Unsurprisingly, then, progressives (such as Jeremy Corbyn) who support abolishing the monarchy, often also argue for disestablishment of the Church of England. Meanwhile a growing chorus of other progressive voices calls for a lengthening list of often self-contradictory articles of faith to be excluded from legitimate debate — a move that bears comparison with the religious ordinances of England’s Catholic and Anglican eras.
But what if the progressives are wrong and power can never truly be democratised? This was the argument advanced by political theorist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt argued that democracy is always compromised by absolutism, because no matter how flawless a set of rules you devise, and no matter how fair your electoral system, sooner or later a situation will crop up that doesn’t fit the rules.
When that happens, you have to break the rules: a situation Schmitt called the “state of exception”. Coronavirus lockdowns are a good example: of the past year, countless ordinary freedoms were abruptly suspended in the name of virus control. Schmitt argued that you can tell who’s really in charge by who gets to implement such a state: “Sovereign is he who decides the exception”.
Carl Schmitt was, of course, a Nazi. For him, exposing the traces of arbitrary rule that persist even in democratic government was part of a wider argument in favour of strongman rule.
Critics might argue that quoting a Nazi in defence of the Queen isn’t likely to make the monarchy seem more progressive. But if we accept Schmitt’s argument that even democracies can’t avoid the odd despotic moment, it’s far easier to understand why constitutional monarchies are so often more egalitarian than republics. For even if Schmitt is right, it doesn’t follow that because someone has to decide the exception, that decision-maker has to be a dictator. It wasn’t the Queen who decided to suspend our ordinary liberties for the pandemic, but Parliament, which is made up of our elected representatives.
The role of our Queen is to symbolise that tyrannical twitch we can’t wholly eradicate even in democracies, lest such twitches break out more regularly among our elected leaders. And she must do so without availing herself of actual power. As such, she acts as a kind of inoculation against real tyranny.
Our Queen has two birthdays: her actual birthdate, which is today, and her “official” birthday on the second weekend in June. This aptly reflects her double existence. On the one hand she’s a human individual with a family, a birthday and a recent, terrible bereavement. On the other, she’s an interchangeable cipher, a part not just replaceable but designed to be replaced by her heir apparent when the time comes. Her role is to act, with total self-effacement, as the fulcrum between tyranny and democracy. It’s a position that, once understood, is rightly seen as profoundly sacred.
That understanding feels fainter than ever today. It wasn’t just our monarch who seemed fragile and bird-like in mourning for Prince Philip. A whole world feels as though it’s wearing thin, and that with the death of Philip yet another of its underpinnings has sheared away: the world of enquiry, debate and optimism; one that felt liberated by having only a titular head of Church and State and responded with two centuries of flourishing culture.
Increasingly, I fear that a new generation feels less liberated than abandoned by such light-touch authorities, and yearns — under the banner of progress itself — for something closer to the moral and political strongmen envisaged by Carl Schmitt.
For ultimately, progressive calls to abolish the monarchy — whether as head of Church or state — amount not to a democratisation of power, but a removal of the principal safeguard we have against a return of the political and moral absolutism that preceded England’s Reformation and Glorious Revolution. Should the mounting demands for authority over the moral exception merge with similar calls for authority over the political one, the relative freedom guaranteed for us by our ceremonial priest-kings may be replaced by something far more direct and assertive.
If there’s any hope, it lies in the despised rural and post-industrial backwaters: Deep England. Perhaps only outside the bubble of elite discourse, our nation’s instinctive appreciation for the paradox of constitutional monarchy is robust enough to survive the progressives who seek to tear down its moral and political dimensions.
Never mind heaven on earth. On the whole, Deep England would just like to be left in peace. On this difficult birthday for Her Majesty, we can only pray that the destructive forces of progress accord her the same courtesy.
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