Do Britons feel Queen Elizabeth II kept her 1947 promise?

[TwentytoTwelve]

Do Britons believe that Queen Elizabeth II upheld the promise she made to them in 1947 to serve them for her whole life?

If so, are they grateful to her?

There is of course a generational divide & MNs skews older. Younger people are far less interested.

I don’t feel remotely grateful, and don’t see why I should. She performed her version of ‘service’, not necessarily ours, and she and her family benefitted and profited way more from us than we have from them. The RF are a waste of money, and completely outdated as a concept.

My point was support has dropped & I think Andrew & how they shielded him is a big part of that. Personally I think support will continue to drop.

Being the head of state. So that we don't need to have a president. We have a prime minister and a monarch. The prime minister goes to visit the monarch every week for support and advice, or as a sounding board.
Personally I am in favour of an unelected head of state. It works well in this parliamentary democracy to have people brought up from birth to fulfil the role for life, instead of some ego-driven politician who gets changed out for a newbie every 5 or 10 years.
It is just a shame it is so tough personally on the poor sods born into it, so I don't begrudge them the luxury.

Edited to add, our head of state is not in place of an American-style president, it is in place of the system common in European countries where you have both a president and a prime minister.

Perhaps , time will be test of that theory. Personally I don't see that happening as I think attention will switch to the new generation soon and Andrew will become less relevant to the public's perception of the monarchy. If William is king then him, Kate and the children will be the focus and I think how they behave will hold the key to the success and future of the monarchy.

A referendum should only be held in my view after a reasonably sustained period of time where a reasonable majority favour a Republic.

@Itchthescratch

There is ‘no evidence’ according to you - because we have never been asked !

And no I’m not asking for a referendum. A question could be added to a ballot paper. It’s normal in lots of countries .

Lets see where we stand

And bear in mind that the ‘polls’ we see now present an average . They roll the views of the 65plus into those desperate ‘popularity’ PR polls . Look at the views of those under 45 and there is a different picture .

And no that won’t change . It’s not boomertastic 1960s any more . The idea that people become more right wing and conservative as they age is out of date .

Who says it has to be a politican?

Who says we even need a head of state ?

Ask us if we want to continue paying half a billion annually to a hereditary head of state ( and no they are necessarily good at their ‘job’) who is above the law and enriching themselves grotesquely.

Elizabeth covered up for Andrew while being head of state . Didn’t GAF .

Certainly not. What did she do that was so wonderful?

Loads of people have to dedicate their lives to tedious public service, though - and often for minimum wage. Should Vera who has to scrub public toilets to make ends meet be allowed to ignore a few laws here and there, as part of the nation's gratitude to her? It's not even like she can 'abdicate', if she wants to go on eating and keeping a roof over her head.

Pretty much every country on earth has a head of state. In some countries they don't have a separate head of government (e.g. prime minister), so one person does both jobs.
The main example of a combined-roles system is the USA. Other examples are mostly in Africa or South America, but also include countries like Indonesia, Philippines and Turkey.

If your head of state is not a politician, they are a monarch. The exceptions are a theocracy (Iran), a one-party state (e.g. communist China or Cuba), or a military junta (e.g. Niger or Sudan).

So yes, we need a head of state, and to maintain our "status and dignity" in the world (for whatever that is worth), that head of state needs to be perceived as expensive and splashing the cash on foreign state visits.

Sorry, I'm not buying that. It would have been so easy to sing 'land' instead of king or queen, if that had been the intention. "Long to reign over us" is obviously not referring to the country itself. And if it isn't about the monarch personally, why do we change the pronouns when we switch from a queen to a king or vice versa?

Not grateful.
But she did keep her promise. It's not the same without her and I think it's the end of the line for the RF/monarchy in its current form. It's an anachronism.

I think a lot of it, though, is that most people had never known anything else other than having that particular person as the Queen; they had nobody and nothing to compare her with in their own experience.

A bit like when young children give their parents a card saying "Best Mummy/Daddy in the World!" - it's not like they have an especially wide representative pool of people who have been their mum or dad to compare them with!

Ah the old ‘don’t worry the next one up will be better ‘ line

Yeah they told us that about Charles .

They also told us that they’d ’slim down’ the monarchy . But they kept quiet about the taking more money than ever part didn’t they?

There are more questions about who the Windsors associate with than just Andrew - it’s wider .

Im sure William has returned the 1million he accepted from Epstein’s close associate. He says he had no idea about his co founder’s links to Epstein . We have to take him at his word .
Who supplies the ultra polluting super yachts William spends his summers on ?
Who gave Charles his bags of cash?

The senators who helped expose the Epstein files talk about ‘the Epstein class’ . They include the Windsors in that if I remember correctly .

@Ukisgaslit

Replying to myself here

Yes the senator is calling on the Windsor family to compensate the Epstein victims linked to the palace .

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5665352-khanna-prince-andrew-trump-epstein-files/

Simply not true
Heads of state do not have to be a politician.

And if we were to have an elected head of state we have a clean slate- we can put in all the checks and balances which are non existent with the current Windsor set up .

No qualifications required except being born in the right time/place and no one will ever say if you are no good at the job you have for as long as you reign.

She reigned over us apparently. For some that is enough.

I don't know what "Britons" as a whole think of her, any more than you do OP assuming you are a "Briton" too.

I personally feel neutral, but slightly grateful she didn't do anything completely bonkers which a different monarch might've done.

Surely the will of the people was demonstrated with Brexit vote. More people voted to leave than to stay. Nothing to do with the Queen although she was very fond of the Commonwealth of which she was also head of state.

She baled out her paedo son.

Enough said.

Sure, but OP is asking us what our personal opinion is. We don’t have to agree.

I’ve answered yes, definitely, to the question which is “Did she keep her promise to serve for her whole life?”

Whether pps want to extend that question into discussion about the pros and cons of monarchy is a different matter.

Yes, people like to think of them as a much-loved harmless figurehead, but dissent IS clamped down on when it suits them. Remember the peaceful protestors holding 'Not My King' placards at the coronation, who were forced into the back of a riot van until it was all over... including an Australian tourist who had travelled over to be in London for the event - presumably a monarchy supporter - who got accidentally swept up in the rush to cleanse the streets of anybody expressing a contrary opinion.

And if Charles had had a fatal illness or accident before 1982, that same person would now BE the king - and thus impossible to prosecute (as prosecutions are executed in the name of the monarch), even in the highly unlikely event that he'd given himself up.

The current king has also had some very 'interesting' close friends as well, but that's another matter entirely...

She stuck at it and didn't abdicate. I do respect her for that.

She made big mistakes at times though (as anyone would). Andrew was very obviously her favourite child and she did everything she could get away with to cover up and whitewash over his very serious wrongdoings. She clearly thought that the sun shone out of his arse and it has done nobody any favours. Neither at the time nor since (he is now taking legal action against Thames Valley Police, we hear this morning)

Grateful is taking it a bit far. I'm not Ungrateful, I'm neutral.