Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/19/queen-mad-at-former-prime-mini.html
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To be fair, I don’t think it is particularly “political” for a monarch to show her displeasure at the prospect of people voting to stop being her subjects, even if I personally think monarchies are stupid relics. If she advocated on some policy, then yes, that’s different.
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Seconded. I think the Queen taking an anti-breaking-up-the-kingdom stance isn’t really that unqueenly. Besides which, “think carefully about the future” is not a very controversial message on the eve of a big decision.
Of course if they’d actually had a crystal ball and seen the future you’d think they would have voted to leave about 70-30.
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They would not have stopped being her subjects–Scotland was not voting to become a republic, only to leave the U.K. If Scotland leaves the Union, she becomes Queen of Scotland.
It would be incredibly complicated, certainly, but it already is, so plus ça change.
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I think British people became “citizens” rather than “subjects” with the passing of the 1981 Act relating to citizenship (British Nationality Act?).
But with British “constitutional” law: ¯_(ツ)_/¯ - Who the fuck knows.“They’re” taking back sovereignty from the parliament and instead vesting it in the right kind of people at the moment so all bets are off
EDIT: you were spying on me typing that…
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P.S. “Subjects” is largely an anachronism. Almost everyone became Citizens in 1983. Only about 50,000 people are British Subjects, all old folks from Ireland and India who somehow managed to avoid interacting with the state for decades. They end up having to take British citizenship in a hurry when they need a passport to go on holiday or whatever.
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It’s definitely not a surprising position. It’s not “unqueenly”, but it speaks to what kind of “queenliness” is in actual effect.
Any interventions by the queen are where people can see the difference between a powerless and ceremonial monarchy, and a powered and non-purely-ceremonial monarchy.
It’s never been purely ceremonial, and isn’t now, but the monarchy’s still only a going thing in the modern era on the strength of a fuzzy promise to more Republican-minded people, that they’re somehow not “really” in charge.
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And now we have to ask did the Queen and her staff actively collaborate with Johnson to shut down Parliament because it was inconvenient. Michael Gove hinted at the time of the referendum that she was in favour of Brexit, so would anyone be too surprised if there was ‘coordination’ between Downing Street and the Palace?
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Liz is my Queen too, and I’m very aware of just how ceremonial and removed the crown ought to be from politics. (And I have a right to Scottish citizenship through heredity!)
I feel like independence referendums transcend normal politics. They effectively have authority from the right to self determination in international law rather than from the law of the nation. In a matter of independence even a full fledged monarch would have no legal power to stop it (they may have military power to stop it, but that wasn’t going to happen).
That’s how I see it, anyway. I’m sure there were people actively campaigning to leave who are plenty pissed with the Queen right now. That said, I think there is a sizable chance Scotland will leave and that they’ll get a much better deal from the EU than they would have if they left before the Brexit mess. Before Brexit I think the EU’s position was, “If you leave you’ll have to apply for membership just like any other state” and now I bet they’d be a lot more friendly.
Yeah, but if you pick a random thing Michael Gove has said and gave me even odds, I’d probably bet Gove was lying.
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Scotland would still have the queen as ruler, albeit in a likely more diminished role. None of my friends were particularly influenced or even noticed her interference when they voted (on both sides ) but this revelation is rather shocking. Here’s hoping it throws a spanner into BoJo’s plans!
The timing of this is interesting, right as the Supreme Court is deciding whether Boris misled the queen on prorogation. I imagine it’ll definitely affect that outcome, and not in BoJo’s favor.
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So she would become Queen of Scotland in the same way that she’s Queen of Australia or Queen of Canada, perhaps.
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Well, the argument might be that Johnson didn’t need to mislead the queen, but that rather Johnson could have just flatly stated the intent of the prorogation and the queen went along with it anyway. It’s a little tricky. They can’t call the queen as a witness (I don’t think?!?).
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She fought the Nazis, so I give her a pass on this one.
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She appears before the Crown all the time…(joke)
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I have to admit to having no framework for understanding the nuances here - but - yes - good on her for punching Nazis!
And for pulling that sword from the stone. It was really stuck in there but good.
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She served in the woman’s branch of the British Army during WW2 as a mechanic and driver; there are many images of her maintaining and driving military ambulances.
(It is my understanding that she enjoys off-roading in Land Rovers to this day.)
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If only she’d said that before the Brexit vote.
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What do you base that on? Membership is membership, it’s not as if each new EU member enters with their own special arrangement. That would be pretty counter intuitive in terms of keeping the union together.
(The only exception being the UK which entered with a permanent rebate, which in effect means Scotland would most likely enter with a worse, but fairer, arrangement.)
What it might happen however, is that the Scottish are less likely to have their membership application blocked after a no deal Brexit, but only if Spain were to find it less urgent to block the Scottish application if the English no longer are fellow EU members.
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You are right, I said the wrong thing. I meant that I think it would be easier for a post-Brexit separated Scotland to join the EU than it would be for a pre-Brexit separated Scotland to join them. It’s if they can’t join that I think they might have an easier time talking about their relationship with the EU.
And I don’t really have a good reason to think that. It’s just my assessment of how people behave.
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