Royal succession - look at the language being used!

[SardineQueen]

bbc here

Thinking of changing it so that if a female child is born before a male child, the male child no longer gets to jump the queue.

Whether you give a monkeys about the royals or not - the language used by Nick Clegg is astounding!

I would have thought that it would be very obvious that it should be changed - apparently not

If you are considering a major change, however overdue IMO, it makes sense to use calm, moderate, understated language. They are consulting all the countries the Queen is monarch of, some of which have different cultures. Makes sense to me.

Our current government have just announced that the question "are boys more important than girls?" is something to which they will have to give "careful thought". The answer may well be, yes they are, but they are willing to be sympathetic to the idea that girls might be equal.

They have labelled automatic male supremacy "a little old fashioned".

Seriously that is OK?

Hopefully they will look to other countries that have adopted this method, Sweden I think is the most recent, and adopt it here.

I am actually a Royalist (kind of have to be!) but would much prefer this system.

A bit of straight talking wouldn't go amiss. Then the sexists can come out of the woodwork and some folk can stop pretending that feminism isn't needed anymore.

And if some commonweath countries don't like it, then they can withdraw. They won't though, because they know which side their bread is buttered.

About time. The other European monarchies have all adopted it apart from Spain I think. Sweden was the first iirc yonks ago.

Oh well, it's all archaic, but if it has to continue, it's no injury to anyone now alive to change the way it functions.

I think the aim is to present this as a 'consultative' exercise, so it doesn't seem like us imposing the change on the Commonwealth ... I do this at work as well, citing the fabulous Josh Lyman quote "how many people's permission do I need to do whatever the hell I want?"

Plus they almost certainly do have to tackle the "no Roman Catholics" issue at the same time - interestingly I don't know if this is actually a catch-all for 'no non CofE', I assume (!) a monarch following Hinduism, Judaism or other branch of Christianity would present a similar legal problem although that could be amusing if the legislation specifically singles out Catholics. Simple (from my perspective as a non-Christian at least) solution would be to make someone other than the monarch the head of the CofE, surely? Prince Charles has said in the past he would like to be known as Defender of Faith, which I think is a good thing.

So I don't think the language in this case is intended to be intrinsically sexist, as it is deferential to a long-standing precedent and a delicately-balanced relationship with other nation states. That said, it seems blindingly bloody obvious to me that the law needs changing, not least because surely all three of our longest serving monarchs are women anyway, aren't they? (A quick Wiki hit suggests not quite, but that certainly Elizabeths I and II and Victoria are in the top 10, depending on how you add it up).

It would move the Yorks down the succession list if it came in with immediate effect: new version would run - Charles, William, Harry, Anne, Peter, Savannah, Zara, Andrew etc

I can't imagine many people being distraught at Prince Andrew having to move down in the succession order compared to, say, Princess Anne (as academic as it probably all is anyway - hoping nothing bad happens to Princes Charles, William and Harry + any forthcoming William offspring). I don't imagine Beatrice and Eugenie are up nights working out how to get their hands on the throne - who'd want it, to be quite honest! I'd much rather be a minor royal and be indecently rich without the work schedule of the Queen. She should take a leaf out of the Dutch royal family's book and abdicate so she can put her feet up a bit.

I can't imagine anyone else as Queen. I don't want her to abdicate. I'd miss her. I wonder if Charlie will pass the throne straight to William? The Queen could easily last another 5/10 years and he'd be in his 70s by then.

I cannot imagine HMQ ever abdicating. She embodies a very old-fashioned sense of duty and just wouldn't. Prince Charles and, once military career ends, Prince William will take on more duties so her schedule can ease.

It's specifically Catholics who are excluded BTW.

Also, whatever one thinks of the monarchy, it's an interesting aside that Britain has had a female head of state for 123 of the last 174 years.

Most of the best monarchs this country has had have been women...discuss!

I thought al this had been decided a few years ago? (that girls could succeed ahead of her younger brothers).

What is crazier (IMHO) is that Autumn had to renounce her Catholicism before she could marry Peter. disgraceful.

but then, if you think about it, the whole monarchy thing is a bit crazy anyhoo.

Still, I'll be waving the odd flag on the 29th. I do like a Bank Holiday.

No, I can't imagine her abdicating either, but I would if I were her. The Dutch people still love the former queen but she doesn't have to do so many public engagements nowadays.

Lots of speculation if Charles will pass it straight over to William. I don't think he'd want to - for William's sake. But yes, I think statistics like we've had a female monarch for 123 of the last 174 years mean that debating "ooh should we have female monarchs?" is a wee bit pointless. We have them. Deal with it. But it will be a long while before it actually becomes an issue again.

Not necessarily if Will and Kate's first child is a girl. It would be nice if she knew what was in store for her

The British royals don't abdicate - they despised old lover boy Edward for doing it.

MigratingCoconuts - agreed :)

The language doesn't bother me - it's a bit softly softly, but he's not exactly going to go in all guns blazing on a major constitutional matter. I'm sure the change will happen soon, which is the important thing.

They had exactly this same discussion back in 1981/2, but it didn't come to anything because Diana had a boy.

if some chinless wonder gets to be the pointless billionaire next time purely through birth, I don't much care if it's a male or a female. If they are going to inhabit this medieval world of entitlement and crowns and castles, let them inhabit it with gender politics as out-dated as the rest of it. Couldn't care less whether the next one we pay for is male or female.

NorfolkNChance, why do you kind of have to be a royalist? Are you in fact Kate Middleton?

Oh if only! I am related to the Belgian royals on my Mother's side, my second cousin is something like 33rd in line and I am something ridiculous like 378th (can't keep up with the births). There you go my Royal claim to fame.

if there's a sudden rash of 'accidents' amoungst about 378 members of the Belgium royal family, we'll know what happened then...

hahah @ Norfolk taking out the belgian royals

I suppose my original point was that in this country we have a lot of people who say that the feminist fight is done, women are equal, there is no need for anything further. Then you have something like this - the head of state (about as important as you can get!) and paid for by public money and we have automatic male supremacy and the govt and lots of other people shrug and say "well it's tradition you know" and move on to something else. Which kind of shows up where our society is really at, in terms of equality. If this society were genuinely equal the govt wouldn't be so mealy-mouthed about it - they wouldn't be suggesting that the current system might well be absolutely the right way of doing it. There wouldn't be any question that this way of doing things was wrong!