If Britain was not, as Napoleon put it, ‘a nation of shopkeepers’, future generations would look back on the events of 2019 in the same way we today look at those of 1789.
In that year, faced with a corrupt, ossified institution that ubiquitously loomed over the public lives of a citizenry it neither understood nor cared about, the people of France began a process of demolition. Tearing down the excesses of monarchical despotism that had ruled over them for centuries.
Unfortunately for King Louis XVI and the Bourbons, this process ended in 1793 with the quiet zip of the guillotine and the soft thud of a severed head. Louis was not a tyrant, he was an ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary position during remarkable times, solely on account of his birth.
His fate should have served as a warning to monarchs across the world, a sign that no matter how deeply their positions in their respective states were entrenched, they would not be able to resist the tide of the spirit of the enlightenment sweeping through Europe during the 18th century.
Fast-forward to the present and cross the Channel, in Britain, the House of Windsor sits in the belly of the UK political system, draining it of its legitimacy like an ulcer.
In a summer that has thrown up the family’s toughest PR period since the death of Diana Spencer, Boris Johnson’s Machiavellian utilisation of the Queen’s utterly useless position at the pinnacle of the British state in suspending parliament may serve as the cherry on top of a pie of increasing republican sentiment.
By playing on the monarch’s impossible role as the incumbent standard-bearer of an undemocratic governing body that is perpetuated through hereditary succession, tracing its roots back to the conquest of 1066, the Prime Minister has not only granted himself the legislative breathing space to force through whatever version of Brexit he so desires, he has also inadvertently exposed to many the incompatible nature of the relationship between monarchy and democracy. No matter how neutered or ‘constitutional’ that monarchy may be.
Hereditary governance, no matter how nominal it is presented to be, can only breed despotism.
Take the Queen’s second son, Prince Andrew, for example. The Royal Family’s most famous debauch has recently found himself re-embroiled in a scandal relating to the notorious American sex criminal, Jeffrey Epstein, of whom the Duke was a close friend of, and his notorious ring of child sexual exploitation.
Prince Andrew reportedly travelled on Epstein’s ‘Lolita Express’ airliner, famed for the fact it catered to the allegedly paedophillic tastes of famous patrons including former president Bill Clinton.
This week, specific allegations were made made against the Duke of York from a victim who claimed she was forced to have sex with him when she was below the age of consent. This victim was allegedly procured by Epstein. All of this has culminated in the Prince denying any knowledge of the fact that his renowned, serial paedophile friend was indeed, a paedophile.
Does any of it really matter though? At the end of the day we are all acutely aware that Prince Andrew will always be protected by the arms of the state his family owns. The story will fade away, no Royal will be held to account for their actions no matter how egregious they may turn out to be. This is not France.
At the same time, the world’s richest man under-30, and ‘Britain’s most eligible bachelor’, the eminently punchable billionaire Duke of Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor, is attempting to turf out the the residents of a block of council flats in Central London in order to free up the land for yet another luxury gentrification project to aid the ongoing social cleansing taking place in our nation’s capital.
Although Grosvenor is not a direct relation of the Royal Family, his hereditary peerage was granted to his family by the Crown in 1874. His sociopathically feudal attempt to remove land rightly belonging the people, from the people, is being carried out in the name of the House of Windsor. His title and status derive from them. They are responsible.
These are two of the more notable events of one summer relating to the actions of an institution that has remained in place for almost a millennium. Mr. Johnson’s prorogation of parliament is merely the latest example of the petty despotism that stains the history of British democracy.
The Prime Minister, an insatiably self-serving opportunist, can not be blamed for using the remit provided to him by the decrepit shell of a monarchy to circumvent the genuinely democratic organs of the British state in forcing though his Brexit agenda, whatever that may be, when we the people continue to award a hereditary, archaic office ultimate power over us, and then tell its occupant that they may only use that power in a ceremonial fashion. In tolerating the monarchy’s existence, we create constitutional crises such as the one we are in.
We the people are to blame. We know that monarchy and the concentration of power in an office obtained purely through the order of your birth is a product of an era we claimed to have left centuries ago. Yet as of 2016, 86% of the British public supported the continuation of that same monarchy.
Maybe Johnson’s fluffy and fleeting ‘coup’ will rouse the House of Windsor into action. This legislative logjam may awaken the family to the perilous philosophical position they are in. Theoretically, their position at the head of the British state is untenable, the events of August 2019 demonstrate this.
Nonetheless, I have little hope in the Royal Family coming to this conclusion on their own. Over the course of the last 60 years they have lost the largest empire the world has ever seen. I highly doubt they would be willing surrender their final territorial bastion of patronage. Certainly not of their own volition.
However uncertain times often breed uncertain futures, and when viewed in the context of Brexit, prorogation, austerity and climate change, it is not worth ruling out the possibility of the House of Windsor’s future featuring the sound of the quiet zip of the guillotine and the soft thud of a severed head. Although of course, only in the proverbial sense.
Twitter- @SamuelBF3
Please sign the petition challenging the Duke of Westminster and his plan to demolish the council flats at Cundy Street and Walden House- https://www.change.org/p/grosvenor-group-save-cundy-street-and-walden-house?recruiter=931540181&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_abi&recruited_by_id=4550356f-4bbd-4c8c-88e4-20fae5cc0ea1&share_bandit_exp=initial-16575623-en-GB&share_bandit_var=v3
