Any global grouping which has to concern itself with amending a 17th century piece of legislation about royal succession should ask itself the question “Do I have any business existing?”
I refer to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM-pronounced chowgum) currently in session in Perth, Australia. The CHOGM comprises 54 countries, all former British colonies, and takes place every two years, primarily to reconfirm that they are no longer British colonies. As always, I am being flippant but that is my private perception of the CHOGM.
Commonwealth leaders are pledging to amend the legislation to allow daughters in the line of succession over younger royal sons. Currently one of the rules says, “An elder daughter should be placed behind a younger son in the line of succession.” To put in a language the average reader might understand you could be a 30-year-old royal daughter who would be cast aside to make way for your five-year-old royal brother simply because he has protruding genitalia.
The same legislation also says that anyone who marries a Roman Catholic is barred from succeeding to the crown.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said at the CHOGM that "These rules are outdated and need to change." It is not just these rules Mr. Cameron, but the whole monarchy is outdated by a 100 years.
Cameron’s deputy Nick Clegg had said earlier, "If Prince William and Catherine Middleton were to have a baby daughter as their first child, I think most people would think it fair and normal that she would eventually become queen of our country."
The Guardian’s Nicholas Watt reports, “Buckingham Palace is understood to be supportive. One No 10 source said: "Downing Street has been working on this for five years. Buckingham Palace will not have been taken by surprise. This will welcome the crown into the modern age."
There are so many things wrong with all this but let me mention just one. Why does the CHOGM exist at all? Quite apart from the fact the heads of Commonwealth governments barely fit the frame in a ceremonial group picture, what is the purpose of the grouping? However, even if you accept that the CHOGM does indeed exist, the rest of the medieval vestiges do not make sense.
Here is the number two leader of Britain talking about a possible female offspring from a not yet pregnant Catherine even as her grandmother-in-law, Elizabeth II, is still very much a regnant queen.
Clegg is worried about William and Catherine’s future daughter while Charles, the Prince of Wales, is still waiting at 63 to become king with his mother 85-year-old mother in control. 2012 will mark the queen’s 60th year.
We are also told that Buckingham Palace will not have been taken by surprise by the amending in 2011 of the Bill of Rights 1688, the Act of Settlement 1700, the Act of Union with Scotland 1706 and the Coronation Oaths Act 1688. I suppose 323 years are long enough for the monarchy not to have been taken by surprise.
For those of you who may not know the queen of England is still the monarch of 16 Commonwealth countries known as the Queen’s realms, which include Canada and Australia. India, the most populous member of the Commonwealth, decided to be a republic when the British colonial rulers left in 1947 and hence does not have the queen as its monarch.
