The case against the monarchy

CEASE campaigning, Hillary Clinton; get back to business, Donald Trump: America’s 2016 election has been cancelled. The White House has announced that in the interests of political stability the next president and all future ones will be chosen using the British model. Barack Obama will remain in office until he dies, at which point Americans will welcome their next head of state: his daughter, Queen Malia.

Americans would not stand for this. Why do Britons? The case against hereditary appointments in public life is straightforward: they are incompatible with democracy and meritocracy, which are the least-bad ways to run countries. Royalists say this does not matter because the monarch no longer “runs” Britain. Yet in theory, at least, she has considerable powers: to wage war, sign treaties, dissolve Parliament and more.

There is little danger of Queen Elizabeth II throwing her weight around (though her son Charles has a habit of bending ministers’ ears over trivial matters). But the trouble with hereditary succession is that you never know quite who you're going to get. The Windsors are no less likely than any other family to produce an heir who is mad or bad. What then?

The second pitfall is subtler: in the belief that the monarchy forms some kind of constitutional backstop against an overmighty Parliament, Britain is strangely relaxed about the lack of serious checks on its government. It has no written constitution; the current government has plans to repeal a law implementing the European Convention on Human Rights, which many Britons recklessly consider a nuisance rather than a safeguard. It is true that monarchs can, as a last resort, stand up for the nation: royalists cite the example of King Juan Carlos of Spain, whose televised address to the nation in 1981 helped prevent a coup. But the more one believes that the head of state’s role really matters, the more serious a problem it is that the monarch is chosen using a mechanism as dodgy as inheritance.

Opinion polls and healthy sales of commemorative junk suggest that Britons and foreigners alike love the Windsors. But the royals may not be entirely good for the country’s image abroad, or its view of itself. Britain still has a reputation as a snooty, class-obsessed place. Mrs Clinton’s advisers warned her of the “inbred arrogance” of Britain’s previous government; Britons themselves are gloomier than Americans about the prospects of talented poor people. The image is out of date: by some measures Britain is now more socially mobile than America. But it is hard to shake off the debilitating tag when the head of state and her hangers-on attain their positions not through popularity, talent or industry, but by the mere fact of their birth. Britain would be stronger if its head of state were elected. And if the winner were Elizabeth, then good for her.