This Christmas, the head of state of 16 nations will deliver her Christmas message to her subjects, as she has done every year since she ascended the throne in 1953, although she was queen of considerably more than 16 countries back then. That said, she will, in addition, be speaking directly to the 54 countries which make up the Commonwealth of Nations, of which she is the head. She will not, as many fondly imagine, be addressing only the peoples of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is a fact which should always to be remembered when considering the position, and loyalties, of our current monarch, Elizabeth II and those of her potential successors.
Her immediate successor, of course, is Charles, the Prince of Wales, and it was when he recently addressed the United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen, that one of the most regular, and respected, commentators at my blog, Dr. D, wrote to me and asked my opinion of the monarchy.
As I responded to Dr. D, I realised that he had asked a question which I had not given any thought to in a very long time, and that I was thinking about it now, in the light of attitudes and views which I didn't have when I last seriously thought about it. In recent years, my thoughts and my anger have been directed at elected politicians, at the controlled media, and those organisation within various western states, which seem to be there for the sole purpose of destroying us. Until now I had not considered the role of the woman during whose reign our leaders, at whose head she sits, have inflicted such irreparable damage on this progressively less united Kingdom.
I come from a family for whom loyalty to the crown has always been offered without question, indeed, so ingrained is that loyalty, that I now feel almost treacherous to be questioning it. Throughout my life, the Queen has always been there and I have instinctively accepted the rightness of that fact and my allegiance to the woman herself. Hence, it is with reluctance that I ask myself, do I still feel the same?
To answer that question, I need to separate the institution from the current incumbent, and, in that respect I am still a committed monarchist. I am no more impressed now by the arguments in favour of a republic than I ever was, and I remain in favour of a constitutional monarchy for a number of reasons. I accept the argument that because we have a Queen we can, in theory, never have a dictator. An unelected head of state means there is no individual in the nation, elected or otherwise, with ultimate power.
Blair, and Thatcher before him may have seemed all powerful, but once they ceased to please they were gone, and it did not take a revolution, or the trauma of impeachment, to do it. I think it was put quite well by the person who said that the main power vested in the monarch is the power she denies to anyone else.
The government might send the troops to war, but the troops do not swear allegiance to the government, they swear allegiance to the queen, as does Parliament. The queen does not declare war, but she has the power to sack the man, or woman, who does so.
In theory she can sack the government, as they are effectively working for her. It would cause a constitutional crisis if she did, as almost occurred in 1975 when she (through her governor general) removed the Australian government.
Oddly enough, despite that, Australia still retains her as head of state, as do Canada, New Zealand and a host of other countries despite a number of referendums aimed at turning them into republics. I suspect that is due to the same feelings that I have about the institution, that is to say, a respect for the individual and a distrust for the alternative.
The alternative is a presidency, which has all sorts of downsides, look at the examples, Obama, Jimmy Carter, Francois Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac, de Gaulle, Muggabe, Mandella the string of crooks who have run Italy, of whom Berlusconi is probably the least dishonest, would we want any of them? I think of the various politicians who would try to be elected president, if such a role existed here and I shudder. In Britain we could have had a President Thatcher, a President Callaghan, we be looking forward to the prospect of a President Blair, a President Brown, or, God preserve us, a President Mandelson, On the other hand we have total nonentities like the president of Germany, who's name I forget, or the, heavily shop soiled new president of Europe.
I may think very highly of the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, but he is one honourable man amongst a battalion of charlatans.
I can understand why some would object to the hereditary principle, however, I have an instinctive distrust of politicians and don't want one of them as my head of state, which is what we would get. I far prefer someone who is there by accident of birth, at least they have a better chance of being a human being.
For those reasons, and because, we in Britain, have already lost too much of our heritage, I still support a constitutional monarchy
However, what of the individual currently in the role of monarch? You may find it strange that, as I said earlier, I have respect for the Queen herself, after all, many British nationalists believe she has betrayed her coronation oath, and her promise to her people. However, I think that view ignores what she actually said. The queen actually swore to serve the peoples of her empire, her coronation oath specifically mentioned countries such as Pakistan, South Africa and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and as Princess Elizabeth she promised to serve "this great imperial family, of whom we are all members" and, as is now quite clear, she meant the the people of Pakistan, Kenya, Fiji and Uganda just as much as she meant those of England, Scotland and Wales.
That is the way she thinks. Her father had once been king of almost a quarter of the earth's population, her parents were the last Emperor and Empress of India. Elizabeth never ruled India, but she inherited an Empire all the same, and, even though it has now gone, it all still means a great deal to her.
Elizabeth remains head of state of sixteen countries including places like Papua New Guinea, Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas. As Head of the Commonwealth she has to serve the interests of people from across Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. These are the lands from which most of the immigrants to Britain come, and I believe the Queen feels great loyalty to them, even though that conflicts with the well being of her British subjects.
She has not betrayed her oath, people just do not understand what she actually said, or who she said it to. The Queen is as much a victim of the end of Empire as we are, just in a different way. After all can the Queen of Jamaica really deny her subjects access to her realm?
I may disagree with her, I may believe that she has presided silently over the greatest disaster this country has ever suffered, yet I can respect the woman for her loyalty to those she was born to rule, except of course, she wasn't always loyal to those of us in Britain.
Does her loyalty to the Commonwealth excuse her for standing by and allowing what has been done to this country, by her government? I will not make a judgement on that, other than to say that she also has been brought low, in comparison to where she was, by the post war catastrophe which has hit Britain since she was crowned.
In many respects everything which the young Princess Elizabeth was raised to inherit has gone, not only the Empire, think of the mighty church which she became head of in 1953, and then consider the diminished and shrunken sect which stands in its place.
This brings me to one other issue and that issue is Europe. The queen may be able to square mass immigration with the promises she made when first ascending the throne, but how does she square that with allowing the UK to be absorbed into the EU and to herself, our queen, becoming nothing more than citizen Elizabeth Windsor?
In answer to that, I don't know what the truth is. Maybe she is a true believer, maybe she really believes that Europe is good for Britain, as I once did. Alternatively, is it all true and is she part of an elite, happy to preside over the destruction of the nation state for a mad dream of a new world order? Then again, maybe the truth is that after fifty years of mutely watching as her birthright crumbles she views this as merely a further progression.
Only Elizabeth knows the secrets of her own soul.
Her son on the other hand, is much less of an enigma, we can see the truth of him far too clearly, and it is not pretty to behold.
Charles will be a disaster, he personifies the very worst aspects of the so called liberal elite, everything he believes in is fatal to the future of the nation he hopes, one day, to rule. However, I doubt he can do more damage than has already been done. Charles's own actions and bizarre pronouncements over the years have so reduced his stature that he would have less power even than the state allows a constitutional monarch, and, in any event, the country has survived idiot princes before. Conversely, I quite like his wife, Camilla, who I think will make a better queen than he will make a king, and certainly a better one than his enchanting and lovely but deeply disturbed first wife would have made. She seems a sensible woman, who apparently loves her husband and will probably keep him from going too far off the rails.
It is an irony that it may fall to that once so reviled woman, and not the son's of the sainted Diana, to save the monarchy, if only from itself.
There are some who would like the monarchy to skip a generation, but I think that is unfair to William, who is still young and still very much an unknown quantity, although his parentage on both sides does not auger well. Also, having waited so long it is unlikely that Charles would willingly abdicate.
If the Nationalist movement does not prevail then it matters not who sits on the diminished throne for, like everything else we once cherished it will become an irrelevance. If we do prevail, then it is a different story
Ultimately, I believe that we need to change the government, but if we can save this country we should not dispose of all its ancient institutions and one we should keep is the monarchy, for in the past it has served us well, even though those individuals currently in place have not always done so.