.