Figurehead

I approach the question of the Monarchy from the following position; [1] if the Queen has no power, then, when we adopt a republican political system there is no pressing constitutional need to replace her.  Or; [2] if the Queen has power, then our primary democratic duty is to republicanise Britain.

I am angled to incline towards [1] being the case.  And for me, under the conditions of [1], I still feel the need to remove the powerless Queen. 

For what she represents; her role as a social actant rather than as an empowered actor.

She, and the Monarchy that she embodies, represents a Britain of deference, of domination, of class, of imperialism.  And on, and on.  And these values are given a figurehead, a ‘God bless her’ organisational focus by the Queen’s presence as head of state.

But someone will become head of state.  Do we promote the Prime Minister?  If [1] is in fact the case then this would little alter our political system.  But it would give us another figurehead, and without a Queen to cleave to we would instead attach our loyalties to another living representation of Britain.  But this would be worse. 

Like the USA, we would find that our society would develop its very own case of Presidential Syndrome.  Couple the position of figurehead with the role of leader of the executive and the legislature and we would walk a dangerous path.  ‘I support our Prime Minister in whatever he does, because he is our Prime Minister and we must respect the office of Prime Minister’, to paraphrase Ms. Britney Spears. 

So do we elect an apolitical figurehead of the state?  The role of the figure as an actant even when the power as an actor is removed means that there can be no such thing.  If 51% of Britons, or, more accurately, 51% of whatever small percentage of the polity actually vote, or, even less if the race is more than a two-way… if the plurality of the voting population vote for, say, Richard Branson then his brand of self-aggrandising egotism becomes the representative character of Britain.  This would exclude those who feel differently, possibly a majority of the voting population, probably a majority of the polity.  And more, it would project this character outwards.   

This would be terribly inaccurate.  G.W. Bush may be a moron, but it is not true to say that American’s are morons, or that America is a moron nation.  However entertaining it may be to say so.  But, that said, G.W. Bush, as the head of state of the United States, has done one thing tremendously well; project the image of America as a moron nation to the rest of the world.  That is now a patently clear-cut case, carved by diamond drills onto Mount Rushmore.  The figurehead of the nation, shapes that image of the nation as an exaggerated copy of he, she or it 

It.  It is the word, as it is my answer to the problem of head of state.  If the head of state needs no real political power, as in scenario [1], then the head of state need not be human.  Or even alive.  A statue would suffice.  But not of a once-living person, an object that would carry its own set of exclusionary, unwanted and debilitating images.  Rather, what I propose is that we erect a stature, representative of a human being but not recognisably of any gender, of any race, of any period in time.  We could all own a functionally identical copy of our head of state, to sit on the mantlepeice, hold a door open or to serve as a patriotic magazine rack.  The Queen cannot do that, can she? 

The statue would be an empty space, a cipher for whatever values and characteristics we choose to ascribe to it.  Even if the we in question is a minority of one.  After all, if instead of telling people what it means to be British we allowed people to develop their own definitions of what it means to be British, would not that be, well, very British indeed?