Economically, it might. It is commonly asserted that the British monarchy brings in far more money than it drains in the form of tourism. I would be interested to know how well this claim stands up to scrutiny.
On the one hand, most of the physical tourist attractions could be maintained without monarchy actually owning or inhabiting them - indeed, the tourism value of Buckingham Palace would perhaps be improved if you could actually go inside.
On the other hand, perhaps that would ruin the mystique - and the mystique is certainly worth something too, as the wedding of William and Kate is estimated to have generated several billion pounds in tourist revenue all by itself, which is enough to pay for several decades of monarchy.
If the royalty went away and the UK took possession of its lands, castles, and holdings, it could make a killing off tourism to those private or semi-private residences. Other European countries that are no longer monarchies do this just fine.
Actually it does - the experience of visiting Versailles, a sort of preserved museum that exist solely for tourism, is entirely different from visiting an actual royal palace. Despite the historical significance it was one of the least memorable places I’ve been to in France.
Yeah, for one, you can actually enter the palace and not stay outside. The numbers of visitors in versailles absolutely dwarfs british palaces. I'm talking 'more visitors[0] than the british top 10 combined[1]'.
And the fee to enter is not cheap. 20€.
I think you've just proved the comment you are replying to correct though. You were still interested enough to visit knowing that it exists solely for tourism in advance, and presumably only came to your conclusion afterwards.
These are not the sorts of places that people typically visit on overseas holidays more than once. So once the ticket has been bought, whether or not it is "an actual royal palace" is irrelevant.
Of course people like to feel the glamour of being close to the mystique of living wealth, but once an attraction is firmly on the circuit it hardly matters. See Tower of London, Blenheim Palace, Edinburgh Castle, Hampton Court Palace, etc.
According to Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, Buckingham Palace would be around the 70th most visited
attraction in the country, hardly a sign that you need a living monarchy to sustain tourism - https://www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=423
I did not write this as a defense of keeping the monarchy around just for the curiosity value, or from the raking-in-cash angle, just highlighting that the experience is quite different for visitors.
A lot of this land and property is privately owned by the royal family but leased to the government, I’m not exactly versed in UK law; but a governmental attempt to seize a private citizens land seems like it wouldn’t be the smoothest thing to attempt to pull off.
> The Crown Estate as a whole dates back from the time of the Norman Conquest.
In 1760, George III reached an agreement with the Government over the Estate. The Crown Lands would be managed on behalf of the Government and the surplus revenue would go to the Treasury. In return, the King would receive a fixed annual payment, which was called the Civil List. With effect from 1 April 2012, the Civil List was incorporated into a new system of funding referred to as the Sovereign Grant.
The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch. It cannot be sold by the Monarch, nor do any profits from it go to the Sovereign.
The Crown Estate is managed by an independent organisation, headed by a Board, and any profit from the Estate is paid every year to the Treasury for the benefit of all UK taxpayers. The Treasury is effectively the principle Government stakeholder and is kept informed of the estate’s overall business plans and strategies.
The Estates portfolio has a value of over £7.3 billion, from beef farms in the north of Scotland to Portland stone mining in Dorset. Windsor Great Park is the only Royal Park managed by the Crown Estate. All other parks are administered by the Royal Parks Agency.
> ”The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the Monarch. It cannot be sold by the Monarch”
Correct.
> “nor do any profits from it go to the Sovereign.”
Incorrect. Currently 25% of the Crown Estate’s profits are paid to the Monarch. This was raised from 15% in 2018, and is set to revert back to 15% in 2028.
"The sovereign grant was increased in 2017, from its previous level of 15%, to pay for extensive renovations at Buckingham Palace which are likely to run until 2027."
No, Buckingham Palace and other “occupied” royal palaces are not part of the Crown Estate.
”The palace, like Windsor Castle, is owned by the reigning monarch in right of the Crown. Occupied royal palaces are not part of the Crown Estate, but nor are they the monarch's personal property, unlike Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle.”
Did some research; think I’ve figured it out. See whether this is correct.
Occupied palaces, like Buckingham Palace, are owned by the reigning monarch ‘in right of the Crown’ (like you pointed out).
Similarly, the Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch ‘in right of The Crown’.
“In right of The Crown” means it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne.
So, you are correct (and I was wrong) that Buckingham is not part of the Crown Estate.
Notwithstanding this technicality, would you agree that the overarching point remains that it isn’t as if “the money goes to the monarch for their personal enjoyment” (which is what I interpreted you implied), but towards Buckingham renovations, which is a property of The Crown[1] (i.e the state) and which in turn is embodied by the reigning monarch.
It sounds to me as if the monarch is like a custodian/shepherd of these assets for the benefit of the state (the crown).
Laws still have to respect the rights of the people, no? I’m not well versed in UK law, but the US, the legislature can’t just make a law making criticism of the government illegal because it’s a violation of our First Amendment right to free speech.
> Economically, it might. It is commonly asserted that the British monarchy brings in far more money than it drains in the form of tourism. I would be interested to know how well this claim stands up to scrutiny.
Only because of Hollywood accounting.
Tourists don't come to England to see the Queen. Tourists can't see the Queen. Tourists come to see the Palace. The Queen doesn't own Buckingham Palace. The government does. If the Queen were to disappear tomorrow, tourists would still come to England to see Buckingham Palace.
The question really is whether the existence of the queen is what provides continued value for buckingham palace — without the monarchy, it becomes another relic of a bygone era, with no inherent quality to attract tourists beyond its history and aesthetic. Visiting a “live” structure is an altogether different thing — this is where the queen lives vs this is where a queen once lived (as opposed to all the other places kings and queens have lived)
Counterargument: all those grandiose empty buildings. People still come to see our Place of the Parliament in Bucharest and ain't nobody bringing back Ceaușescu :-))
The question isn’t whether people would visit, but rather do they visit more because of the queen’s existence. That is, would be worth a billion rather than billions
The late author JG Ballard once suggested that the monarchy should be abolished, but that the British government should work with Disney to have lifelike robotic replicas made. Cheaper in the long run, and Disney World is quite popular after all.
Getting rid of the monarch as the head of state also means your nation has to pick a new head of state, somehow. Regular elections and an office and bureaucracy around that isn't free either.
But the Brits already HAVE a head of state what they don't need in effect is another. There is nothing the queen does that couldn't be done by existing members of government.
I don't disagree that a unified head of state+government would be unusual, but most parliamentary systems were also heavily inspired by the Westminster System, so that might not be a great argument one way or another.
Whom does the armed forces pledge allegiance to? In the UK, it's the monarch, not the government. That balance of power (military v political/legislative) gives you national stability.
You don't want one person having both.
Its the main reason royals serve in the armed forces.
> Whom does the armed forces pledge allegiance to?
Why does the armed forces need to pledge allegiance to a person?
> In the UK, it's the monarch, not the government. That balance of power (military v political/legislative) gives you national stability.
I don't think there's much evidence of that.
> You don't want one person having both
Why not?
> Its the main reason royals serve in the armed forces.
The main reason the royals serve in the armed forces is that the royalty (and even the broader nobility) is a remnant of what is notionally a warrior elite that is traditionally barred from servile labor but has position of authority ultimately grounded in military function. The substance of both the authority and the distinct warrior class is almost entirely extinct, but traditions remain, including the tradition that it's pretty much the only thing that looks like work that senior royals are permitted to do, as anything else in government would be seen to violate their distance from that function and anything else would be seen as demeaning the monarchy.
IIRC, it's because the British Army can trace its origins back to the New Model Army, so pledging allegiance to the Crown was more than just a formality back then.
In contrast, the 'Royal' Navy was created expressly by the monarch so allegiance is implied.
So if after an election there are two different coalitions who both claim to be the best chance at a stable government, who makes the choice to go with one of them, or to call fresh elections?
Under the Westminster system of government, I cannot see any alternative to having a seperate head of state that is not part of the government, even if they do nothing more than wake up every 5 years, appoint a prime minister and go back to sleep again.
> So if after an election there are two different coalitions who both claim to be the best chance at a stable government, who makes the choice to go with one of them, or to call fresh elections?
In a parliamentary system, the legislative body selects a head of government using a negative process, i.e. they choose the first best alternative that won't lose a vote of no confidence. You don't need 51% approval from parliament, you need to not get 51% disproval.
And depending on country, there are rules for in which order the various players are asked and how much time is allowed to pass for horse-trading and coalition-making, but generally the order is that you first ask the incumbent if they want to continue governing, and thereafter each party leader in order of size in parliament if they have an alternative that they think can pass a vote.
Also, in countries where coalitions are the norm, the various parties have aligned into blocks during the election campaign so that you can be reasonably certain that a vote for party A implicitly is a vote for their block.
> So if after an election there are two different coalitions who both claim to be the best chance at a stable government, who makes the choice to go with one of them, or to call fresh elections?
We, here in the rest of the world, use a magic number to determine that. 51% (or 50% + 1).
That was the case in the UK from 2010-2015. It's called a minority government.
Various factions horse trade until some coalition of parties has a majority, and then they rule as coalition. Members of both the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats had cabinet seats.
The main downside to this sort of process is that sometimes negotiations take a long time. Belgium spent nearly two years bickering over forming their coalition in 2010.
> Sure, that works fine when one party has 50%. But what happens when no-one does?
Form a coalition that does or have new elections. You can even set a timeline after an election for a coalition to be in place or new elections are mandated by law.
> So if after an election there are two different coalitions who both claim to be the best chance at a stable government, who makes the choice to go with one of them, or to call fresh elections?
Why do you need to have someone make a choice? Have a set timeline for one of the other to secure the support of a Parliamentary majority or new elections are called by operation of law.
It is useful to have a hereditary figurehead to open flower shows and the like. It keeps the elected politicians from forming a personality cult, and gives them more time to govern. Pardoning turkeys probably isn't the highest and best use of the us President's time
According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw, the royal family brings in 160M pound from land property with a maintenance cost of 40M pound, and an additional 7000M pound from tourism
I expect to be downvoted for this but I think there is an appeal in an institution that dogmaticaly upholds a "higher" ideal of human behavior. They try to provide us with an example of how a hypothetical family with essentially unlimited resources that is born into this world with a social duty should theoretically behave. They also show us constant examples that human emotions are a factor regardless of your socio-economic situation. This provides the layman with an answer to the question "what would I do if I won the lottery and was instantly vaulted into the highest social circle?" Would you use your influence for the good of the people while maintaining a scandalous affair? Would you fall into the same emotional traps as the royals?
I think it's an interesting social experiment that may be worth the cost it requires to maintain.
What you describe is noblis oblige. It's a long standing cultural force ofarguable efficacy peculiar in particular to France/Britain.
Elsewhere, there are alternative viewpoints. The funny thing is that your proposed institution assumes the layman is the one who needs to be taught or reminded more often than not.
Stripping the Monarchy of their lands goes quite a bit further than just abolishing the monarchy. Removing the right to rule a county is one thing. Stripping a wealthy family from all their holdings seems to go a bit too far by any measure in a civilized society that values the concept of personal property.
>Stripping a wealthy family from all their holdings seems to go a bit too far by any measure in a civilized society that values the concept of personal property.
The concept of personal property can perfectly accommodate of a limit in how much a individual person can personally own, especially in regard to the distribution of wealth in the whole population.
> Stripping a wealthy family from all their holdings
An Act of Parliament could just ascertain that the Windsors exempting each other from Inheritance tax was unlawful, and ask the new Republican Revenue & Tax office to assess 40% IHT on every historical generational transfer of assets.
Just redressing the historical injustices that the Windsors benefitted from would strangely make them much less rich.
On the one hand, most of the physical tourist attractions could be maintained without monarchy actually owning or inhabiting them - indeed, the tourism value of Buckingham Palace would perhaps be improved if you could actually go inside.
On the other hand, perhaps that would ruin the mystique - and the mystique is certainly worth something too, as the wedding of William and Kate is estimated to have generated several billion pounds in tourist revenue all by itself, which is enough to pay for several decades of monarchy.