Under Penalty of Catapult

Monday is the 60th anniversary of Elizabeth II’s accession to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and a bunch of other countries. If nothing else, the Queen’s “Diamond Jubilee” reminds us that monarchy does in fact still exist. It’s not especially powerful anymore, but it remains useful. In particular, the patchwork British Constitution is held together merely by the existence of the Queen’s office. It is a theoretical backstop against total paralysis of the state.

The real question is how long can the monarchy survive Elizabeth herself. Charles, the Prince of Wales and 63-year-old heir apparent, will likely be the oldest monarch at the time of his accession, eclipsing King William IV, who took the throne at 64. Charles follows in the steps of his great-great grandfather, King Edward VII, who succeeded Queen Victoria after living his entire life, 59 years, as heir apparent.

It’s hard to foresee a celebratory tone at the coronation of the future King Charles III. He may well be into his 70s or 80s. Virtually all of his “subjects” will have lived during the reign of his mother. More to the point, Charles has lived his own life as a tabloid figure devoid of much substance. That’s true of all Royal family members, but it’s easier for the public to digest a new monarch who is at the beginning of his or her days than one who is at the end. Elizabeth II and Victoria took the throne 25 and 18, respectively, so they were able to define their respective cultural eras. Charles will be perceived as a stopgap until his own son assumes the throne as King William V.

Constitutionally, the monarchy isn’t relevant to the non-British countries like Canada and Australia. They maintain pro forma links to the monarchy, but if there were no more kings and queens, none of these countries would witness an interruption in their respective affairs. The only remaining link is the office of the governor-general, which in all Commonwealth countries has been a local citizen for decades. Queen Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, appointed the first Canadian to the governor-generalship of that country, and all his successors have been Canadians. The same is true of Australia and every other Commonwealth realm. (In the old days, the governor-general was often some British peer, maybe even a son of the monarch.)

There has been no serious anti-monarchist push in these outlying realms because of respect for the present Queen and her longevity. That will change when Charles becomes king. Maybe not enough to end the monarchy in these countries right away, but Elizabeth really is the last personal link the monarchy has with any of these realms. It’s difficult to imagine her passing won’t at least start the process of dissolving the monarchy outside Britain.

As for Britain itself, the country itself may break apart while the Queen is still alive. Scotland’s local government plans a push for full independence. The European Union continues to chip away at the traditional concept of national sovereignty. The United States continues to impose its anti-individual authoritarian values on its British “allies.” None of these trends bode well for the maintenance of a thousand-yer-old monarchy predicated on hereditary succession.

Some might point to last year’s wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton as a sign of Royal resuscitation. I’m skeptical for one major reason. It’s not that the Duke of Cambridge isn’t an attractive potential King. It’s his military background. Like most men of the House of Windsor, William has occupied his time in the armed forces. But the military isn’t held in the same esteem it was during World War II. The Iraq and Afghan campaigns are just as divisive in the United Kingdom as the United States. The British government participated in the American lies and deception necessary to initiate those wars. While the monarchy likes to act politically neutral, its physical and symbolic presence in support of the military will, I predict, prove fatal in the long run.

There’s also the inherent blowback of egalitarianism. The monarchy survives largely by its own inertia. The rest of society no longer accepts its basic foundation — that goes for libertarians, socialists and even many conservatives. The succession laws, which date back in their present form to the 18th century, discriminate against women. In America, you can’t have unequal numbers of male and female athletes on college sports teams. Yet the British — and by extension the Canadians, Australians, etc. — maintain that a son has an automatic right of succession to the throne over an older sister.

There has been recent movement to change that and abolish the gender-preference rule. But that exposes the other problem of monarchy. The British government can’t simply decree a change to the rules of succession. It needs the cooperation of Canada, Australia and the other realms that maintain Elizabeth as Queen. And once you open up the rules of monarchy to one major change, any of these countries might be tempted to seek other changes — or reconsider their participation in the whole project altogether.

What if, for example, King Charles III doesn’t go over so well with the Canadian or Australian public? Charles can’t just resign and let William take over. When his great-uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated, it took a political act of all the Commonwealth parliaments to grant him leave to do so. And that was a case where everyone wanted the guy gone. If some countries resist worshiping at the feet of Charles, they are likely to simply abolish the monarchy in their country. And once one country goes, especially one like Australia, the others may take advantage of the opportunity to follow.

One can never predict the future, but probability strongly suggests the monarchy won’t exist in 100 years or even 50. It may be down to its last decade or two. Britain will face the most difficult transition. Ending the monarchy may end up being the final step towards full integration of Europe into a superstate (either voluntarily or by force). So I’m not suggesting that abolition will necessary be a good thing for the cause of individual rights. But all institutions eventually adapt or perish.

The British government decided to punish Fred Goodwin, former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, for his mismanagement which led to the bank’s collapse-and-bailout four years ago. And they’re punishing him in the most British way possible — by revoking his knighthood.

Goodwin was awarded the honor of Knight Bachelor in November 2004 for “services to banking.” The Knight Bachelor (KB) is the ESPN of knighthood. It’s on basic cable and anyone who is even a little famous can get a title. Your fancier knighthoods include Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and the HBO of knighthoods, the Knight of the Garter.

Anyhow, Goodwin was a good little banker who aggressively expanded RBS until it became — wait for it — “too big to fail.” And then it failed, leading then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government to bail it out at taxpayer expense.

Goodwin has not faced any criminal charges in connection with his management of RBS. Yet the public outrage over the collapse prompted an obscure group called the Honours Forfeiture Committee to review Goodwin’s knighthood. This is a committee of six bureaucrats, the senior civil servants in the British government. The Committee is not limited to reviewing cases where an honoree is convicted of a crime, but may also act when a knight “has been censured, struck off etc by the relevant professional or other regulatory authority for action or inaction which was directly relevant to the granting of the honours.”

The Committee advised Prime Minister David Cameron to revoke Goodwin’s knighthood. Cameron passed that advice on to Queen Elizabeth II, whose office in turn issued formal papers “canceling and annulling the Knighthood” as of February 1. Since honors are ultimately discretionary gifts from the Queen, Goodwin could not argue or appeal this decision. The Cabinet Office, which runs the Civil Service, issued the following statement:

The scale and severity of the impact of [Goodwin's] actions as CEO of RBS made this an exceptional case.

In 2008 the Government had to provide £20bn of new equity to recapitalise RBS and ensure its survival and prevent the collapse of confidence in the British banking and payments system. Subsequent increases in Government capital have brought the total necessary injection of taxpayers’ money in RBS to £45.5bn.

Both the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury Select Committee have investigated the reasons for this failure and its consequences. They are clear that the failure of RBS  played an important role in the financial crisis of 2008-9 which, together with other macroeconomic factors, triggered the worst recession in the UK since the Second World War and imposed significant direct costs on British taxpayers and businesses. Fred Goodwin was the dominant decision maker at RBS at the time.

In reaching this decision, it was recognised that widespread concern about Fred Goodwin’s decisions meant that the retention of a Knighthood for “services to banking” could not be sustained.

What I love about this punishment is that it’s naked scapegoating. Everyone basically acknowledges this. Prime Minister Cameron and his fellow party leaders all issued statements supporting the Committee’s decision. Nobody is pretending that this addresses any substantial question, such as Goodwin’s legal liability or the systemic failures of the government’s monetary policies. This is little more than publicly pointing at Goodwin and laughing at him — and telling him he can’t put “Sir” before his name anymore. This is government at its absolute silliest.

It’s even funnier to think a group of senior civil servants had nothing better to do than worry about this guy’s fake title. I’m sure if you examine everyone who has received an honor from the Queen with a fine enough comb, you’ll find something that could justify “canceling and annulling” their knighthood. But, of course, this was all about immediate politics. Bankers are a politically unpopular group in Britain — not without cause — and elected officials of all stripes need to quell the public’s fury lest they get the bulk of the blame.

I previously addressed the Canadian government’s comical obsession with reforming the upper house of that nation’s parliament. But the Mother Parliament is no less obsessed. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition that assumed power in the United Kingdom two years ago has been itching to do some major constitutional reform of its own.

The British House of Lords has always been a sore subject. It is, after all, a vestige of pre-democratic class theory. The Lords was historically a small group of peers who inherited their titles. They exercised equal power with the House of Commons until 1911. That’s when the shit hit the fan. The Conservative majority in the Lords thwarted the Liberal government’s efforts to introduce new taxes. The Prime Minister tried to create a bunch of new peerages to give himself a majority in the Lords, but King George V refused. The government called for new elections, prevailed, and the King acquiesced. To prevent a repeat of this stalemate, the government forced through the first Lords reform bill, which basically took away the Lords’ power to veto legislation passed by the Commons. The Lords could still delay legislation for a limited time.

Ironically, one of the few times the Commons used the 1911 reform bill to disregard the upper house was to pass a second Lords reform bill, in 1949. This time, the Labour government wanted to do some large-scale central economic planning without interference from the peers. So the 1949 law further reduced the time the Lords could delay the Commons’ mob rule.

Neither of these reforms altered the basic nature of the Lords as a non-elected body, although what was once a small group of hereditary peers was, by the late 20th century, a nearly 1,000-member chamber dominated by peers appointed for life (I don’t think a hereditary peerage has been created since the 1960s). When Tony Blair’s Labour government took power in 1997, they successfully moved to expel most of the hereditary peers, leaving just 90 with about 700 more life appointees.

Now David Cameron’s coalition wants to finish the job and convert the Lords into a mostly elected body. Last year the government circulated a draft bill that would create a chamber of about 300 members, 240 of them elected for non-renewable 15-year terms. Their terms would be staggered every five years to match scheduled House of Commons elections. The remaining members would be appointed by the government. (The reformed Lords would continue to include some bishops of the Church of England. Don’t ask.)

The government further proposes Lords elections depart from the traditional first-past-the-post system used for the Commons and instead use a single-transferrable vote. This means voters can rank candidates and if their top choice doesn’t win, the vote is then “transferred” to the next-ranked candidate until a candidate is elected. The Liberal Democrat part of the coalition tried to implement a similar system for Commons elections via a failed referendum last year. (I’d note many U.S. libertarians favor such a system for this country.)

Actually, Lords reform really is nothing more than a Liberal Democrat pet project to keep them occupied while the Conservatives run the government. There doesn’t seem to be any genuine enthusiasm among the Conservatives for this proposal. There’s already been numerous objections to the proposed size of the House — 300 is thought to be too small — and fears that an elected Lords would lead to deadlock with Commons. This mirrors the fears raised by opponents of Canadian Senate reform.

Canada provides an interesting compare-and-contrast. While the Canadian Senate is exclusively appointed, its membership is also strictly apportioned by region and province. The House of Lords has no ties to British geography. The proposed reform bill would create electoral districts that are larger than existing Commons constituencies. But the number itself, 240 as proposed, is completely arbitrary. It could just as easily be 400 or 800.

In Canada, the Conservative government is pushing Senate reform in part to strengthen its natural political base in the western provinces. With Britain, the third-place Liberal Democrats are betting that a chamber elected by single-transferrable vote will strengthen its meager standing in Parliament. In both countries, reform critics fear the unknown long-term consequences of holding a second set of legislative elections.

There’s also the common question of why have a second chamber at all. In Canada, the leftist opposition party and several provincial leaders publicly support abolishing the Senate. None of the British elite seem to favor that. There’s widespread agreement than some upper house is necessary. The government itself notes an elected Lords “would continue to scrutinise legislation, hold the Government to account and conduct investigations.” (Similarly, Canadian Senate defenders note it is a “chamber of sober second thought.”)

In both cases, the push for an elected upper house is an admission that the presently elected lower houses aren’t quite doing a thorough job of scrutinizing the government. Obviously, that’s bound to happen when the government controls a majority (or near-majority) of the lower chamber’s seats. The merging of executive and legislative power in the Commons means there’s little incentive for the chamber to scrutinize itself. At the same time, neither the British nor Canadian governments want to give up the “supremacy” of the Commons; they want elected upper chambers, but they don’t want to alter the constitutional alignment of power between the houses.

In my previous post, I sided with the Senate abolitionists in Canada. What concerned me the most was an elected Senate would be a competing body for power rather than a check on it. In particular, I thought an elected Senate might lead to a greater centralization of power by displacing the elected provincial legislatures. That’s not really an issue with Britain. The UK is already a highly centralized state in spite recent devolutions to regional parliaments in Scotland and Wales. The elected Lords would not correspond to or compete with any existing local governments.

Like the Canadian government’s proposed reforms, I also find the British government’s ideas a tad unwieldy. In Canada, there’s a written Constitution with specific amendment procedures. The government is trying to avoid directly amending the Constitution by using elections to “nominate” Senate candidates the government would continue to formally appoint. The British constitution is basically whatever Parliament says it is on any given day. Still, both proposals require the implementation of a complex new election scheme. More elections doesn’t equal better government or a greater protection for individual rights.

If I were the British Liberal Democrats, given my position as a progressive third-party agitator, I would actually go in a completely different direction. Instead of reducing the Lords to 300 elected members, why not just use the current system and appoint every single voter to the Lords? I’m dead serious. Unlike Canadian senators, there’s no statutory limit on how many peerages the Queen may create. So just make everyone a damn baron.

In effect, I’m proposing turning the Lords into a permanent national referendum on the work of the Commons, which is to say the government. Obviously you can’t fit several million people into the Lords chamber, which doesn’t even accomodate the current membership. And you’re not going stage elections, like you would for the Commons, on every single piece of legislation. But you could devise an online system that allows for debate and instant voting on contested measures. Sure, it would take time and money to develop such a system. So would creating and maintaining the elected House of Lords. Why waste those resources just to have 300 more politicians on the public payroll?

Following last November’s elections, Virginia’s Senate found itself equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, 20-20. Just as the vice president officially presides over the U.S. Senate, the lieutenant governor of Virginia presides over the state Senate and is constitutionally authorized to serve as a tie-breaking vote. This is particularly important when it comes to organizing the Senate and determining the makeup of committees where most of the real legislative work is accomplished. There’s no hard-and-fast rule on how to handle such situations. In the federal Senate, the vice president’s vote has been considered dispositive in determining partisan control. During the 107th Congress, which spanned the end of the Clinton administration and the start of the Bush administration, the Senate was divided 50-50. Vice President Al Gore gave the Democrats the majority until Vice President Dick Cheney assumed office and gave Republicans organizational control.

In 1995, when Virginia’s Senate was also divided 20-20, Democrats attempted to claim unilateral control through then-Lt. Gov. Don Beyer’s tie-breaking vote. Beyer declared there was no constitutional limit on his tie-breaking powers and that he would vote to give his fellow Democrats a majority. He was sadly thwarted by a single conservative Democratic senator who said he would oppose such an effort. This led to a “power sharing” deal where committee chairmanships and assignments were split equally.

Yesterday, when the new 20-20 Senate convened, Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling opted not to follow the 1995 example, voting to give Republicans organizational control. Earlier this month, Bolling preemptively issued a memorandum outlining his views of the tie-breaking power. He noted the Virginia Constitution empowers the lieutenant governor to act as president of the Senate and cast any tie-breaking votes “unless another provision of the Constitution of Virginia has expressly imposed a limit on the Lieutenant Governor’s authority to cast a vote.” He cited several specific cases where the Constitution limits voting to “elected members” of the Senate, such as financial bills and election of judges, and on those matters, Bolling said he would not cast a tie-breaking vote on final passage. As for organizing the Senate, Bolling said no constitutional provision limited him, so he was “fully empowered” to cast the deciding vote.

Bolling struck what he hopes is perceived as a moderate position, giving fellow Republicans control while announcing limits on his future tie-breaking power. No doubt this is political self-preservation. Bolling plans to run for governor in 2013, so he doesn’t want to alienate fellow Republicans — who now control the governor’s office and both houses of the General Assembly — or independent voters, who might look at yesterday’s events as an excessively partisan affair.

I can’t really fault Bolling here. His memorandum makes a strong case. And the problem, if there is one, lies with giving the lieutenant governor the job of presiding over the Senate in the first place. The form and function of the legislative presiding officer has evolved erratically over the centuries. In Britain, the speaker of the House of Commons is completely impartial. Although chosen by the members, upon election the speaker is expected to sever all partisan ties and typically runs for re-election as an unopposed independent. The Canadian House speaker is also considered impartial, although he does not generally sever party ties.

Historically, upper chamber speakers were creatures of the executive. The Canadian Senate speaker is still appointed by the government. The Lord Chancellor, a British cabinet officer, presided over the House of Lords until recent reforms empowered the members to elect their own speaker. And in the United States, of course, the vice president has always been the Senate’s president, a role he actually fulfilled day-to-day until the latter half of the 20th century.

Once again, I’d note the cautionary warnings of my favorite framer, George Mason. At the constitutional convention — presided over by a very impartial George Washington, mind you — Mason objected to the whole idea of having an executive officer, the vice president, presiding over half of the legislature. The vice presidency itself was a last-minute addition to the final draft of the Constitution. It helped resolve a couple of issues. First, it fit in with the idea of having an Electoral College where each member voted for two candidates. Second, since the Senate would have two members from every state, appointing the vice president as presiding officer prevented a situation where one state would sacrifice half its Senate delegation to the impartiality of the chair.

The House speakership acquired a more partisan character early in the 19th century. This was due to the separation-of-powers itself. In the British and Canadian parliaments, the speaker serves as a buffer between the executive, which is largely composed of members of the legislature itself, and opposition members. But in the U.S., the House, Senate, and White House all constitute distinct centers of power. The House speaker, therefore, assumed a role closer to that of a prime minister or leader of the opposition than an impartial presiding officer. The vice president’s role as president of the Senate has largely withered away except when there’s a tie vote.

Lt. Gov. Bolling surprisingly took a more British-Canadian approach with his tie-breaking memorandum. While there are no statutory qualifications on a British speaker’s tie-breaking power, there are well-understood conventions regarding the practice. Generally, a speaker will vote to preserve the rights of the House. For example, he will break a tie in favor of continuing a debate. He will vote to support the government on a confidence motion — something that doesn’t exist in the U.S. system — but against final passage of a bill, as that conflicts with the principle that only a majority should pass laws.

Of course, let’s see if Bolling sticks to his memorandum if a major initiative supported by his fellow Republican, Gov. Bob McDonnell, comes down to a 20-20 vote. The memorandum itself is not legally binding. Bolling is still a member of the executive branch — McDonnell named Bolling to the ludicrous portfolio of “chief jobs creation officer” — and his preemptive attempt at statesmanship could still fall prey to his political ambitions. Bolling is facing a tough primary against the state’s attorney general, which only gives the lieutenant governor more incentive to use his current post to the maximum benefit of his party.

Normally the engagement of an Air Force pilot and the daughter of a successful businessman would not attract international attention. Such is not the case for Flight Lieutenant William Wales, RAF — aka Prince William of Wales — and Catherine Middleton. As the second-in-line to the throne of the United Kingdom currently held by his grandmother, Elizabeth II, Lt. Wales’s upcoming wedding is a major political event. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has declared the wedding day, next April 29, a government holiday, and no doubt the event will have diplomatic and political repercussions within the “international community” on par with the recent Wikileaks brouhaha.

Indeed, there may already be reprecussions within Cameron’s bi-party coalition government. The London Telegraph reported on November 23 that members of the Liberal Democrat Party — the coalition partner with Cameron’s Conservatives — are concerned that wedding coverage will drown out campaigning for a May 5 referendum on whether to change the country’s voting system. This is a core Lib-Dem issue and the coalition with the Conservatives was predicated on getting a public vote.

Overall, though, the wedding presents an excellent opportunity for the British state to reassert itself in the face of worldwide economic and political crisis. As Ireland’s government goes bankrupt, likely dragging down much of the European Union with it, Prince William and Princess Kate will provide smiling faces to remind people that yes, the state indeed is eternal and can always renew itself with an infusion of fresh blood. That is what the British Monarchy has been reduced to, of course, a symbol of the state.

Personal monarchy died centuries ago. The 1689 revolution established Parliament’s right to choose a King or Queen of its own liking. In 1701 the Act of Settlement blindly excluded all Catholic heirs of the late James II and appointed the crown to the first available protestant heir of a German princess, whose thousands of now-living descendants include Elizabeth II and William. George III went mad, lost America to a bunch of drunken farmers, and left England in the hands of his idiot sons. Victoria, George’s granddaughter, dismissed one of her prime ministers after she failed to appoint members of his party to her household staff; she ended up spending most of the 19th century in seclusion and grief over her dead husband. Edward VII, Victoria’s son, waited 60 years for his mother to die, then “ruled” for less than a decade before his lifetime of debauchery caught up with him. At least he left a respectable heir in his son, George V.

Which brings me to the King that interests me the most, Edward VIII, eldest son of George V. History records Edward Windsor as a strange footnote in the thousand-year history of the British Monarchy. He ruled less than a year, from his father’s death in January 1936 until his abdication that December. It was the shortest reign since probably Jane Grey, the poor girl who “ruled” England for two weeks in 1553 until she was overthrown, captured, tried, and executed by the government of Mary Tudor.

Unlike Lady Jane, a placeholder for Protestant interests desperate to keep the Catholics from regaining the crown, Edward VIII did not inspire religious warfare. His offense was far more trivial. He wanted to marry a twice-divorced American woman whom the British political establishment could not accept as their “queen.” Given the choice between remaining on the throne and marrying the woman he desired, the King chose the latter.

History wasn’t kind to Edward Windsor’s choice. Public sympathy largely focused on Edward’s bother, Prince Albert, the Duke of York, who became King George VI upon his brother’s abdication. Indeed, a film was just released about George VI and his struggles with public speaking (he had a terrible stutter) in the aftermath of his brother abandoning England and leaving him the crown. Edward was literally sent into exile, spending most of his life in the Bahamas and France until dying in 1972.

The common view of Edward Windsor, at least in the UK, was that he abandoned his country and “duty” for a woman who was beneath him. Prince Albert was the better man because he always put duty first, even though his personality and temperament probably weren’t suited for the public role of a monarch. (Indeed, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Albert’s wife, largely blamed Edward’s abdication for her husband’s death in 1952 at the age of 57.)

Contemporary views of Edward were more favorable in the United States, where the press portrayed the King as a hopeless romantic. During the height of the “abdication crisis,” the British government and press conspired to conceal knowledge of the King’s future wife from the public. One Member of Parliament publicly chastised a government minister in the House of Commons for ordering pages discussing the King’s relationship to be ripped out of imported American magazines. The British press largely maintained silence until the crisis was at full boil.

And it was a genuine political crisis. Basically, Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told Edward that he only had two options: Repudiate his lover or repudiate the throne. Edward offered what most outsiders, especially from today’s standpoint, would have considered a reasonable compromise: Allow the King to marry whom he wished, with the the understanding that his new wife need not be given the title of queen. Baldwin and his ministers wouldn’t hear of it, and they threatened to resign en masse unless Edward acquiesced to their demands.

Realistically, Edward had no alternative. Even if he forced Baldwin’s resignation, no other party leader in the House could have formed a stable government (or supported the marriage). There would have been a forced general election — a referendum on Edward’s personal life.

The whole thing looks very peculiar seventy-plus years later. Why not just accept the compromise? After all, Queen Elizabeth’s husband does not hold the title of “king,” and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone (except maybe him). It’s a silly double standard. The spouse of a Queen Regnant is not called King, but the wife of a King must always be called Queen. All this bother over a title.

On the other hand, Parliament decides who is King. That was settled once-and-for-all in 1689. And the King can’t be allowed to act against Parliament’s wishes. So Edward Windsor had to go.

But what gets me is, this guy was raised from birth to become King. He was technically born third in the line of succession after his father, then the Duke of York, and his grandfather, the Prince of Wales; but there was always a really strong probability he’d eventually be King. So after spending 42 years doing his “duty” and living his life as he’s told to by his family and the government, the one time he tries to make a decision on his own, he becomes a pariah who is no longer welcome in his own country. Honestly, I think that sucks balls.

Don’t get me wrong. The guy lived a nice life in exile. But this isn’t about wealth or social status. I just look at the individual. There is something grotesque about the state – which is not the Monarchy – effectively conscripting a person at birth to serve as some fictitious ”head of state” where he is expected to be the very personification of a state he has no real control or influence over. Come to think of it, a monarch is just like a voter in that regard.

It’s funny to think of the weight of British society coming down on Edward Windsor at a time when Hitler’s rise in Germany would shortly lead to worldwide devastation. It wasn’t Edward VIII, or any member of his family for that matter, who caused two world wars and global depression during the first half of the 20th century. But God forbid the guy tried to marry an American woman on the rebound.

In a strange sense, Edward Windsor is a libertarian hero. When confronted by the bullies of a corrupt and violent political establishment, he actually had the integrity to flip his prime minister the bird and say, with a stiff upper lip, “Fuck you, Stanley, I’m marrying this bitch, so you can take your crown and cram it up my brother’s sphincter.”

Considering that in today’s society, petty thugs at all levels of government work to dictate all of our personal decisions — from what we eat to how we may travel — there is something admirable about a guy giving up his birthright to one of the oldest (if powerless) offices in the world simply because he wasn’t going to take orders about how to live his life from some weak-kneed bureaucrat who happened to win a popularity contest. No doubt if Mr. Windsor was with us today, the American commentariat would deride him as a “child” who didn’t understand that the state always knows what’s best for us.

December 11 marks the 74th anniversary of Edward Windsor renouncing the throne. I say “Abdication Day” should be a libertarian day of celebration — an opportunity to express small ways we can defy the state’s ever-expanding intrusion into our personal lives. Let us all “abdicate” our positions as servants of the state, even if it’s just a ceremonial gesture for now.

The United Kingdom’s new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government released its 36-page program today, which included the following section on “consumer protection”:

The Government believes that action is needed to protect consumers, particularly the most vulnerable, and to promote greater competition across the economy. We need to promote more responsible corporate and consumer behaviour through greater transparency and by harnessing the insights from behavioural economics and social psychology.

We will give regulators new powers to define and ban excessive interest rates on credit and store cards; and we will introduce a seven-day cooling-off period for store cards.

We will oblige credit card companies to provide better information to their customers in a uniform electronic format that will allow consumers to find out whether they are receiving the best deal.

We will introduce stronger consumer protections, including measures to end unfair bank and financial transaction charges.

We will take forward measures to enhance customer service in the private and public sectors.

You’d think the new government would clean up the last government’s abuses of “consumer protection” regulation before demanding a slew of new powers. But I suppose that’s why I wasn’t invited into the coalition.

Funny how antitrust laws never seem to stop this type of unfair competition:

inema chains including Cineworld, Odeon and Vue have all been able to upgrade to digital free of charge thanks to the British government. Whereas other exhibitors have had to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds installing 3D digital projectors and screens, only to see the big chains receive a massive leg-up on 3D courtesy of the public purse. It costs between £70,000 and £100,000 to convert each screen to digital. No wonder rivals to the Big Three think this is unfair competition.

The UK Film Council has invested £12 million ($18 million) in equipping 240 screens in 213 cinemas across the UK, or what’s called its Digital Screen Network. The DSN covers approximately 8% of screens in 1/3 of UK cinemas. Of those, half are controlled by Cineworld, Odeon, and Vue. Cineworld was apparently the first chain to begin upgrading its 73 DSN screens. Then Odeon and Vue followed. Cineworld has just posted a £40 million profit for 2009, boasting how it’s led the way in 3D.

(Reported by Tim Adler via Deadline Hollywood.)