The public mourning for the Queen has been a PR triumph. But this shouldn’t disguise the need for reform, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins
indefensible, its obsession with soldiering outdated. Much stress has been made in the past week on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and with good reason. The UK is virtually the only nation in Europe with a still unstable union – a result of the failure of London’s political class to tolerate a federal autonomy. It lost Ireland under the Queen’s grandfather and may yet lose Scotland under her son.
Separating the headship of state from elected office has, on the whole, proved a sound constitutional principle. Failure to do so is currently tearing the US apart. Separation distinguishes the mystical embodiment of the nation from the turmoil of democratic division and argument. But how to institutionalise that embodiment remains elusive. The greatest powers on Earth have elective presidencies, but few could be considered secure democracies.
If Britain is to retain a monarch chosen by birth it must be by overwhelming public will. That requires the office to be updated by a democratic consensus and not to rely on decisions by the new king himself. He takes office after what has been an undoubted triumph of public relations. Such triumphs are tenuous, if blind to the need for reform.
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