#bagehot

[kamalkafir-blog]

The polycrisis theory of Brexit

NEWS-FINANCE -QUOTE-EDUCATIONAL AND MOTIVATIONAL Parliament has lost interest, but Britons still devour books about Brexit. Those books tend to belong to one of two schools. One is the Great Man—or rather, inadequate boys—theory of history, exemplified by “All Out War”, by Tim Shipman. It argues that the divorce was propelled by the betrayals, blunders and petty feuds at the court of David…

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.

- Walter Bagehot

If Bagehot was alive today he would say the greatest danger to the legitimacy of the British monarchy would to be give way to the manufactured sentiments of populism and the celebritisation of the monarchy. The role of the monarchy is never to lower itself to passing whims of faddish passions but to elevate its subjects to higher call of duty.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.

- Walter Bagehot

If Bagehot was alive today he would say the greatest danger to the legitimacy of the British monarchy would to be give way to the manufactured sentiments of populism and the celebritisation of the monarchy. The role of the monarchy is never to lower itself to passing whims of faddish passions but to elevate its subjects to higher call of duty.

Photo: Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation Procession showing armed forces moving along Regent Street and through Piccadilly Circus, 2 June 1953.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

- Walter Bagehot

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell. One half of the world, according to the saying, do not know how the other half lives. Accordingly, nothing is so rare in fiction as a good delineation of the poor. Though perpetually with us in reality, we rarely meet them in our reading.

- Walter Bagehot, editor of the Economist

A curious comment, this, from one who greatly admired George Eliot and visited her regularly in St. John’s Wood, where they would discuss the money markets and the pain she felt in composing her novels.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

- Walter Bagehot, constitutional essayist and founding editor of the Econmist

The media age has led to the commodification of the monarchy, enforcing more openness from the latter and consolidating the monarchy’s status as a cultural form of images and representation.

From the death of Diana to current events (such as a very pubic break from the Sussexes) have vividly portrayed a picture of a mediated monarchy and mediated politics. Arguably revealing that the media have altered, perhaps, distorted, the very basis of royalty and politics and royal popularity depends on the media for its projection. The current monarchy has strived to balance the compromise for continuity.

The late Princess Diana was of great importance in helping the royals to be closer with the general public. Under such context, Diana’s death and Queen’s cold response triggered calls for abolishing the monarchy. The monarchy lost the media war to Princess Diana on her death in 1997, suffering public blame for aloofness and succumbing to public mourning.

The monarchy responded to the demand of democratic politics with deeper modernisation and more intimacy with people. It was a great deal for the Queen to endure, because it was the sacred that kept the royals different from ordinary people.

Yet, through the hard persuasion of the government and the sensible adaptation of the Royal Family, the crisis was overcome. Since the 1990s, the British monarchy has responded to the public culture of democratic politics with paying income tax, publicising expenditure accounts and getting closer to the people.

The tension is set to continue even as the monarchy modernises in the media age. This gap is only set to grow wider between the wants of an increasingly populist emotionally driven public against the needs of a traditional monarchy that sees stoicism as the sacred heart of the royal identity.

The magic of the monarchy only works if you don’t reveal too much of its mystique as Bagehot rightfully claims.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The supine placidity of civilisation is not favourable to animosity. A placid Conservative is perhaps a little pleased that the world is going a little ill.

- Walter Bagehot, ‘Lord Brougham’, National Review, (July 1857)

[blackswaneuroparedux]

A constitutional sovereign must in the common course of government be a man of but common ability. I am afraid, looking to the early acquired feebleness of hereditary dynasties, that we must expect him to be a man of inferior ability. Theory and experience both teach that the education of a prince can be but a poor education, and that a royal family will generally have less ability than other families. What right have we then to expect the perpetual entail on any family of an exquisite discretion, which if it be not a sort of genius, is at least as rare as genius?

- Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867)

The British monarchy is not alone in Europe in being a constitutional monarchy within a democratic state. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands are all constitutional monarchies. Kings and queens inherit their titles and are not elected - although all those countries are also stable parliamentary democracies. All these monarchies have survived in those countries that have experienced relative stability over the last 160 years.

Where there were no overthrows, no revolutions, where the world wars had a different significance, monarchies still exist. Denmark is a good example of that. The constitutional monarchy remains in place because the majority of people do not want to abolish it. That's also the case in the other European countries but especially in Britain where recent polls show that around 80 percent of Britons are in favour of the monarchy.

 Most of the kings and queens of Europe are well over 60, and many of them are related to one another. The exception is the 55 year old King Felipe VI of Spain, who was born in Madrid in 1968, is the only son of former King Juan Carlos I and his wife, Queen Sofía. All of Europe's royal dynasties are likely to be handed down to the next generation within the next ten or 20 years. In every case, there is already a successor lined up - but the younger generation are no longer marrying among "their own." Instead, like in the wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton, they are marrying "commoners" - those without titles.

More than ever before the royal families are closer to the people nowadays - they go to normal universities and no longer feel so much pressure to marry into nobility. Hence Walter Bagehot need not lose sleep in his grave.

That never used to be the case - royal and noble families of Europe used to intermarry. Most of Europe's monarchies are descended from just a couple of families, notably the German noble families of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Even the British Queen has German blood in her veins: King George V changed the family's name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor by royal proclamation in 1917, due to anti-German sentiment in World War One.

Come on Germany and France. Ditch the EU and get back to good old fashioned monarchy. The amount of interest in the daily lives of the European royal houses followed avidly by both the French and German public seem to suggest that there might be an appetite to bring their own monarchies back.

**Photo: Seven European monarchs photographed together for the Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.