THE MONARCHIST

at 7:30 PM

Jonathan Prynn of The London Evening Standard writes: "Regina v Darling, or more likely v Osborne, will be one of the more fascinating departmental spending struggles of the coming years. Next summer The Queen's senior courtiers lock horns (or perhaps tiaras) with Treasury mandarins over the future funding of our Head of State. It could be a defining moment for how Britain wants to run its Monarchy. The annual Civil List, the public income used to pay for The Queen's daily costs, mostly staff salaries, has been set at £7.9 million for the past 20 years. It only covers about half of Her spending, the short-fall made up from reserves. The reserves are almost depleted and will be down to a few million by the time The Queen's next 10 year financing cycle starts in Spring 2011."

"Just to keep The Queen's way of life at current levels would mean increasing The Civil List by at least £7 million and more realistically probably £10 million a year. The claim will come against one of the bleakest public spending backdrops in British history. It also comes in a new era when hostility to the taxpayer funding the lifestyles of public servants is more intense than ever. The Queen cannot be compared to those "flipping" MPs of course. The public expects a little Majesty from their Monarch, but prefers humility from their political representatives. Nonetheless the case for the extra money is going to be an unbelievably hard one to make. If anything the public mood could harden over the next two years as the grim reality of deep public spending cuts takes hold. It was anger over alleged "Royal profligacy" that forced The Queen to start paying tax on Her income during Her 'annus horribilis' during the last recession in 1992."

Jonathan Prynn concludes his article by adding this: "We could be approaching the moment when The Monarchy takes another lurch towards a pared down Scandinavian model. Less Majesty it may be but The Queen has finely tuned political attenae. If the alternative means stoking up Republicanism she will happily accept more tupperware and less flummery at The Palace."

at 7:30 AM

"The Heir to the Throne of the British Empire visiting the Provinces of that Empire in America is a new fact in the history of both. Never was a visit more graciously made, or more cordially received. The personification of free monarchical government and the spirit of British North American liberty meet for the first time, and never was meeting more affectionate, or congratulations and prayers more hearty. The representative person of majesty, and the representative thousands of freedom, embrace each other with an ardour and earnestness that bespeak the strongest convictions and the deepest feelings."

"Why is this? No favours are sought or expected on either side. The visit is not diplomatic, nor are the greetings those of cliques. The visit is the expression of a Queen-mother's affection to her son, and a Queen-sovereign's love to her free people; and the reception is the spontaneous ovation of all ranks, classes, parties, and ages; the unanimous, concentrated heart of our whole country, offering its warmest tribute of love and loyalty to the filial representative of the most beloved of sovereigns, the truest guardian of civil and religious liberty."

"The universal and cordial welcome to The Prince of Wales, were no prostrations of superstitious ignorance and galvanized serfdom before an Eastern potentate or an European despot; they were the cordial homage of a virtuous people to parental, royal, and personal virtue - the intelligent appreciation by a free people of a principle of government and law, which is above party; which, like the sun in the firmament, is no less impartial than universal in its benefits. It is in this that a free monarchy is distinguished from a free republic on the one side, and an arbitrary despotism on the other - as the personifica of impartial authority and supreme law, and not the head of a party - as the impartial guardian of public rights and freedom, and not the absolute disposer of a people's religion, liberties, properties, and lives. The visit of The Prince of Wales to these Provinces must have been one of great pleasure, profit, and pride to His Royal Highness, as it has been one of great interest and satisfaction to all classes of their inhabitants." Continue reading this historical document and detailed record of 'The Visit Of The Prince Of Wales To British North America In 1860' which has recently been scanned and published online for the very first time.

at 10:20 AM

Whilst most people in Australia have put the republic debate behind them, there is an ongoing unhealthy state of affairs with many of our politicians and the Crown.

Even though many Labour voters support the Crown the Labour Party has taken on an ideology that states Australia must be a republic. Once the party takes on something as an ideology it is next to impossible to have them overturn it. Since The Labour party governs nearly all of Australia we have a state of affairs where the elected government is totally against the Crown. My question is – how long can this go on?

Is Australia going to continue as a nation where the government of the day is against the Crown and actively undermines it? One only has to look to New South Wales where the State Labour government threw the Governor out of Government House and has totally downplayed the role of the Crown in that state.

I call upon readers to offer ideas on to how to combat this....

at 5:10 PM

Her Excellency The Right Honourable Michaelle Jean, Governor General of Canada, is pleased to announce an upcoming Royal Visit to Canada that will take place later this year. Their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall have accepted the invitation of The Government of Canada to undertake a visit in November 2009. They will visit Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and The National Capital Region. The visit will be coordinated by The Canadian Secretary to The Queen, Mr. Kevin MacLeod, CVO, CD. A detailed itinerary will be published at a later date by The Department Of Canadian Heritage. Learn more here. Live online debate in Canada about November's Royal Visit is now available via here and here.

at 4:00 AM

Waterloo Day 2009. Victor Hugo's The The Eighteenth of June, 1815 from Les Miserables:

If it had not rained in the night between the 17th and the 18th of June, 1815, the fate of Europe would have been different. A few drops of water, more or less, decided the downfall of Napoleon. All that Providence required in order to make Waterloo the end of Austerlitz was a little more rain, and a cloud traversing the sky out of season sufficed to make a world crumble.
The battle of Waterloo could not be begun until half-past eleven o'clock, and that gave Blucher time to come up. Why? Because the ground was wet. The artillery had to wait until it became a little firmer before they could manoeuvre.
Napoleon was an artillery officer, and felt the effects of this. The foundation of this wonderful captain was the man who, in the report to the Directory on Aboukir, said: Such a one of our balls killed six men. All his plans of battle were arranged for projectiles. The key to his victory was to make the artillery converge on one point. He treated the strategy of the hostile general like a citadel, and made a breach in it. He overwhelmed the weak point with grape-shot; he joined and dissolved battles with cannon. There was something of the sharpshooter in his genius. To beat in squares, to pulverize regiments, to break lines, to crush and disperse masses,--for him everything lay in this, to strike, strike, strike incessantly,-- and he intrusted this task to the cannon-ball. A redoubtable method, and one which, united with genius, rendered this gloomy athlete of the pugilism of war invincible for the space of fifteen years.
On the 18th of June, 1815, he relied all the more on his artillery, because he had numbers on his side. Wellington had only one hundred and fifty-nine mouths of fire; Napoleon had two hundred and forty.
Suppose the soil dry, and the artillery capable of moving, the action would have begun at six o'clock in the morning. The battle would have been won and ended at two o'clock, three hours before the change of fortune in favor of the Prussians. What amount of blame attaches to Napoleon for the loss of this battle? Is the shipwreck due to the pilot?

at 6:10 AM

It's tails and toppers at Royal Ascot again. The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh at Royal Ascot, 16 June 2009. Her Majesty is Patron of Ascot racecourse, following in the footsteps of eleven previous monarchs since Queen Anne founded the racecourse in 1711.

at 12:17 AM

The Duke of Edinburgh salutes as he and The Queen make their way to Horse Guards Parade for the Trooping the Colour ceremony to mark Her Majesty's official birthday, 13 June 2009. The military ceremony dates back to the early 18th century, or even earlier, when the colours (flags) of the battalion were carried (or 'trooped') down the ranks so that they could be seen and recognised by the soldiers. Since 1748 the parade has also marked the Sovereign's official birthday. (Also see Trooping the Colour 2008)

at 4:46 PM

Be very afraid that Gordon Brown, who is desperate and whose Labour party is frantically trying to avoid obliteration at the next general election, is now flailing about with electoral reform plans, including apparently, PR, on the false pretence of democratic principle. Egad is all I can say about that. The Tories need to immediately stick a dagger through the heart of the Labour corpse before it does any more real lasting damage to that country's future. PR would be the end of the British nation as we know it.

If it is not already apparent to our beloved readers, The Monarchist is a supporter of our First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system and an avowed enemy of Proportional Representation (PR). We should be wary of any leader who has lost sight of the reasons why we have a democracy, which is not to give voice to every Tom, Dick and Harry - for that path leads to tyranny of the masses over the rights of the individual - but to provide a means to preserve our ancient liberties.

If I was to look for a country who is furthest from losing sight of this crucial objective, I would look no further than Poland. Serious thinkers there have good reason not to believe in power to the people nonsense, for they have suffered too much for too long not to get it finally right. Go over to AndrewCusack.com to read this excellent essay, for here is what Professor Jerzy Przystawa of the University of Wrocław has to say about PR:

PR creates “party states” and makes the political life of a country into a field of eternal and continuous battle among the political parties. It gives enormous privileges to parties and their leaders at the expense of citizen’s rights, it deprives the voters of any control over elected deputies, it eliminates then accountability of the MPs, and the political parties cease to be responsible for their actions. Such a system does not inspire confidence among voters, is conducive to large abstention from voting, and it does not allow any political party to win the parliamentary majority. In this way, the system enforces coalition governments, thus governments are weak, torn by continuous party battles among the members of the coalition. It exerts pressure on the state budget which weak governments cannot resist. This, in turn, deepens the budget deficit. As it has been proven on numerous examples of many countries, the system generates political corruption. The list could be continued.

So why pray, did the victorious Allies foist this failed, totally alien system onto the losing powers of the Second World War? Answer: Because we wanted to keep them politically and terminally weak:

It is worth reflecting on how the best democracies in the world, the United States, Great Britain or Canada and Australia built democracies in the countries under their domination and responsibility. What electoral systems were “suggested” to Japan, Germany, Italy or Austria? Or even France, their less than terribly responsible ally? Should one not be tempted to expect that all those established democracies would propose their own electoral systems as a model of democracy? Would it have been unreasonable to suppose that they should strongly advocate their electoral systems, of which they benefited so much?

As we know well, nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary: America and England, with the help of their Soviet ally, imposed on Japan, Germany and Italy electoral systems totally alien to their own, totally different from their ways of electing national parliamentary representation. Instead of the so well-functioning First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) majoritarian rule, they imposed on their defeated enemies the so-called Proportional Representation! We know that they did so against the will of some important politicians of those countries. For example, one of the major proponents of the European Community, Konrad Adenauer and his Christian Democrats, the CDU, intended to introduce the Westminster FPTP system in Germany, but the occupying powers had not agreed to that! There is little doubt that similar “good advice” was given to Japan and Italy. And, of course, it must not have been very difficult to persuade them: their trustful Soviet ally was certainly in favour of such a solution; the communist parties they created, especially in France and Italy, strongly supported the idea, and all the socialist illusions, prevailing all over Western Europe at that time, made the task so much simpler and easier. We are now entitled to analyse why electoral systems were so important to them.

I think there might be little doubt that the real reason for this was a sensible intention to make certain that the Japanese, German and Italian states, that were about to be rebuilt and reorganised, should be politically weak, unable to ever become a threat to the world again. And one efficient, civilised and “democratic” measure to achieve that was the so called Proportional Representation. The Soviets achieved similar effect by direct fraud, without going through any subtleties. The Western democracies embarked on a more sophisticated approach. Of the many “qualities” of PR, the most important of all was that PR weakens the state and thus prevents it from being a real competitor on the political arena.

In other words, why would we want such a system, do we now wish to be weak, poor and unfree? If our very best thought this back in 1945, if the world's strongest democracies have since maintained a fairly consistent track record of producing stable, reasonably free governments, if we have avoided the need for mainstream winners to form political coalitions with minor, fringe and lunatic parties that mass democracy, PR-style elections inevitably produce, why would we risk touching it with a ten foot pole today? Good question.

at 3:59 PM

The ancient Corps celebrated their 500th anniversary on June 4th

Her Majesty's Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms was instituted 500 years ago by King Henry VIII in 1509. Although the Yeomen of the Guard, which was founded in 1485 is older, the Gentlemen at Arms are more senior, due to their being classed as 'gentlemen' rather than 'yeomen', and because they are classed as the 'nearest guard', i.e. the personal guard to the Sovereign.

The uniform is that of a Heavy Dragoon Guards officer of the 1840s. It has a skirted red coat with Garter blue velvet cuffs and facings embroidered with the Tudor royal badge of the Portcullis. Helmets with white swan feather plumes are worn when on duty, even in church. Officers wear gold aiguillettes and carry sticks of office which they receive from the Sovereign on appointment. Cavalry swords are worn, and long ceremonial battle-axes, over 300 years old, are carried by all the Gentlemen.

The Queen sits for an official photograph with Her Majesty's Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, 4 June 2009. The Queen's ‘Nearest Guard’ commemorated the 500th anniversary of their founding with a parade and luncheon at St James's Palace. © Press Association

The Queen inspects Her Majesty's Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms at St James's Palace during a parade to celebrate their 500th anniversary, 4 June 2009. In a speech to mark the occasion, Her Majesty remarked that, 'As individuals, you have all given long and distinguished military service to the nation. As members of the ‘Nearest Guard’, your service to the Crown continues in a distinctive way'.

at 5:46 AM

You can almost forgive Gordon Brown for his Freudian slip on Omaha Beach, for subconsciously admitting that the 65th anniversary of D-day has been more about the presence of one man than the sacrifice of thousands of English-speaking veterans. No disrespect to the President, but the Queen should have been the lightning rod for this event, the only head of state to have served during the Second World War, who was a dear friend of Ike, and who therefore would have been a more generational and affectionate representative for D-day veterans.

I think I have watched Saving Private Ryan about a dozen times, love the film, but one gets the impression that too many Americans believe Operation Overlord was a mostly American show. It was not an overwhelmingly American operation, most of the troops who landed on the Normandy Beaches were from other countries.

No it was not a Franco-American initiative, nor was it an Anglo-American one, unless you believe the 15,000 Canadians who landed on Juno Beach that fateful day was a minor event. Remember that "Anglo-American" is a British invention, most Americans would probably rather not share the glory, but neither would most Britons want to share it beyond those two.

Properly told, D-day was a triumph of the English-speaking peoples. Yes, a battalion of Free French came ashore that day, as did some Polish and Norwegian units, but it was predominantly the work of three nations, many of whom died fighting for King and Country. What a travesty the Queen couldn't be there.

at 10:53 PM

Between the Glorious First of June and the 6th of June Normandy Landings, now is as good a time as any to showcase the Naval and Military Club (see post below) located at 4 St. James's Square. The Club where I now stay while in London is located right beside Norfolk House where General Dwight D. Eisenhower planned Operation's Torch and Overlord and directed the largest amphibious assault in military history.

Norfolk House, the former Headquarters of General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander during the Second World War

at 2:56 PM

St. James's Square in London is Clubland for the Gentleman. The Carleton Club, Reform Club, Travellers Club and Naval and Military Club are all within a five minute walk of each other. With so many spacious private clubs around, it is a wonder how so many Members of Parliament would rather rip off the taxpayer with expensive London mortgages rather than live in temporary affordable comfort at a traditional gentlemen's club.

Gordon Brown may mock the Tories for moat cleaning and life at the Gentlemen's Club, but the Naval and Military Club where I stayed for four days cost me a very reasonable £65 per day, so assuming Parliament sat for 100 days each year, the taxpayer would only have to reimburse each MP £6,500 for their trouble. If a handsome Georgian mansion within spitting distance of Westminster was good enough for Lady Astor, the first woman to sit in Parliament, who lived here from 1912 until 1942, why should a backbencher feel any less privileged in such surroundings.

The Naval and Military Club was established in 1862. It was founded in 1862 because the three then existing military clubs in London - the United Service, the Junior United Service and the Army & Navy - were all full. The membership was long restricted to military officers. This is no longer the case, but it still has a predominantly military and ex-military membership. The old "In and Out" (Cambridge House at 94 Piccadilly) where Lord Palmerston lived until his death in 1865. Shortly after Palmerston's death Cambridge House was purchased by the Naval & Military Club, which had outgrown its previous premises.

The new "In and Out". The Club moved to its current location at 4 St. James's Square in 1999. The nickname "In and Out" heralds from the famous lettering found on the gate posts (seen above), which existed to guide London cabbies in and out of the Club.

A Bust of King Edward greets Members and Visitors to the Club

Her Majesty the Queen graces the first room

The Duke of Edinburgh is President of the Club and has been known to pop in from time to time. He donated this portrait to the Club in 1999.

H.M.S. Victory

The Mandatory Portrait of Lord Nelson, Hero of the Nile

A Naval Club without a portrait of the Immortal Nelson wouldn't be right.

Neither would a Military Club without a portrait of Wellington.

Admiral Beatty Graces the Entrance to the Library

The Library

The Canning Room

The Canning Bar

The Long Bar and what I would call the Field Marshal Room, owing to the number of portraits of British field marshals.

Field Marshal Roberts and Haig on the back wall

Field Marshal Haig

The staircase with columns resplendent

The grand staircase

Up we go.

Down we look.

Under over: Another portrait of Field Marshal the Lord Roberts

At the top.

They serve more than coffee in this upstairs room, yet this is what they call it: The Coffee Room. Here you can wine and dine and pretend you are someone who you are not.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

The Astor Room, this was Lady Astor's bedroom. Likely misattributed quote to Lady Astor: "Mr. Churchill, you're drunk!" Winston Churchill: "Yes, and you, Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober." ...Other undefinitive anecdotal dialogue between Churchill and Lady Astor: "Winston, if I were your wife, I'd poison your tea." Churchill: "Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."

There is a long forgotten special link between Lady Astor and Canada. It was Lady Astor who volunteered to have her English country house converted into a hospital for wounded Canadian soldiers during the Great War and personally tended to their needs.

The view from Lady Astor's Room. All Gentlemen Clubs need a courtyard these days - "Gentlemen, you may smoke".

King Harald V Room (Reign: 1991 to Present). As it turns out, The Norway Club is closely affiliated with the Naval and Military Club and shares the same grand London home.