On the whole I quite enjoyed Seamus Milne's article about the monarchy in today's Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/23/cut-anti-democratic-dynasty-out-of-politics
And certainly I would urge the Labour party to go into the 2015 election promising to install a republic.
But Mr Milne is wrong to say that the Royal Family is part of the aristocracy. Perhaps he is thinking of medieval France where the monarch was nothing more than a sacerdotal posh boy and the counts were the real rulers of their Comte (is that right? I'm never good with French plurals). He should read KB McFarlane on the emergence in later medieval England of the "Your Majesty" title that specifically distinguished the Crown from other landed magnates.
He also needs to add to his list of royal "meddling" in politics the insistence in 1924 by George V that the Labour party should be allowed to form a minority government when the rest of the establishment was trying to stitch things up.
And certainly I would urge the Labour party to go into the 2015 election promising to install a republic.
But Mr Milne is wrong to say that the Royal Family is part of the aristocracy. Perhaps he is thinking of medieval France where the monarch was nothing more than a sacerdotal posh boy and the counts were the real rulers of their Comte (is that right? I'm never good with French plurals). He should read KB McFarlane on the emergence in later medieval England of the "Your Majesty" title that specifically distinguished the Crown from other landed magnates.
He also needs to add to his list of royal "meddling" in politics the insistence in 1924 by George V that the Labour party should be allowed to form a minority government when the rest of the establishment was trying to stitch things up.
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