I’ve just been writing a lecture on ‘Transatlantic ideas of liberty’ for an Erasmus exchange with Potsdam University in a week’s time. Going through the ideals and principles of seventeenth-century English republicans which would later come to influence the American colonists in the War of Independence and inspire the US constitution, such as political and religious liberty, accountability of office-holders and the rule of law, it struck me once again how quaint and anachronistic the British monarchy appears today as many people in this country celebrate the Queen’s official birthday with the usual pomp and circumstance.
The Queen is not just the head of state, she is also the secular head of the established churches of England and Scotland, she still opens Parliament, she signs Acts of Parliament into Law, and the House of Lords is still a colourful mix of non-representative members. I’m not sure what my republicans would have made of that.
I’m not advocating regicide, but surely the House of Lords should long have been replaced by a fully elected Upper House or Senate. I can just imagine seventeenth-century republican pamphleteers poking fun on the Lords involved in the latest ‘cash-for-access’ affair. They would have denounced the corruption of privilege and the decline of virtue.
At the same time as the Queen’s official birthday, both the British and the Americans are also celebrating the anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. This document, in which King John acknowledged to his rebelling barons that the monarch was subject to the law and endorsed principles such as Habeas Corpus and trial by jury, should mean so much more than people in fancy uniforms parading around London.
But then, if Britain didn’t have its Queen, who would confer honours on the Blackadder team?
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