Thinking also about the symbolic (mild)humiliation that is inflicted on the victor, by requiring them to begin by visiting and acknowledging the monarch before they start governing. Some would read this as an outdated feudal hangover. More positively, I would suggest, it's a reminder both of the web of constitutional norms within which the successful party must operate, and of the truth that the victor must govern for the common good not simply for their own faction.
Blair in his memoirs records his impatience with all of this tradition and ceremony when he won the 1997 election. He wanted to get on with the business of governing.
I agree completely that the entire business of monarchy now is the symbolic. It reminds me of Attlee’s defence of constitutional monarchy: that it vests supreme symbolic power in a politically powerless figure, preventing the rise of a Hitler or a Mussolini who claims to be the living embodiment of the polis. In a constitutional monarchy you already have one of those.
In the 1970s there was wild speculation that there might be a right-wing military coup against Labour. If that had ever happened then I am quite sure that it would have stood no chance of success at all without the Queen's support. And also that the Queen would have resisted, even at the cost of her life.
Thinking also about the symbolic (mild)humiliation that is inflicted on the victor, by requiring them to begin by visiting and acknowledging the monarch before they start governing. Some would read this as an outdated feudal hangover. More positively, I would suggest, it's a reminder both of the web of constitutional norms within which the successful party must operate, and of the truth that the victor must govern for the common good not simply for their own faction.
Blair in his memoirs records his impatience with all of this tradition and ceremony when he won the 1997 election. He wanted to get on with the business of governing.
Yeats is wiser here:
"How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?"
One of my favourite Yeats quotes!
I agree completely that the entire business of monarchy now is the symbolic. It reminds me of Attlee’s defence of constitutional monarchy: that it vests supreme symbolic power in a politically powerless figure, preventing the rise of a Hitler or a Mussolini who claims to be the living embodiment of the polis. In a constitutional monarchy you already have one of those.
In the 1970s there was wild speculation that there might be a right-wing military coup against Labour. If that had ever happened then I am quite sure that it would have stood no chance of success at all without the Queen's support. And also that the Queen would have resisted, even at the cost of her life.