So, Dave wants to reform the powers of the Queen does he? … Owen, awhileback, summarised the reasons he opposes the current ’settlement’ when it comes to the monarch … I’m a convert to the principles of constitutional monarchy…we need a proper…

Whether you think the Queen or the GG is head of state (the Queen cannot exercise the GG’s considerable powers directly), the Australian head of state argument (“resident for president”) is undermined by experience. I don’t know why the side of politics which usually supports impartial international observers without any democratic legitimacy playing a role in the politics of a country has so much against the Queen, but as for Australian Governors General, all the disastrous ones have been Australian. Lord Casey was a former Cabinet minister and found himself having to choose a caretaker Prime Minister from among his erstwhile political rivals. Sir William Deane, a former DLP man (membership of which party ought to be prima facie evidence of an inability to understand the role of a Head of State in a moden liberal democracy), seemed to think he’d been granted a moral pulpit from which to criticise the democratically elected Government, and the less said about Sir John Kerr and the Bishop of Brisbane, the better.

Four out of nine (since the Liberals started appointing Australian GGs in 1965) is crap. This suggests Aussie PMs are awful at choosing good GGs, but I’ve only ever heard a superior alternative.

Owen replies: It is strange how many people are taught that the Queen has no real powers. As you rightly say, we would do well to start with a proper cataloguing of what those powers are.  Many Australians were caught by surprise when the Governor General sacked an elected Prime Minister with a majority in the lower house.

Owen replies:  I agree with you that we could remove the prerogative powers without abolishing the monarchy (and said so in my post) – but I don’t think we are likely to do so.  As for your Church and State point – the difference with the countries you mention is that the Queen is Head of the Church of England, and is not – and has never been – Head of the Church of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia etc.  If she (or her heirs) were willing to give up one or other role, then we would have a way to separate Church and State in England as well.

Owen replies: I deliberately didn’t want to propose an alternative, as I wanted to focus on the harm that the existing system does.  But if pressed, I would be attracted to a German- or Italian-style "constitutional presidency" – which seems to work well without creating the gridlock that you fear.

For as long as we are subjects, not citizens, of our country

Have a look at the 1984 Immigration and Nationality Act some time. The default legal status of ‘British subject’ hasn’t existed for two decades. (I say ‘default’ – there are still a few people out there who are subjects rather than citizens, essentially because none of the categories of citizenship brought in by the 1984 Act fitted them.) Other than that you’re spot on. If we have to have a ‘British Day’, perhaps we could make it January 30th…

Owen replies:  My point about subjects and citizens was intended to reflect the psychological reality, not legal terms.

Owen replies:  Speaking as a civil servant, I see a world of difference between concentrating power in the hands of unelected civil servants and transferring power to elected representatives.  They may look the same from outside the Westminster Village: they certainly don’t from within it.  But I am not an advocate for Westminster-based power – like you, I want to see power more diffused. That is why I argued here that the Westminster Government has too much power, and that many of its functions should be devolved to regional governments, with the remaining supra-regional decisions handled at a European level.

Owen replies: that went long ago …
 

The monarchy interferes in our day-to-day political life.

Maybe this is a "telling piece of Barder jargon". I wouldn’t have thought that most people have a day-to-day political life. Waking up and going to work isn’t really impeded by the Queen is it? By "our" don’t you mean "my", or "me and my civil servant friends". Are you against the monarchy having real political power because too much concetrated power can be bad, or just because you want is concentrated elsewhere? Which brings us to the class system. It strikes me (admittedly as an outsider) that there is something inherently human in a class system, and whatever the country/situation a group of people that have use of power create some sort of "class system".An hereditory system is horrible, but I don’t think it affects me much in my day to day life. Far more worrying for me is the "class system" as manifested by bureaucrats and politicians through the civil service, ensuring favourable education and professional careers.When you argue against the monarchy, is is because you are against class systems or because you are against that particular type of class system?  For what it’s worth, I view the monarchy purely as a constitutional tradition (similar to the House of Lords) that shouldn’t be abolished unless we’re very sure of the effects. If the reason is to grant greater powers to Westminster, or to strenghten an alternative class system – I say stick.

Owen replies:  You can’t have read this properly.  My complaint is that the effect of the monarchy is to give too much power to the Executive (which is who the civil service works for). Far from a self-serving concern to increase the power of the civil service, this is a call to reduce it, transferring that power to elected representatives where it belongs.  Furthermore, you say that you view the monarchy as a "purely constitutional tradition".  But as my post makes perfectly clear, it is more than that. It is a real political force, with an impact on our social, political and economic life.  If it were, in Bagehot’s phrase, merely the dignified part of the constitution, I could live with it. (I wouldn’t like it, but there would be other, more important things to worry about.)   But my point is that it is not merely a harmless tradition. 

Owen replies: In some sense, that is part of my reason for opposing the monarchy. I know this is not what you meant, but the quasi-presidential powers of this and other Prime Ministers derive from the vestiges of absolute monarchical power, manifested in the use of the royal prerogative.  Parliament should exercise control over those powers.