Second, it was drawn to my attention yesterday that Twitter seemed to be particularly excited about unsubstantiated claims about the state of Prince William’s marriage.
Divorced bloke gets on high horse about third in line to throne’s marriage gossip.
Instead, what troubles me is that in what passes for a constitutional settlement within the UK the decisions of some people as to how they will conduct their personal lives might have implication for the conduct of government. Prince William, in particular, is second in line to the throne and his father will be well into his seventies if he does ever become king. In that case the succession rests pretty heavily on his shoulders. Like it or not, public confidence in his conduct matters whether you are a monarchist or not.
There is a point at which we say fuck off to pompous gits, isn’t there?
It was drawn to my attention yesterday….
You can just imagine the scene as His Royal Spudliness’ butler shakes him awake and murmurs “As the nation’s premier potato, the world will be expecting a pronouncement from your excellency on this very serious matter. Shall I alert the media to a tweet at ten o’clock?”
A post worthy of Diary of a Nobody. Richard Murphy is Charles Pooter to the nth degree.
Come to think of it, he’s more of a mash-up of Pooter and Roderick Spode.
I love the bit about “what passes for a constitutional settlement in the UK…”. That’s proper classy writing, that.
If that was “Second” what earth-shattering point was first?
@ Sam Vara
Being interpreted that means “Baldwin told Edward VIII he couldn’t stay Head of the Church of England if wanted to marry a re-married American divorcee so much that he admitted breaking the seventh and tenth commandments in order to do so.”
Which has an utterly negligible connection to Prince William
The “dodgy” constitutional settlement? Is that the one from 1688 that says: “you can be king, but keep out of everything else or we’ll chop yer head off and pick somebody else”? Seems pretty fair to me.
And from this stream of twaddle arises the inevitable conclusion: only I, Captain Potato, Master of the Royal Trainset, am capable of being the next head of state
@Diogenes Yes… Which begs the question…
At which point should the Unwashed Masses rise up and …. OK, Option B is quite unfashionable nowadays, but it *is* a very Britsh Tradition. Usually local, but..
One ….Feeling.. I’ve had over the decades in all my various sojourns in the Blessed Isles is that the only thing keeping people back is that they don’t want to copy the French.
And that that’s rougly the *only* thing keeping people back to …reset.. the Failure.
And to be fair… The Bureaucracy the French built is ….welllllll..
But still..
His grandmother (at a minimum) has set a precedent where the monarch does nothing in the face of outrageous abuses of her government – she has abdicated in all but name. Why should anyone think the next ‘sovereign’ will have any power when the current one has given it all away?
And without power, who the hell cares what William is like?
He’ll be opining authoritatively on Daily Mail coverage of the Kardashian toenail colour of the week and depilation trends next week?
Does he actually lecture students? – is there any record of refunds being asked for?
And the way prospective candidates conduct their personal lives is totally irrelevant under which system of government, pray tell?
“a mash-up of Pooter and Roderick Spode.”
Heheh.
Grikath, my personal take is that the Prime Minister is the de facto head of state – although the Supreme Court has stepped in once or twice on rather poorly argued grounds – but we don’t want to solemnise it to the extent of having President Blair or Bojo. A nicely messy British compromise. Such compromises used to happen in the Netherlands, such as banks refusing to give me a blank giro form – but they would type the details on it for me