Menzies House

Change is in the Heir

Craig Buchanan offers a rather comprehensive road-map to Royal ascendancy. Despite all the history the impending heir still may be best predicted by the TAB.

A little over a week ago, Shloss Nymphenburg made the sad announcement that Duke Franz of Bavaria (whom Jacobites and legitimists consider to be our rightful king, and publically acclaim as Francis II) had been diagnosed with cancer.  His Royal Highness is receiving treatment, and the prognosis is said to be good.  While we wish him a speedy recovery and a restoration to good health, we must concede that the attention of royal watchers the world over has shifted this morning to the usurping House of Windsor (or Mountbatten-Windsor, as Prince Charles looks likely to rename it when he ascends to the throne), and the announcement by that other palace that Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their first child.  Speculation is doubtless rife already across the web as to what they will name the infant.  I admit to having read none of it, but offer the following thoughts from the standpoint of one versed in British history, and possessed of a vague grasp of tradition.

Since biology tells us that there are two distinct possibilities for the heir to the heir to the heir – a girl, or a boy – and since each carries a distinct set of historical (and indeed constitutional) baggage, let us begin by splitting our discussion in twain, and consider the female options first.

An Australia Day Reflection about our Flag

Well, it’s that time of year again folks – Australia Bashing Month, when the media, with nothing else to report in the run up to Australia Day, denigrate and deride our nation’s culture and history, almost to a man, all in the name of some greater social planning experiment that they and their friends in the far left want to foist upon us.  And, as in previous years ad infinitum, they have picked on two symbols this time around – the Queen, and the flag.  I have, on a previous occasion, used this site to discuss the Queen’s continued role in Australia, so I thought Australia Day 2012 might prove as good a time as any to reflect upon the flag.

Now most of these guys – the journos and their trendy pollie mates, I mean - studied politics at undergrad level, so I guess we have to take their word that the flag is one of the key issues of the moment, and that our leaders need to focus on it as a priority. And even if we have our doubts, let's humour them, and put all thought of reducing our $200 billion dollar debt aside for a few days; let's leave the overcrowding on Christmas Island alone for a week, and put law and order firmly (or perhaps not so firmly, given the context) out of our minds. After all, those are minor concerns when viewed alongside the republican movement’s unstinting drive to change that most reprehensible and unreconstructed of our national symbols.

Forget as well that this was the flag under which our troops fought while liberating Europe from the Nazis. The naysayers would much rather you remembered that it was hijacked by racists on the beaches of Cronulla. Forget that it represents the red, white and blue of western democracy, a beacon towards which thousands upon thousands of the under-privileged have fled from their own oppressive regimes around the world, and continue to flee as we sit here contemplating both this question and our navels. The left would rather we remembered that the Union Flag in the top left-hand corner is a symbol of all that is wrong with Australia, an unwelcome echo of our colonial past.

Racing Royal Gee Gee’s

Craig Buchanan argues that our constitutional monarchy isn't broken, so there's no reason to change it... but... that it might just be improved by a Royal Governor-General:

Is it just me, or has there been a slight warming towards the royal family from Australia’s media outlets of late?  I don’t just mean those discussions about Pippa’s bum, and whether she had it padded or not.  Within days of each other, Prince Charles and Prince Harry each got some fair and balanced reporting around their visits to riot affected sites in London, while the tenor of comments related to the Queen’s visit to Perth next month also seems to be generally positive.  Perhaps I just haven’t waited long enough for the other shoe to drop.

That said, I’m not so much a monarchist as a realist, and the first rule of the realist, as blokes in sheds all across this great country of ours will tell you, is that if it ain’t broke then we don’t intend to waste a perfectly good Saturday morning trying to fix it.  And let’s face facts, the monarchy here in Australia ain’t broke.

Broke would, by definition, be a presidential style leadership, drawn from a small group of second rate politicians – broke, because it would cost the Australian taxpayer a right-royal fortune, while potentially causing problems rather than solving them.  Can you picture it?  Craig Thomson, retired after fifteen reasonably uneventful years as a Labour backbencher, having been able to call upon the legal resources of his Party once or twice to keep his name out of the press, is finally bumped upstairs as a safe pair of hands and no real loss to the Parliamentary party, only for us to discover that he needs to be escorted around the Presidential Palace of an evening.  Who would credit it?  And who could risk offering the job to Malcolm Turnbull, without a constant nagging fear that he might suddenly decide that he is a fan of royalty after all, and declare himself king?  Then again, perhaps we’d go with celebrity appeal, and elect our own version of Ronnie Reagan.  I hear Mel Gibson might be looking for a new role.  No?  Too contentious?  Well, perhaps we could dust Paul Hogan off?  Barry Humphries?  No?  Ah well, back to the drawing board.

Wither The Union

Craig Buchanan looks at the UK, the EU and Federalism:

The casual observer might be forgiven for thinking that Britain has been coming apart at the seams of late.  First there were the parliamentary scandals – resignations by the London bus load, and Members of Parliament arrested, while luckier colleagues were forced to pay back thousands in misappropriated (taxpayer) funds.  Then Scotland threatened to vote with its feet, electing the first majority government at Holyrood committed to eventual independence and the end of the Union.  And now the good people of not only London, but also Birmingham, Liverpool, and Bristol, are cleaning up after riots, looting, and a side serving of recreational arson.  As England mops up (and the Scots, Welsh, and Irish gloat quietly to themselves) it is tempting to paraphrase that most English of musical acts, Kit and the Widow, in punning “’Whither the Union?’ they’re asking, to which the answer’s ‘yes’.”

Meanwhile, just across the Channel, Merkel and Sarkozy are busy proposing a single European government with France and Germany at its heart, ala Charlemaigne, while Britain, once the defender of European independence, looks on through the smoke.

Of one thing there can be no doubt, however.  David Cameron and his Conservative-Liberal coalition government seem committed to preserving their almost mythic Union at any cost.  Unionist to the core (the full title of Cameron’s party is, after all, the Conservative and Unionist Party, even if the Union in question harks back to the Irish Union of 1801, long since defunct, and beloved of almost no one), they have pledged to fight to preserve what they have in the face of all comers.  But are they in danger of allowing those who wish to see the break-up of the United Kingdom the upper hand?  Exactly what sort of Union should the Unionists be looking to save, or perhaps to salvage?