Republicanism (you are a flatulent pain in the arse).
People used to tell me that I'd "calm down" or otherwise end up softening my republican position, back when I was 18 or so and listening to The Queen Is Dead. That I'd grow out of it, like acne. But it hasn't happened. If anything, my anti-monarchical position has only got stronger as time has passed.
Here is a fundamental difference between the USA and the UK: in America, the notion exists that anybody, born anywhere in the nation into any kind of family, can achieve any office in the land. Now, in reality, as we all know, such things are in practice not possible because they're all bound up with vast amounts of money, and nepotism, and big business and connections. I accept that. Nevertheless, the crucial point is that the idea exists, as an ideal if nothing else, and for that I will applaud the USA forever. Not in my country, not in the UK. In the UK, I could never become the Head of State, never, not ever, because I was not born into the right family. It is institutionally impossible. Only the special ones have that privilege, the ones we toady up to by calling them "Your Majesty" and other blandishments (what a disgusting and servile phrase, so reminiscent of the way we talk of God - what does that tell you?), the ones who take my money and inhabit multiple grand, ornate palaces full of valuable works of art, not-so-valuable servants, tacky rococo décor and other remnants of a governmental and social system that should have died out after Paine and Voltaire. Monarchism - the vile notion of inherited kingship - is nothing more than a cheap, pier-end form of Aryanism; sustaining itself on the belief that one family, one line, is superior to all others and deserves to live in stupefying wealth and comfort while their tatterdemalion citizens - sorry, subjects - perish in shop doorways and pensioners rot in nursing homes. Not through achievement, not through merit, not even through misguided notions of venture capitalism, but through birth, this family - genetically compromised through generations of in-breeding, and who are as authentically "British" as the Elgin Marbles - are deemed to be in a class of humanity above me, above you, above everyone else in this country. It is a fundamental axiom of modern democracy that I should be able to have a voice electing my Head of State, but I don't. I have no say at all, and neither does any citizen of this country. It makes me laugh when people suggest that Prince Charles shouldn't be the next monarch. The whole point is that he WILL be, he has to be, he will become monarch at the exact moment that his mother expels her final breath and shuffles off this mortal coil; nothing can stop that, the idea that we might have some say in it is to deny the very point of a monarchy.
This is not an argument principally about money, although that is a factor. Nor is it an argument about political power. It is not even an argument about class, although I would certainly relish the abolition of the entire rotten system of aristocracy. It is an argument, at heart, about the nature of democracy and the symbolism of a system of a monarchy which literally owns the government, and thus the people. Few things disgust me more than the Queen's speech to Parliament, where she routinely and repeatedly refers to "my Government". No, no, a hundred times no. It is not your government, Elizabeth, it is my government and the government of everyone that went out and voted for it. By the people, for the people, of the people. Monarchism is a denial of the very precepts of democracy.
And I still listen to The Queen is Dead.
Here is a fundamental difference between the USA and the UK: in America, the notion exists that anybody, born anywhere in the nation into any kind of family, can achieve any office in the land. Now, in reality, as we all know, such things are in practice not possible because they're all bound up with vast amounts of money, and nepotism, and big business and connections. I accept that. Nevertheless, the crucial point is that the idea exists, as an ideal if nothing else, and for that I will applaud the USA forever. Not in my country, not in the UK. In the UK, I could never become the Head of State, never, not ever, because I was not born into the right family. It is institutionally impossible. Only the special ones have that privilege, the ones we toady up to by calling them "Your Majesty" and other blandishments (what a disgusting and servile phrase, so reminiscent of the way we talk of God - what does that tell you?), the ones who take my money and inhabit multiple grand, ornate palaces full of valuable works of art, not-so-valuable servants, tacky rococo décor and other remnants of a governmental and social system that should have died out after Paine and Voltaire. Monarchism - the vile notion of inherited kingship - is nothing more than a cheap, pier-end form of Aryanism; sustaining itself on the belief that one family, one line, is superior to all others and deserves to live in stupefying wealth and comfort while their tatterdemalion citizens - sorry, subjects - perish in shop doorways and pensioners rot in nursing homes. Not through achievement, not through merit, not even through misguided notions of venture capitalism, but through birth, this family - genetically compromised through generations of in-breeding, and who are as authentically "British" as the Elgin Marbles - are deemed to be in a class of humanity above me, above you, above everyone else in this country. It is a fundamental axiom of modern democracy that I should be able to have a voice electing my Head of State, but I don't. I have no say at all, and neither does any citizen of this country. It makes me laugh when people suggest that Prince Charles shouldn't be the next monarch. The whole point is that he WILL be, he has to be, he will become monarch at the exact moment that his mother expels her final breath and shuffles off this mortal coil; nothing can stop that, the idea that we might have some say in it is to deny the very point of a monarchy.
This is not an argument principally about money, although that is a factor. Nor is it an argument about political power. It is not even an argument about class, although I would certainly relish the abolition of the entire rotten system of aristocracy. It is an argument, at heart, about the nature of democracy and the symbolism of a system of a monarchy which literally owns the government, and thus the people. Few things disgust me more than the Queen's speech to Parliament, where she routinely and repeatedly refers to "my Government". No, no, a hundred times no. It is not your government, Elizabeth, it is my government and the government of everyone that went out and voted for it. By the people, for the people, of the people. Monarchism is a denial of the very precepts of democracy.
And I still listen to The Queen is Dead.