Her Majesty Commands...

The ghost of Empire:

Britain took the first step towards seizing control of a number of Caribbean islands yesterday despite international criticism of a “return to colonialism”.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that the Governor of the Turks & Caicos Islands was appointing a series of experts to help him to run the territory and to prosecute its corrupt politicians.

The Governor Gordon Wetherell was expected to seize control of the islands last month after the planned publication of a final report into allegations of corruption. A navy frigate on patrol in the Caribbean, HMS Iron Duke, would have been on stand-by to offer support as British investigators, lawyers and administrators arrived to replace the elected Parliament.

In my more sarcastic moods I would be penning a letter to Her Majesty demanding she do the same for her Canadian realm. The stark fact is that Gordon Brown would be a far worse leader than Stephen Harper. Mother England, not what she used to be. The easy way out of our current mess - repealing theStatue of Westminster - being impractical and undesirable, what are our alternatives? Perhaps junking parliament? Just let the Queen appoint whomever she likes as ministers of the crown? To hell with responsible government, responsibility being old fashioned anyway. I doubt Her Majesty would be very keen. She has better things to do with her time than play the role of ward-healer / nanny that is the typical career path of a modern politician.

One of the salient advantages of a hereditary monarch is that the position is not something you can aspire to. Certainly the current holder had no desire to be crowned, praying as a little girl that her parents would produce a brother, thus knocking her down the line of succession. This helps explains the relative normality of the Royal Family, relative that is people of fame and accidental wealth. People desperate to be famous for the sake of being famous, or powerful for the sake of being powerful (politicians) are mentally ill. Pretty much anyone crazy enough to want to be Prime Minister, or President, is crazy and power mad enough that they should be ineligible for the job. There are exceptions. One can imagine Margaret Thatcher or Nigel Lawson doing a real job. Tony Blair or Gordon Brown? This was not always so.

For all their eccentricities Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone were sane and decent men - though Dizzy did cut an awful lot of corners. It was a cliche that the British Empire was run on a shoestring. Never exactly true, even before late imperial spectacles like the Delhi Durbar, but the British liked to keep overhead to a relative minimum. Government at home was much the same. Victorian Britain was the classic night watchman state. While Glad and Dizzy might have been the most powerful men of their age, their real power over the typical British subject was a lot less than a small town mayor today. As a rule sane men don't want great power over other men. Just enough power to get a specific task accomplished. When the state assumes the role of protector, educator, secular priest and dietitian, it naturally attracts men and women who enjoy wielding that sort of power over their fellow citizens. In other words crazy people.