[nm, a bit skew to the point]
Years ago, I worked with a guy who was at school with Andrew in Canada, back in the day. He said that the appellation “Randy Andy” was accurate.
They say that politics makes for strange bedfellows, and Andy will certainly have a strange bedfellow for his cell:
I don’t think it would’ve gotten to the point of arresting him unless more was coming. This isn’t exasperated parents letting the county sheriff scare their son straight. It’s the first arrest of royalty in centuries; its safe to assume everything about this case has been done meticulously by the book at every step.
Welp… Australia’s apparently the first of the Realms to say “pull him from the queue”
It’s on the cards and is being raised in Parliament, but unlikely to happen til after all this legal proceedings so as not to prejudice anything. Stay safe Charles, Will, Harry and families!
So what happens if he’s removed from the line of succession only in Australia and the worst happens, so that he’s the heir? He’s king everywhere other than Australia?
From the article:
Short of withdrawing from the Commonwealth entirely, it doesn’t sound like its something Australia can unilaterally do.
Make that short of becoming a republic. A country doesn’t have to have the British monarch as their head of state as well – or even to have formerly been part of the British empire – to be a member of the Commonwealth.
They wouldn’t have to become a republic. The Australian Parliament could just declare someone else monarch of Australia. The crowns of Australia, Canada, etc might currently happen to sit on the same head as the crown of the UK, but they’re legally distinct and the respective nations’ Parliaments can slap them on top of whomever’s head they please.
Right, but if by some miracle Andrew became king, Commonwealth countries could act unilaterally to break ties with the British monarchy without necessarily making fundamental structural changes to their form of government, though it would take a bunch of legislation and probably changes to the constitution.
In particular, in every constitutional monarchy in the Commonwealth outside Britain itself, the head of state is the Governor General acting in the name of the monarch. The GG is nominally appointed by the monarch “on the advice of the Prime Minister”, but in practice it’s the PM who does the appointing and the monarch’s role is purely ceremonial.
I don’t see why such a system couldn’t continue, with the GG simply becoming head of state in their own right and not representing anyone. The role is mostly ceremonial anyway, but there are occasions when the GG has to exercise important reserve powers. In that capacity the GG is supposed to be a dignified non-partisan statesman, and that important part of constitutional monarchy could certainly continue with no connection to a monarch.
But Great Britain is stuck with the monarch as head of state. So realistically, if Andrew ever became king, that would probably be the end of the British monarchy, already under heavy criticism from many quarters. Queen Elizabeth was superb at maintaining dignity and respect for the institution; King Charles not so much. Andrew would be a dumpster fire.
As noted above, the “monarch” could simply be the Governor General within the existing structure of government.
That would result in a republic, though. An appointed GG is not a hereditary monarch. But Australia could, if they wished to remain a constitutional monarchy (they wouldn’t, but hypothetically) pick a new monarch unrelated to the UK Crown.
We may be getting into the weeds of semantics here, but as I see it, despite the name, constitutional monarchies in Commonwealth countries other than the UK have little to do with hereditary monarchy. Rather, it’s all about important reserve powers exercised when necessary by an impartial non-political head of state, who also performs ceremonial duties.
The fact that the GG is appointed to a limited term (in Canada, nominally 5 years though it can be more or less) rather than a lifetime position inherited from many generations of inbred privilege, is not really relevant to their role and responsibilities as head of state within the structure of the Westminster parliamentary system.
Can’t agree with that and I think it steps just over the line of semantics into the meaningful. You need a monarch to have a monarchy, constitutional or otherwise. Remove the monarch and you have something else. The President of Ireland is a largely ceremonial post that nonetheless does have certain reserve powers. You can argue that’s different because it is an elected post. But if you don’t have a monarch to appoint a GG, you going to have to elect one as the position will become instantly even more politicized as an internally nominated post.
I disagree, at least from the Canadian perspective. The monarch does not in any practical sense appoint the GG, the Prime Minister does. What the monarch does is formally issue an official invite to the position respecting the Prime Minister’s wishes.
The actual British monarchy has always been carefully hands-off about meddling in the affairs of Commonwealth constitutional monarchies, occasionally participating in ceremonial occasions on request, as King Charles did recently by delivering the Speech from the Throne to the Canadian parliament, but they always leave the exercise of reserve powers to the GG.
Could the PM appoint an obviously partisan GG siding with his own party? Sure, anything is possible, but if the PM ever did such a thing, the opposition parties (and the public and the media) would raise holy hell. The last place you would look for recourse is the British Monarchy, as former Green Party leader Elizabeth May famously found out. [PDF] In short, the Queen diplomatically schooled May on how constitutional monarchies actually work, and punted her complaint to the GG of Canada.
That wouldn’t happen by accident. Changing the line of succession requires all the Commonwealth realms to pass their own Acts of Parliament. But they’ll presumably do what they did when they last adjusted the line of succession just over a decade ago - the Acts provided that their provisions would only take effect on dates to be subsequently decided by each government, thus delaying the change until all the Acts were in place and allowing the implementation of the Acts to be coordinated.
Also, right now, most of the lands that have the Royals as nominal head of state are taking it slow on the Andrew-defenstration… but if it did ever get to the point of him inheriting, I imagine all of them would find it much more urgent.
Like if the seven people ahead of him are found hanged in their jail cells?
Though it probably doesn’t apply in this case, there have been cases where someone is a monarch in more than one place - and the places have different rules about the line of succession. For example, Victoria inherited her position of Queen of Great Britain from her uncle William, who was King of Great Britain and King of Hanover. Hanover didn’t have reigning Queens, so Victoria’s other uncle became King of Hanover.
I thought it was traditional for them to fall backwards onto a dessert fork.