Category: Republic

The House of Lords has overruled the Britain’s elected legislators by voting to delay any decriminalisation of TV licence fee non-payment until 2017. The vote to delay removal of the criminal penalty was 178 to 175. Unlike the Church of England, the BBC is not able to place its own representatives in the legislature to…

Democratic Heritage Rejected The inability of the British to take democracy seriously and fully replace feudal with democratic institutions and practices has been brought to attention again by the revelation that the number of citizens eligible for an hereditary seat in the legislature has increased. Stephen Benn, a sixty three year old Labour Party supporter…

British Government Suffers Second Defeat The British government has suffered another defeat for its policy of treating as above the law those it believes to be “royal”. In October 2014 the High Court quashed a decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions that Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad al-Khalifa was, as reported by the Financial Times…

Not Impartial On Scottish Independence One of the monarchist claims is that the Windsor clan unite the nation in a way that partisan politicians cannot. For that reason clan members are, in theory, required to keep their mouths shut on political issues. In the Scottish independence referendum it may for once have been true that…

But Motives May Be Doubted The monarchists like to tell us that a great advantage of their feudal institution is that it ensures a politically neutral head of state. But as the vote on independence for Scotland becomes close the news media has reported that some politicians want hereditary head of state Windsor to speak…

Local government workers have been offered a 1% pay increase. The Windsor family got 5.7% for 2013-14, no questions asked. That’s £1.9m more a year They get it because they take 15% of the profits from the Crown Estate. And the Estate has been doing quite nicely, helped by a boom in the rents for…

The abdication of Juan Carlos de Borbón as king of Spain may have given a boost to support for the Spanish monarchy but it seems that the Spanish are far from enthusiastic about the feudal institution. The new king is taking over from his dad today but there are no pictures of him, bunting or…

Centre for Citizenship Rejects Call Following the Birmingham schools affair Prime Minister David Cameron has called for children to be taught to “respect for British institutions”. The Centre for Citizenship believes that some British institutions are worthy of no respect. And that to teach children to respect institutions that deny them their democratic rights is…

But Dangers Lay in Wait for Monarchists The abdication of Juan Carlos Bourbon, the Spanish monarchy, seems to have increased support for the feudal institution. However in an El País opinion poll only 49% of those asked said they wanted to keep the feudal institution. Support for a republic was shown by 36% of those…

On Thursday the Financial Times published a notable little display of monarchist arrogance. It was an article by Charles Powell of the Elcano Royal Institute called “Abdication is the king’s final gift to a grateful Spain”. You would not have thought that Spaniards in their thousands had been demonstrating for a referendum on their monarchy.…