Nixon, China, and the monarchy

Sometimes when a change happens it is people at the opposite end of the political spectrum from those you might have expected to enact it who actually do.

It's like the "Vulcan Proverb" which supposedly said that "Only Nixon could go to China."

And witness the fact that it was a Conservative Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary who finally took action, agreed at the Commonwealth meeting yesterday to start the process of scrapping archaic and ridiculous rules about the succession to the monarchy.

Both the ban on anyone married to a catholic inheriting the throne, and the rule which ruled a monarch's female children out of the succession while a brother of any age was available, should have been repealed decades ago. This sort of rule lays the country open to charges of enshrining discrimination against women in our constitution at the highest level and has no place in the 21st century.

(I don't think I need to declare an interest in the former case: I am married to a catholic but have no realistic prospect of inheriting the throne!)

I don't expect to live to see a woman become Queen as a direct result of this change to the law of succession, but I will be pleased to live in a country which has one fewer ludicrously outdated form of institutionalised discrimination.

Comments

Tim said…
Possibly the most underwhelming statement of all time. How about a competition for finding our head of state ? Don't forget - we only have the present monarch because one of her ancestors picked up the crown off a battlefield and proclaimed himself king. If you're happy with our head of state getting the job through an accident of birth, then you must support the idea of Calum Best playing for Man Utd because his father George did !
10:08 am
Chris Whiteside said…
If we were setting up Britain from the start today I wouldn't include a hereditary monarchy or peerage.

But we're not at Day One, have the history we have, and it is better to build on and reform our existing institutions than scrap everything, good along with the bad, in an attempt to go straight to some perfect system.
10:18 pm
Jim said…
I think the monarchy is not really a bad thing for the UK at the moment, it brings in the tourists and all.

These are my feelings for as long as Queen Elizabeth II is on the throne (and no I don't mean the toilet)

When her day does come, then the monarchy will need to be reviewed. Like most people I say Charles must never be king.

William has a lot of support so to kill the monarchy will actually need charles to insist on "his birth right"
8:12 pm
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