Sky News contributor Sophie Elsworth says it has been reported Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is forcing his very few staff to address him still as “sir,” despit...
Thanks for the interesting chat; i hope it’s nice for you. I am tearing my hair a little, but in a fun way.
By this logic, why have laws at all? Why not just have an absolute monarch and trust “the people will stand up” if power is misused? Laws aren’t magic, they’re often used to perpetuate awful things, but they do shape what people see as overreach. The reason cops who kill don’t get lynched is because people believe the legal system will eventually punish them.
I also don’t think the US being a republic makes no difference. Trump isn’t a king, and has struggled to get this far. He’s faced injunctions that actually stopped some harms. In Canada, it would be 100x easier. Parliament can just say “notwithstanding the Charter” and ignore all rights, and courts could not stop it (unlike in the US, where they could, but SCOTUS won’t because it’s been packed with lunatics).
One interesting proposal related to your ideas from constitutional scholars about how to do away with the relationship to the british royal family (looters, genociders, and pedophiles that they are) is to simply deem the King of Canada to be an individual…effectively making the King a fictional entity. That would actually make sure he has no power, eh?
I see your point that “if we all agree he has no power, any exercise will clearly be a problem” … except the monarchy is in constant contact with the governor general. You won’t know why the GG makes her choices. The monarchy has vast “reserve” powers (which as the name implies, are generally kept in reserve…like a Chekov’s gun). Australia’s governor-general dismissed their PM in 1975 using those powers. In Canada, the last clear example of undemocratic BS was 1961 when the LG of Saskatchewan refused consent to a passed law. But we have a perfect example in 2008: do you think the GG didn’t check with her boss about proroguing to save a minority PM from a no-confidence vote? That was a real exercise of real power by an appointee of the crown.
Or consider this situation: https://donshafer1.substack.com/p/the-day-37-british-columbia-mlas . Imagine the King has business interests in BC and would benefit from this financially. He calls the GG, who calls the LG of BC to say “get this moving.” If the LG (or GG) went public, she’d lose her job. So she’d quietly do it. And if it leaked? Conservatives would say “we must stay connected to the crown…tradition!.. and who wants these human rights laws anyway?” Plenty of Liberals would fold too, saying “well, technically, the king actually does have the right to pick whoever he wants, and we shouldn’t shake things up too much…maybe we could just get the king to agree to take it back and appoint her again? no? maybe another lady…an indigenous one? no? how about a white lesbian, would that do? okay, perfect, we’ll call that a win!”
Thanks for the interesting chat; i hope it’s nice for you. I am tearing my hair a little, but in a fun way.
By this logic, why have laws at all? Why not just have an absolute monarch and trust “the people will stand up” if power is misused? Laws aren’t magic, they’re often used to perpetuate awful things, but they do shape what people see as overreach. The reason cops who kill don’t get lynched is because people believe the legal system will eventually punish them.
I also don’t think the US being a republic makes no difference. Trump isn’t a king, and has struggled to get this far. He’s faced injunctions that actually stopped some harms. In Canada, it would be 100x easier. Parliament can just say “notwithstanding the Charter” and ignore all rights, and courts could not stop it (unlike in the US, where they could, but SCOTUS won’t because it’s been packed with lunatics).
One interesting proposal related to your ideas from constitutional scholars about how to do away with the relationship to the british royal family (looters, genociders, and pedophiles that they are) is to simply deem the King of Canada to be an individual…effectively making the King a fictional entity. That would actually make sure he has no power, eh?
I see your point that “if we all agree he has no power, any exercise will clearly be a problem” … except the monarchy is in constant contact with the governor general. You won’t know why the GG makes her choices. The monarchy has vast “reserve” powers (which as the name implies, are generally kept in reserve…like a Chekov’s gun). Australia’s governor-general dismissed their PM in 1975 using those powers. In Canada, the last clear example of undemocratic BS was 1961 when the LG of Saskatchewan refused consent to a passed law. But we have a perfect example in 2008: do you think the GG didn’t check with her boss about proroguing to save a minority PM from a no-confidence vote? That was a real exercise of real power by an appointee of the crown.
Or consider this situation: https://donshafer1.substack.com/p/the-day-37-british-columbia-mlas . Imagine the King has business interests in BC and would benefit from this financially. He calls the GG, who calls the LG of BC to say “get this moving.” If the LG (or GG) went public, she’d lose her job. So she’d quietly do it. And if it leaked? Conservatives would say “we must stay connected to the crown…tradition!.. and who wants these human rights laws anyway?” Plenty of Liberals would fold too, saying “well, technically, the king actually does have the right to pick whoever he wants, and we shouldn’t shake things up too much…maybe we could just get the king to agree to take it back and appoint her again? no? maybe another lady…an indigenous one? no? how about a white lesbian, would that do? okay, perfect, we’ll call that a win!”