You know what, let me actually go through this in detail.
The royal family brings in loads in tourism!
What is being argued here is that the "mystique" of having a functioning monarchy persuades people to visit the UK when they otherwise wouldn't. That may or may not be true and is largely impossible to quantify. But let's think about it anyway.
The UK is 8th in the most popular international tourist destinations. 6 of the 7 countries above it do not have an active monarchy. What they tend to have is actual attractions people want to visit, or a cultural significance which marks them out. Heck, Germany gets more tourists than the UK. France gets almost 3 times as many tourists as the UK. Austria gets almost as many tourists as the UK with a fraction of the population. These places don't have monarchies, they don't sell themselves on the basis of having monarchies. They sell themselves as places with interesting history, beautiful cities and buildings and actual things to do. Spain gets almost twice as many tourists as the UK and do you ever see its monarchy in the international news or on promotional material? No. It sells itself on the basis that it has a great climate, natural beauty, good beaches and interesting history and culture. These are things people actually care about.
In the UK, we have many things which are attractive to tourists. Moreover, we speak English (the most widely spoken language on Earth). This endless insistence that "oh, it's the monarchy who brings everyone here" is frankly not doing us justice. People aren't spending thousands and flying halfway around the world solely because of a small family of people they won't actually see, they're doing it because there's actual reason to do so.
A lifelong head of state has more responsibility than an elected one
Tell you what, why don't we compromise.
Instead of an elected head of state, we can just pick an unelected senior civil servant or diplomat and make them head of state for life. How does that sound?
Because that would still be more democratic than the system we have. For one, we could pretty much guarantee that the head of state would be competent because they would have had to be to reach the position from which they were selected.
If that thought creeps you out, maybe you should think long and hard about the system we actually do have, which is far more arbitrary and demands far less competence from the person who is representing our country overseas. Speaking of which..
A monarch is more highly respected internationally than a representative would be
Let's be honest here.
Those trips the queen (and her family) makes overseas. Do you think they sit around and discuss actual political issues? Do you think they actually talk about anything of importance to the country? Do you think anyone seriously questions the queen on anything? Do you think anyone actually expects her to do anything beyond show up and be the queen?
Whether or not the queen is respected, whether or not the heads of state of other nations actually like her is irrelevant because she herself is not an elected representative or professional diplomat. Frankly, we could pick some actor or musician who is doing well internationally and send them over to buy foreign heads of state a nice steak dinner and it would fulfill much the same function.
The reason we assume the queen is competent and well liked is because we tend to separate the ceremonial aspects of international diplomacy (in which everyone is meticulously polite and little of importance is done) from the practical aspects, which are actually difficult and need to be handled by a representative.
The monarchy keeps the government stable
And that's a good thing?
What has kept the government stable in the UK, what still keeps it stable to this day to some degree, is the class system. We retained an upper class for far longer than many countries, because as a monarchy we maintained the idea for far longer that "good breeding" made some people naturally better than others. Countries which abandoned this had to reinvent their class systems, often resulting in greater social mobility. When all you need to be "the right sort of person" is money, it's possible to better yourself. In Britain, until very recently, it was impossible for a person to fully shrug off the legacy of their class background, even if they had financially bettered themselves.
To this day, our political system (and indeed the top levels of virtually every important aspect of our society) are full of people from a very particular social background. That's why our government is comparatively stable, because regardless of which party is in power it is generally composed of and represents the views of the same socio-political group. If you think that is a good thing, then fine. As someone who feels that social mobility is an important part of representative democracy and that anyone, irrespective of background, should be able to aspire to political office, I don't.
Captcha: keep calm
The royal family brings in loads in tourism!
What is being argued here is that the "mystique" of having a functioning monarchy persuades people to visit the UK when they otherwise wouldn't. That may or may not be true and is largely impossible to quantify. But let's think about it anyway.
The UK is 8th in the most popular international tourist destinations. 6 of the 7 countries above it do not have an active monarchy. What they tend to have is actual attractions people want to visit, or a cultural significance which marks them out. Heck, Germany gets more tourists than the UK. France gets almost 3 times as many tourists as the UK. Austria gets almost as many tourists as the UK with a fraction of the population. These places don't have monarchies, they don't sell themselves on the basis of having monarchies. They sell themselves as places with interesting history, beautiful cities and buildings and actual things to do. Spain gets almost twice as many tourists as the UK and do you ever see its monarchy in the international news or on promotional material? No. It sells itself on the basis that it has a great climate, natural beauty, good beaches and interesting history and culture. These are things people actually care about.
In the UK, we have many things which are attractive to tourists. Moreover, we speak English (the most widely spoken language on Earth). This endless insistence that "oh, it's the monarchy who brings everyone here" is frankly not doing us justice. People aren't spending thousands and flying halfway around the world solely because of a small family of people they won't actually see, they're doing it because there's actual reason to do so.
A lifelong head of state has more responsibility than an elected one
Tell you what, why don't we compromise.
Instead of an elected head of state, we can just pick an unelected senior civil servant or diplomat and make them head of state for life. How does that sound?
Because that would still be more democratic than the system we have. For one, we could pretty much guarantee that the head of state would be competent because they would have had to be to reach the position from which they were selected.
If that thought creeps you out, maybe you should think long and hard about the system we actually do have, which is far more arbitrary and demands far less competence from the person who is representing our country overseas. Speaking of which..
A monarch is more highly respected internationally than a representative would be
Let's be honest here.
Those trips the queen (and her family) makes overseas. Do you think they sit around and discuss actual political issues? Do you think they actually talk about anything of importance to the country? Do you think anyone seriously questions the queen on anything? Do you think anyone actually expects her to do anything beyond show up and be the queen?
Whether or not the queen is respected, whether or not the heads of state of other nations actually like her is irrelevant because she herself is not an elected representative or professional diplomat. Frankly, we could pick some actor or musician who is doing well internationally and send them over to buy foreign heads of state a nice steak dinner and it would fulfill much the same function.
The reason we assume the queen is competent and well liked is because we tend to separate the ceremonial aspects of international diplomacy (in which everyone is meticulously polite and little of importance is done) from the practical aspects, which are actually difficult and need to be handled by a representative.
The monarchy keeps the government stable
And that's a good thing?
What has kept the government stable in the UK, what still keeps it stable to this day to some degree, is the class system. We retained an upper class for far longer than many countries, because as a monarchy we maintained the idea for far longer that "good breeding" made some people naturally better than others. Countries which abandoned this had to reinvent their class systems, often resulting in greater social mobility. When all you need to be "the right sort of person" is money, it's possible to better yourself. In Britain, until very recently, it was impossible for a person to fully shrug off the legacy of their class background, even if they had financially bettered themselves.
To this day, our political system (and indeed the top levels of virtually every important aspect of our society) are full of people from a very particular social background. That's why our government is comparatively stable, because regardless of which party is in power it is generally composed of and represents the views of the same socio-political group. If you think that is a good thing, then fine. As someone who feels that social mobility is an important part of representative democracy and that anyone, irrespective of background, should be able to aspire to political office, I don't.
Captcha: keep calm