Monarchy and the Transcendence of Politics

 

His Majesty King Charles III acceded to the throne of the United Kingdom and his other Commonwealth Realms including the Dominion of Canada the moment his mother, our late Queen Elizabeth II, passed from this life on Thursday, 8 September.   The formal proclamations of the accession began to take place on Saturday, 10 September.   Although there were also proclamations in Wales, Scotland, and North Ireland the formal proclamation on behalf of the entire United Kingdom took place at St. James’ Palace in London.   Similarly, while there were provincial proclamations as well, the formal proclamation on behalf of the Dominion of Canada took place at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Saturday, 10 September.  

 

Although these proclamations were, of course, ceremonies of state, they were not political in the common sense of the word.   While the term “politics” is derived from the Greek word for city and state and thus can mean something along the lines of “statecraft” in everyday English we employ it in reference to the process of competing for the power of elected office by flattering the electorate, making empty promises and vain boasts, defaming your competitor(s) and demonizing factions other than your own.   Mercifully, the institution of the monarchy is not political in this sense.   The office of Sovereign is filled by hereditary right and the moment the previous Sovereign dies the next heir in the line of succession accedes to the throne.   Thus the king or queen can be a symbol of unity in a way that no elected head of state could ever be.   It is very appropriate, therefore, that on this occasion, while office-holding politicians were present and had to sign the proclamations, it was generally non-political figures, usually historians or similar such scholars associated with the realm’s college of arms, who had the duty of reading out the proclamation.   In the United Kingdom this was the Garter Principle King of Arms, David White.   In the Dominion of Canada it was the Chief Herald of Canada, Samy Khalid.

 

It so happens that on the day of the proclamation another event took place in the Dominion of Canada which by contrast was very political indeed.   This was the convention in which the Conservative Party of Canada chose their new leader.     Father Raymond J. De Souza, in a column for the National Post a couple of weeks ago criticized both the Conservatives for not post-postponing the convention or at the very least announcing the result “without fanfare” and the Prime Minister for the partisan rant he gave the following Monday in the guise of congratulating the new leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.   I wholeheartedly agreed with Father De Souza that partisan politics of this sort ought to have been put on hold until at least after the interment of Her Late Majesty and in that spirit have refrained from commenting on the new Conservative leadership until now.

 

In our constitution, the principal body of government under the reigning Sovereign is Parliament, a bicameral legislature, the lower chamber of which, the House of Commons, is filled with Members chosen to represent local constituencies by popular election.   By custom, the person with the largest amount of support in the House of Commons is invited to become His Majesty’s Prime Minister and to select from his associates those who with him will join His Majesty’s Privy Council as the Cabinet, the committee within the Privy Council charged with the day-to-day administrative work of government and thus conventionally referred to as “the government”.  If you are going to have this kind of government, then you have to accept alongside it the necessary evil of politics in the sense described a few paragraphs ago and the inevitable companion of this kind of politics which is partisanship, the division of the legislative assembly and the electorate it represents into competing factions.    While politics and partisanship are undoubtedly evils, they are far lesser evils than that which occurs when a single faction eliminates its competitors and establishes a one-party, totalitarian, state.   This was a major lesson of the first half of the last century.   Therefore we put up with the nonsense that is this kind of partisan politics and thank God that in the time-tested ancient institution that is our traditional hereditary monarchy we have a symbol of order, unity, and continuity that transcends the political.   Only a complete dolt, a total doofus,  a hopeless sniveling moron would wish that it were otherwise.

 

While political parties claim to disagree about all sorts of different ideas and issues, on one matter they are all remarkably alike in their thinking.   Each believes that the country would be better off if they, the party in question, were the ones governing it.  This is what each party is ultimately trying to convince the Canadian electorate to agree with them about in every Dominion election.    Ultimately, for each political party, their ideas, positions, and policies with regards to specific issues are subservient to the idea that they ought to be the ones in power.   This is the reason why parties often jettison ideas and positions that they once treated as sacred principles.   They, that is the parties, feel that they, that is the ideas and positions, have become a hindrance to their attaining the power they covet.   Since the willingness to sacrifice principle for ambition is ordinarily regarded as being an indicator of bad character rather than good character this can be viewed from one angle as speaking very poorly about the corrupting effect partisan politics has on its participants.   The other angle that needs to be considered, however, is that if this were not the case, and every party was made up of inflexible ideologues rather than pragmatic compromisers, this would hardly be preferable to things as they currently stand.   It would make things more interesting, certainly, but in a way that is much worse rather than much better.

 

The new leader of the Conservative Party, which is currently His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the party with the second most seats in the House of Commons on which the task of holding the governing party accountable to Parliament chiefly falls, was chosen by the membership of the party at the aforementioned, ought-to-have-been-postponed, convention.   In passing, let me say that I very much dislike this method of party’s selling memberships to people who then choose the party leader in convention.   The older method, in which the leader was chosen by the party caucus, that is to say, the Members of Parliament who belong to the party, was much better.  The party leader’s veto over local riding associations as to who runs as the party’s candidate in the constituency, an innovation introduced by Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s, ought also to be scrapped.  Returning the final say in candidacy to the local riding associations, and the final say in leadership to the caucus, would have the effect of making the leaders accountable to the parties they lead rather than near-dictators within their parties.   Allowing the party leader to act like a dictator within his own party makes him all the more likely to act like a dictator to the whole country should he become Prime Minister.   These reforms, both of which involve returning to an older, better, way of doing things, are the electoral reforms needed, not proportional representation, which would be the way to attain the undesirable goal of a Parliament filled with parties of inflexible ideologues discussed at the end of the previous paragraph, nor lowering the voting age, which if anything ought to be raised.   All that having been said, it was by membership convention that the new Conservative leader was chosen.

 

Pierre Poilievre, the Member of Parliament for Carleton, had been ahead throughout the leadership race, and so it came as little surprise that he won.   He owes his victory to two broad waves of opinion.  One of these is within the members and supporters of the Conservative Party and is the opinion that the party’s leadership in recent years – basically since they left office in 2015 – has shown far too much of that tendency discussed a couple of paragraphs ago, to sacrifice principle for ambition, and without achieving the intended end as they lost two consecutive Dominion elections that ought, by all rights, to have been easy wins.   The other wave is not confined to Conservative supporters but is the growing sentiment among Canadians that the present Prime Minister has been in office far too long, is haughty and arrogant and completely out of touch with the country he governs, has made life unaffordable and miserable for a large segment of the Canadian population and is continuing to do so and by all indications will keep on doing so in the future, has divided Canadians and turned them against each other,  has been hopelessly corrupt and abusive of government power and that he needs to go, preferably yesterday.   Poilievre’s performance as a critic of the government in the Shadow Cabinet for the last seven years, which was better than that of most of his colleagues and any other of the candidates for leader, combined with these waves of thought to make him the natural choice for the next Conservative leader.

 

The qualities of Poilievre that brought him enough support to win the Conservative leadership on the first ballot are such that it is fairly safe to say that he will do an excellent job in his current role of leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.   The question that only time will answer is whether these same qualities will translate into the ability to lead his party to victory in the next Dominion election and the ability to govern the country well as Prime Minister should he do so.  

 

I hope that the answer to both parts of that question proves to be yes.   It is not so much that I am anxious to see the Conservative Party in government again.   It is rather than I very much share the sentiment expressed in a recently trending hashtag that the present Prime Minister needs to go.     The last time that the Conservatives were in government they angered me so much by passing a bill giving government agencies enhanced powers to spy on Canadians, a bill which had no support in Parliament outside the Conservatives except from the current governing party, that I vowed never to vote for them again unless they majorly adjusted their attitude and leadership.    While I call myself a Tory I do not use the word in the obvious partisan sense of the present day, or even in the sense of what is usually meant by “small c conservative”, i.e., someone holding views on political, fiscal, economic, social, cultural, moral and religious matters that correspond to those that are ordinarily thought of as right-of-centre although I happen to be that as well, but rather to mean someone who believes in and supports the institutions, spiritual and temporal, that survive as our living connection to the Christian civilization that preceded the Modern and liberal and through that civilization to the ancient world, which meaning accords well with the definition famously provided by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary.   I would recognize a churchman and monarchist whose views on government spending, taxation, economics, etc. are mostly if not all diametrically opposed to my own – F. D. Maurice, the Anglican priest who was one of the founders of the Christian Socialist movement in the Victorian era is an example that comes to mind – as a fellow Tory, far sooner than I would a republican like Lorne Gunter whose views on such matters are much closer to my own.   

 

With that thought we return full circle to where we started this essay and I shall close by reiterating the point that we are blessed to have in our traditional monarchy an institution at the head of our state that transcends the chaos of the perpetual struggle for power that is partisan politics and represents stability, continuity, and order.  

 

God save the King!