A little from column A, a little from column B. The system we’re talking about has always struck me as Carrollean, with a monarchy that’s no part of government and a government which relies on that monarchy to rule but which effectively tells the monarch how to decide unless the monarch tells them what not to ask for oh and the current HRH changes religion every time they go into Scotland.
My underlying point is that it would be a massive difficult process to disentangle the monarchy from the structure of the government even if it plays little to no role in the day-to-day business of government. Even if England decides to end the monarchy using the Parliament which it doesn’t technically have, Scotland, for example, could decide to keep it around, as could Wales, and then you have Crown Dependencies such as the Isle of Man which are not part of the UK but are neither independent nor are they likely to become such, regardless of whether there’s a Crown for them to Depend upon. And then there’s the Church of England.
So could it happen? Yes, and the fact the result would likely be strange and nonsensical wouldn’t stop it from happening.
No, no. There aren’t separate Crowns for Scotland, Wales, etc. The present Queen is not Queen of England, Queen of Scotland, Queen of Wales, Queen of Northern Ireland. She is Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is one kingdom. (That’s what the word “united” means.)
So, at the moment the sovereign entity in the UK is the Crown. If, by whatever means, whether formally legal or not, the Crown is abolished and the sovereign entity becomes the British Republic (or whatever), the Republic steps into the shoes of the Crown in all respects and, e.g. Scotland will have exactly the same relationship to the British Republic as it previously had with the Crown. Likewise, e.g., Man, currently a crown dependency, becomes a dependency of the Republic.
The Scots, of course, might not be happy with that, and they might set about changing that situation. They could seek to establish a separate Scottish crown, and put Betty in as first occupant. And that might raise a question about Scotland’s continued participation in the British Republic. But (a) it’s fairly unlikely that they would want to do this, and (b) the Scottish crown isn’t something that would pop up automatically on the abolition of the UK crown; they would have to take, and implement, a decision to establish a Scottish crown.
There might be a bit of a lacuna for the Commonwealth realms. Whoever is monarch in the UK is monarch in Canada, Australia, etc. None of them have their own legislation regulating the crown, succession to the crown, etc. Instead, they have a deal (under the Statute of Westminster) that the UK will not monkey with the laws establishing and regulating the crown without the assent of the Commonwealth realms. And, yes, if the steps the UK took to abolish the crown were formally revolutionary, it might well be that the niceties of the Statute of Westminster would not be observed. That would leave a gap in the system. The Commonwealth realms would have to make their own constitutional arrangements to plug that gap, and I suspect that in the circumstances sixteen out of sixteen of them would declare a republic.
New Zealand does since 1988. The Bill of Rights, Act of Settlement, etc. were all adopted as laws of New Zealand by the Parliament of New Zealand.
Tuvalu, if it did nothing (which is unlikely of course) would arguably end up sort of like Andorra, with the President of Britain being the Sovereign of Tuvalu:
That still leaves a bit of a gap. The Act of Settlement doesn’t purport to say who shall be King or Queen of New Zealand; it prescribes succession to the British Crown. So, unless New Zealand adopted it as a law of New Zealand with appropriate adaptations, what you now have is a law of New Zealand purporting to regulate succession to the British Crown.
It’s questionable, obviously, whether New Zealand has any jurisdiction to regulate succession to the British crown. It would be even more questionable, in our hypothetical, whether the New Zealand parliament has any jurisdiction to regulate succession to a British crown that doesn’t exist. On a plain speaking view, a law of New Zealand purporting to do this would have exactly as much effect as a Law of New Zealand purporting to regulation succession to the throne of Russia.
I think the only way that you could make any sense at all of this is to argue that the effect of the NZ legislation is to create a legal fiction called something like “the British crown” which is a creature of New Zealand law and which is not, in fact, in reality or in British law, the British crown. But whoever holds this fictional crown is, by virtue of holding it, also King or Queen of New Zealand.
We can’t know, of course, what view the High Court of New Zealand would take of this unless the circumstances actually arose. But my guess is that the High Court would hold that it cannot have been the parliamentary intention to create a fictional crown, and subordinate the Crown of New Zealand to it. I think that the Court would take the view that the parliamentary intention was predicated on an assumption of the continuation of the actual British crown, and that the extinction of that Crown would create a gap which the NZ parliament would need to fill either by eliminating any dependence of the NZ crown on the British crown, or by establishing a republic.
It was only in 2002 that the Church of England permitted divorcées to remarry in church under “certain circumstances” and at the whim of the priest. That’s why when Princess Ann married for a second time in 1992, having divorced Mark “Foggy” Phillips, it was a Church of Scotland ceremony.
Incidentally, **UDS **joked about Scotland offering the crown to Betty if the UK as a whole became a republic but I’ve seen suggestions it would be Ann Scotland would turn to - much more popular and very familiar from turning up for every Scotland rugby match
Princess Diana was not very much older than I am, and there were news reports that she was forced to endure a “medical inspection” and present a “certificate of virginity” before she could be approved to marry Charles./QUOTE]
I don’t remember any of that. I suspect it’s a post facto exaggeration by the Diana-fans of the common perception of her suitability. Highly unlikely any such formality would have been expected.
It’s in the official biography by Philip Ziegler. George VI bought the private residences at Sandringham and Balmoral back from his brother (since they were the personal property of the family), and gave him additional financial support from private funds, since there was no “Civil List” money for them, and George having been led to believe there was little accumulated money from Edward’s time in charge of the Duchy of Cornwall estates (which are treated as the private funding for the Prince of Wales of the day) - and later discovered, despite Edward’s repeated phone calls to him to ask for more, that he had been misled.
I think you’ll find the position as Head of the Church was established by Henry VIII. Nothing to do with finding the monarchy a role in a democratic age, and I suspect that neither George V nor his father was particularly church-y (where Victoria was).
But you’re right that the Church’s view was strongly influential in Establishment circles. Indeed, it was some guarded, but public, comments by a bishop that finally brought the whole thing into public discussion. However, the Archbish’s post-Abdication broadcast talk did him no favours, since it sounded a bit like kicking a man when he was down, and inspired a sarcastic verse in response:
My Lord Archbishop, what a scold you are!
And when your man is down, how bold you are!
Of charity how oddly scant you are!
How Lang O Lord, how full of Cantuar!
Without getting into the legalities of the issue(others on here know far more than I in that issue) I believe the court of public opinion would have weighed heavily on the matter, and eventually force Edward to abdicate. Assuming the average voter was moderately against the marriage; the public would soon become vehemently opposed had the marriage lead to a constitutional crisis and an election or two. If the country were in a state of flux due to the issue the British public would foremost blame Edward. When swaying public opinion I believe full time politicians to be better at it than your average Monarch. As others have said, the monarch is who we treat as monarch **not **necessarily who is most rightful for the position.
From what I read a while ago… Camilla had been the love of Charles’ life for a while, but the Palace told him he could not marry her - apparently because in her early college years she had cohabitated with another man without benefit of wedlock. As the 70’s ground on, and things became more and more lax in society, the pool of scandal-free females of suitable social standing became fewer and fewer. He eventually had to settle for a girl much younger who had never had any romantic entanglements. It’s not so much a virginity thing as avoiding any suggestion she’d been “involved” to any extend in an inappropriate way.
(Which maybe should have been a warning sign. The annoying press that covered Charles and Diana said that she could be amazingly bi-polar; and Charles, who had always been surrounded by yes-men and had never even had to put toothpaste on his toothbrush himself, was totally flummoxed by someone who actually ignored his wishes.).
I was puzzled by UDS post and the ease with which it was accepted as a “likely” outcome of the end of the Monarchy, for which the cite here by Marcus is another example.
I’d like to think it’s more an American-knee jerk assumption as opposed to a British/)especially English?) assumption, but it’s more likely my ignorance in basic political science: I thought “republic” and “country (eg Scotland above) which ‘accepts’ crown” are mutually exclusive.
And the assumption is Scotland would be left in the lurch, while England went around not saying Long Live the King? And Morthern Island?
In fact way upthread I hiccuped when “republicans” were mentioned as conceivable parliament members hostile to Edward. Damn those neocons get around…
Around these parts we all pledge allegiance to the republic for which the flag stands.
Leo, considering what would happen if UK became republic is a hypothetical and an extremely unlikely one at that. Thinking that if the majority in England (or England and Wales) voted to get rid of the monarchy there would be a majority in Scotland keen to retain royalty is even more unlikely.
Whatever the views of theLeader of the Opposition there is currently sod all chance of the majority of the population calling for the UK to become a republic. The Queen is immensely popular, Charles is no longer unpopular and the next generation in William and Kate are popular crowd pleasers. Apart from that I do not think there would be any consensus on what sort of republic we should be - see the Australian example of that problem.
“Considering what would happen if [insert topic here] is a hypothetical and an extremely unlikely one at that…”
And this has worried any of us before?
But of course I take your point.
ETA: Even when using brackets in a cite, have edited it and distorted it. As a general rule this is correctly a moddable offense, frowned upon, but I am making a funny.
This was exactly my point. Considering that in most parliamentary democracies, the elected president (while mostly ceremonial) tends to be a former politician with associated partisan baggage - a “neutral” head of state with the trapping and pomp and circumstance of royalty seems to be a much better choice. Plus, the person has the “nuclear option” in the event of a serious constitutional crisis; and as demonstrated by Edward, the option to “opt out” if they don’t like the constrictions of the job.
I’m assuming that what’s meant is that NZ has a version of the British laws that apply to NZ. So if the UK got rid of their monarch, the current one would still be the Queen of NZ, Charles would be next in line, etc., as detailed by their version of the Act of Settlement.
It took me a minute to realize that you were talking about Anne, the Princess Royal. I couldn’t think of anyone in the Royal family named Ann, and not having ever really heard anyone say “Princess Anne”, her first name was only ingrained in my memory as those four letters, not the sound that those letters make.
