Debating the monarchy's relevance, reform and public accountability in modern Britain

[LipglossAndLies]

Welcome to this thread! 👋 I am hoping it provides a dedicated space to discuss and debate the relevance, utility, and future of the institution of monarchy in modern times.

To help make this a welcoming space for genuine discussion, I would like to encourage everyone to follow a few simple guidelines:

💬 Respectful Challenge, Not Nastiness: let's keep the focus entirely on the ideas, not the people posting them.

👀 Focus on the roles, not the people: This thread is about governance, constitutional law, economics, and the function of a head of state. I think it would help to use the official roles and not personal names to keep the conversation completely agnostic.

🙏 Gossip free: Please avoid discussing personal family drama, media feuds, or the private lives of individual family members. There are plenty of other threads for that!

💁‍♀️ Report or ignore: If you feel someone is not commenting in good faith, or is trying to provoke a hostile reaction as it will help keep the conversation on track.

To kick off the debate, for me I would think its time for significant structural reform. Recent years have highlighted major blind spots in how official state roles such as official trade or investment envoy appointments are handed out, funded, and scrutinised by the public. When individuals holding these titles face serious scrutiny over their expenses, or how they utilise state-backed influence, it reflects heavily on the entire institution.

If the monarchy is to survive in modern times, it needs to move past a culture of internal deference and accept rigorous financial oversight, auditing, and transparency as any other government body receiving taxpayers money.

I asked google

Severe Physical Danger or Violence: Proof that public release exposes beneficiaries, executors, or associates to credible death threats, severe harassment, or targeted violence. 1, 2]
National Security and Intelligence Protection: Situations where the contents or the testator’s background involve sensitive state operations, or risks to intelligence sources and safety. 1, 2, 3]
Constitutional and Royal Tradition: Preserving the dignity, privacy, and security of senior members of the British Royal Family, a long-established convention upheld by the courts. 1, 2]

Yep, last one is an easy win for the Royals, but I bed they could argue the first if it wasn't there, as could any person.

They haven't got there because their parents worked hard though. They got there because their distant ancestors killed some other of their distant ancestors, some other distant ancestors were psychopaths, killed some wives and decided to take a load of money and landed from the Pope and other distant ancestors were too busy shagging to settle down and have kids on time. That's not hard work in any way. It's sheer lottery.

@FallenNight
No way an ordinary member of the public can then.

Preserving the dignity, privacy, and security of senior members of the British Royal Family, a long-established convention upheld by the courts

This is always rolled out. Maybe general members of the public would like dignity and privacy?

And, it's not always 'senior members of the Royal Family'.

I think many famous people - not just the royal family would have folk scrabbling to see what was in their wills.

Not one of them likely would profess to live perfect lives.

People are people are people - with all the flaws and foibles that that entails.

I wonder if there would be any reason in which Joe Bloggs could seal their will. I wonder if it could be a consideration where you have had to have your identity changed/hidden? You get lifelong anonymity for some things. (Crime/witness protection etc.) Who knows? There must be some instances.

If so, is there an independent body who would look at the will to make sure someone isn’t being cheated?

I’m all for letting everyone have sealed wills - as long as there are safeguards in place to navigate any wrong doing.

It's quite hard to find out but I know very minor people with connections to the RF have been granted sealed wills. Dukes, Duchesses, a member of the Rothschild family who was a thoroughbred horse breeder, some very dubious connections.
But not, of course, general public.

They need to knock this custom on the head.

And it would be a poke in the eye for those who go searching through records that don’t concern them.

All sealed and you can put forward a claim as to why you should see them.

I imagine it's quite difficult to win wars and murder lots of relatives. Not like today's work I grant you. But they did make some sacrifices and take some risks to win their position

You have bypassed the security and danger to persons extreme harassment.

Witness protection qualifies I suppose.

Too late to edit. I’m not sure why this was corrected to sure instead of queer.

My auto correct has been quite random lately - not sure why - and I don’t often notice.

Apologies.

Witness protection of course! I can't remember what's in my Will but pretty sure there's lots of addresses!

Anyway I don't want to go on about this for fear of derailing this interesting thread!

No not all there seemed to be a desire to want to discuss this so I just decided to set a thread up so people could 🙂

This is a bit of a derail but I was mentioned in a will a few years ago - not as a beneficiary but as someone who could potentially inherit if the main beneficiary predeceased me. Despite having changed my name and moved multiple times, I have received numerous letters over the years from companies who have tracked me down and are interested in buying the property mentioned in the will. I would actually be in favour of restricting wills more, not less, on privacy grounds.

Derail over.

There's an interesting recent case here

Stewarts Law Sealed will case

I agree. Sealed unless you are named in the will. It’s no one’s business how much another person has or how much they’ve been bestowed. It is a privacy that should be granted to all and would surely help prevent fraud and harassment.

Of course it would be interesting but likely that the reason most people want this access matches your own!

Thanks for this thread @LipglossAndLies a lively debate and I have learnt some new things already! So thanks to everyone else too.

When it comes to a modern monarchy I feel that the children of the heir should be encouraged to have normal careers and earn their own money as adults.
Since monarchs now live to a great age, the next in line have plenty of time. It makes far more sense for them to work independently in the real world and only transition into public roles when a change of reign is on the horizon. Especially now, when the institution itself is trying to scale back official engagements, there’s really no point in having younger generations on standby as public figures from day one.

So agree @LifeIsTooShort247

Meritocracy and democracy may be great in theory, but have deep, deep flaws in the real world. Not least corruption by money.

There's at least one royal who's been proved to be susceptible to corruption by money and others whose charitable activities have faced review by the Charity Commission.

C3 himself was dubbed 'rent a royal' by his father and that was before he accepted carrier bags stuffed with millions in cash.

The biggest problem I see at the moment is the failure of our politicians to ensure rigorous oversight of even the rules that are currently in place.

There's no real reason the royal institution couldn't voluntarily take it upon itself to supply any detail the politicians can't or won't pursue.

Unless of course they really do have something to hide?

And they didn't do it all alone.

At whatever level - dukedom, principality, kingdom - the individuals operated, they had to secure and govern the lands they ruled, and in a way that those just below them in the pecking order approved of. Otherwise, they were challenged.

So quite a skill set.

Why not? Who decided on this level of secrecy and why anyway? 10 points for the correct answer.

IIRC it was instituted as a way for the hiding of a bequest to a royal mistress and then rather conveniently morphed into 'convention'.

Moi: 10 points 😎 (unless I've been beaten to it 😛)

What is a gooden?

Y'all need to hide your assets in your letter of wishes rather than the main body of your will.

Significant assets can also be left via trusts, and as I understand it trust distribution information is private.

Yes and pensions are too.