As far as I can tell, Then Prince Charles expressed “personal” political opinions, and even this is getting close to the line of what is accepted. Pretty much proving exactly what I wrote earlier.
There is AFAIK no evidence that any of these opinions had any actual influence.
These opinions were allegedly expressed as personal, and not in the function of being royalty. Even if they were, he had absolutely zero power of governance at the time.
Was this wrong? Maybe probably yes, because the King/Queen is supposed to be apolitical.
Was this in any way a threat to UK democracy? Hell no.
It’s not a Monarchy problem, it’s a British Society problem.
Yes this I agree on, British society has a problem, which this may be part of, and that is the British exceptionalism. Categorizing the king to be the highest, the lords to be second, the people third, and all foreigners fourth.
This is a sick attitude, that may stem from when UK was a world leading Empire?
But the parts about the king functioning as part of the democracy, that you see as problems are not.
Your perception of the problem is skewed. And without the King or Queen to fulfill certain elements of democracy, you would need another way to handle those functions, and the evidence shows us that they are not better in practice, even if they should be in theory.
Sure mate, it’s the Schrodinger Prince Charles Influence where he both had no Influence and only wrote quite a lot of secret letters to Government as somebody with no more political influence than any other Briton and AT THE SAME TIME the British Press was constantly celebrating how policy kept getting changed in ways that favored what he cared about.
Pull another one.
If you can regularly get the government to listen to you USING TOTALLY SECRET LETTERS (so it cannot possibly be via one’s influence in public opinion) and do things that benefit your interests or things you care about, then you de facto HAVE direct influence on policy.
Said influence not being formal makes it even worse - it means it’s not transparent and not subject to public transparency rules, which is why the discovery of the “spider memos” was a scandal.
Now, maybe the King of The Netherlands was also doing that kind of backstage shaping of public policy, but I certainly never saw the effects of it reported in the press and nothing ever emerged of him doing it, and I can tell you from experience that at least when I lived there the Press in The Netherland was way less propagandistic and manipulative than the British Press, so I suspect Willem-Alexander never exercised back then as Prince nor exercises now as King that kind of backstage policy shaping, being limited to using his prestige to shame the government in the eyes of the Public (and then the voter chose or not to punish the governing party for it), same as any other prestigious public person (and, IMHO, he’s infinitelly more deserving on any prestige he has - from earning it by his behaviour - than what any of the British Royals has obtained with their army of PR drones and fawning “opinion makers” and royal-titled editors, owners and board members in the British Press).
Either way you go about it, if an unelected Monarch can shape policy without going via the public opinion (i.e. doing it via backstage access to political leaders rather than convincing the public opinion that something is wrong and then voters chose by themselves whether or not to change their vote because of it), that’s anti-Democratic, and all that being via informal channels makes it even worse so, since that’s not open or transparent,
As far as I can tell, Then Prince Charles expressed “personal” political opinions, and even this is getting close to the line of what is accepted. Pretty much proving exactly what I wrote earlier. There is AFAIK no evidence that any of these opinions had any actual influence.
These opinions were allegedly expressed as personal, and not in the function of being royalty. Even if they were, he had absolutely zero power of governance at the time.
Was this wrong? Maybe probably yes, because the King/Queen is supposed to be apolitical.
Was this in any way a threat to UK democracy? Hell no.
Yes this I agree on, British society has a problem, which this may be part of, and that is the British exceptionalism. Categorizing the king to be the highest, the lords to be second, the people third, and all foreigners fourth.
This is a sick attitude, that may stem from when UK was a world leading Empire?
But the parts about the king functioning as part of the democracy, that you see as problems are not.
Your perception of the problem is skewed. And without the King or Queen to fulfill certain elements of democracy, you would need another way to handle those functions, and the evidence shows us that they are not better in practice, even if they should be in theory.
Sure mate, it’s the Schrodinger Prince Charles Influence where he both had no Influence and only wrote quite a lot of secret letters to Government as somebody with no more political influence than any other Briton and AT THE SAME TIME the British Press was constantly celebrating how policy kept getting changed in ways that favored what he cared about.
Pull another one.
If you can regularly get the government to listen to you USING TOTALLY SECRET LETTERS (so it cannot possibly be via one’s influence in public opinion) and do things that benefit your interests or things you care about, then you de facto HAVE direct influence on policy.
Said influence not being formal makes it even worse - it means it’s not transparent and not subject to public transparency rules, which is why the discovery of the “spider memos” was a scandal.
Now, maybe the King of The Netherlands was also doing that kind of backstage shaping of public policy, but I certainly never saw the effects of it reported in the press and nothing ever emerged of him doing it, and I can tell you from experience that at least when I lived there the Press in The Netherland was way less propagandistic and manipulative than the British Press, so I suspect Willem-Alexander never exercised back then as Prince nor exercises now as King that kind of backstage policy shaping, being limited to using his prestige to shame the government in the eyes of the Public (and then the voter chose or not to punish the governing party for it), same as any other prestigious public person (and, IMHO, he’s infinitelly more deserving on any prestige he has - from earning it by his behaviour - than what any of the British Royals has obtained with their army of PR drones and fawning “opinion makers” and royal-titled editors, owners and board members in the British Press).
Either way you go about it, if an unelected Monarch can shape policy without going via the public opinion (i.e. doing it via backstage access to political leaders rather than convincing the public opinion that something is wrong and then voters chose by themselves whether or not to change their vote because of it), that’s anti-Democratic, and all that being via informal channels makes it even worse so, since that’s not open or transparent,