David Boyle's Blog, page 102
January 12, 2011
Set a maximum percentage of property loans by the banks
It isn't ever quite clear, just from the newspapers, just where the delicate negotiations between the government and the banks have reached on bonuses. It looks as though there is some kind of deal emerging that would nod through outrageous bonuses in return for an agreement to lend more and better to small businesses.
Nick Clegg hinted at a distinction between the private banks, which will qualify for this deal, and the failed banks in public ownership – where bonuses will be quashed, though even that seems to be in doubt at the moment.
I agree that RBS and Lloyds are cases where the outrage is particularly intense, and rightly so, but I think we urgently need to ask the following questions – and to do so before we embrace any deal between the banks and a Lib Dem administration:
1. Will the coalition veto the £2.5m bonus which is pencilled in for Stephen Hester, boss of loss-making RBS?
2. Should we really accept an agreement with the big banks to improve their ability to lend locally, when all the evidence is that they no longer have the local infrastructure capable of doing so? Should we really agree when any blip in local lending would be just that, a blip brought on by intense and temporary political pressure?
3. In what other profession, certainly any other state-run service, will it be acceptable for people to earn inflationary six or seven figure bonuses just for doing the job they are supposed to be doing – lending to local enterprise?
The coalition agreement promises to sort out bank bonuses. Any failure to do so, just when other public employees doing more useful and important work are getting the push, will be a huge and damaging problem for us.
And it should be. Why should we tolerate, as a society, this spectacular failure by the banks to play a useful role in the enterprise economy – when 70 per cent of what passes for local lending, and has done for the past four years, is actually lending on property, fuelling the next asset bubble.
What I suggest is that any agreement with the banks on lending – if such an agreement is to mean anything – must also specify a minimum percentage of those loans which are not on property deals. To lend more on property, they will then have to lend more to conventional small business.
Nick Clegg hinted at a distinction between the private banks, which will qualify for this deal, and the failed banks in public ownership – where bonuses will be quashed, though even that seems to be in doubt at the moment.
I agree that RBS and Lloyds are cases where the outrage is particularly intense, and rightly so, but I think we urgently need to ask the following questions – and to do so before we embrace any deal between the banks and a Lib Dem administration:
1. Will the coalition veto the £2.5m bonus which is pencilled in for Stephen Hester, boss of loss-making RBS?
2. Should we really accept an agreement with the big banks to improve their ability to lend locally, when all the evidence is that they no longer have the local infrastructure capable of doing so? Should we really agree when any blip in local lending would be just that, a blip brought on by intense and temporary political pressure?
3. In what other profession, certainly any other state-run service, will it be acceptable for people to earn inflationary six or seven figure bonuses just for doing the job they are supposed to be doing – lending to local enterprise?
The coalition agreement promises to sort out bank bonuses. Any failure to do so, just when other public employees doing more useful and important work are getting the push, will be a huge and damaging problem for us.
And it should be. Why should we tolerate, as a society, this spectacular failure by the banks to play a useful role in the enterprise economy – when 70 per cent of what passes for local lending, and has done for the past four years, is actually lending on property, fuelling the next asset bubble.
What I suggest is that any agreement with the banks on lending – if such an agreement is to mean anything – must also specify a minimum percentage of those loans which are not on property deals. To lend more on property, they will then have to lend more to conventional small business.
January 7, 2011
Civilised values and the Yeates invesitigation
I was hauled over by the police about 18 months ago under anti-terrorism legislation, largely because I was looking a little unusual. I was wearing shorts with a briefcase, one of the privileges for those of us who are self-employed on a hot day.
It only took 20 minutes or so and they were perfectly nice about it, but it reminded me of the vulnerability of people who can be portrayed as being very slightly peculiar, or even mildly different – especially when things get serious, as they did in the Joanna Yeates investigation in Bristol over the New Year.
I thought back to that incident when the landlord, Christopher Jefferies, was arrested. As the days went by and the police time limit was continuously extended – while he was vilified day by day by the tabloid press – I began to obsess about it, constantly tuning in to hear whether he had been released, as he was inevitably going to be.
You may not know somebody well by sitting in their classroom for two years, but you learn some things about them. It seemed extraordinarily unlikely that he could have been involved in anything like that.
We haven't even spoken for nearly three decades, but the truth is that I owe a huge debt to him, and not just him but to the whole English department at Clifton College, which in the 1970s became a kind of Rolls-Royce operation of huge ambition, civilisation and generosity, and from which I learned a very great deal.
As the days wore on, and he remained in custody, and the column inches grew, I came believe that those civilised values were under attack, maybe not so much by the police – I don't know what was going on in their investigation – but by the rest of society, and by my own profession,
Yet only a handful of what must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of pupils spoke to the press. The rest must have been aware, as I was, that almost anything we said in his defence could fuel the flames. I am hugely relieved that he was released, if only because the investigation could then continue in a more fruitful direction.
But just for a moment, I felt I glimpsed a miserably intolerant and illiberal aspect of the nation – which I had naively ignored before. It makes me realise a little more clearly that, because I see the world differently from the prevailing culture, those parts of it constructed by a monopolistic media, then perhaps I am also at risk. More than just being questioned occasionally because I'm dressed unconventionally.
I was prompted to write this by the report in the Daily Mirror today that Mr Jefferies has been told by police that it isn't safe for him to be seen in public. Every generation has its abuses which it seems to be blind to – we seem to accept, with merely a quibble, that loss-making banks should paid inflationary bonuses while corroding the economy.
We also, apparently, accept that some of the most civilised people in society will have to hide themselves away because of a police and tabloid cock-up, and from fear of the mob. I find that frightening.
It only took 20 minutes or so and they were perfectly nice about it, but it reminded me of the vulnerability of people who can be portrayed as being very slightly peculiar, or even mildly different – especially when things get serious, as they did in the Joanna Yeates investigation in Bristol over the New Year.
I thought back to that incident when the landlord, Christopher Jefferies, was arrested. As the days went by and the police time limit was continuously extended – while he was vilified day by day by the tabloid press – I began to obsess about it, constantly tuning in to hear whether he had been released, as he was inevitably going to be.
You may not know somebody well by sitting in their classroom for two years, but you learn some things about them. It seemed extraordinarily unlikely that he could have been involved in anything like that.
We haven't even spoken for nearly three decades, but the truth is that I owe a huge debt to him, and not just him but to the whole English department at Clifton College, which in the 1970s became a kind of Rolls-Royce operation of huge ambition, civilisation and generosity, and from which I learned a very great deal.
As the days wore on, and he remained in custody, and the column inches grew, I came believe that those civilised values were under attack, maybe not so much by the police – I don't know what was going on in their investigation – but by the rest of society, and by my own profession,
Yet only a handful of what must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of pupils spoke to the press. The rest must have been aware, as I was, that almost anything we said in his defence could fuel the flames. I am hugely relieved that he was released, if only because the investigation could then continue in a more fruitful direction.
But just for a moment, I felt I glimpsed a miserably intolerant and illiberal aspect of the nation – which I had naively ignored before. It makes me realise a little more clearly that, because I see the world differently from the prevailing culture, those parts of it constructed by a monopolistic media, then perhaps I am also at risk. More than just being questioned occasionally because I'm dressed unconventionally.
I was prompted to write this by the report in the Daily Mirror today that Mr Jefferies has been told by police that it isn't safe for him to be seen in public. Every generation has its abuses which it seems to be blind to – we seem to accept, with merely a quibble, that loss-making banks should paid inflationary bonuses while corroding the economy.
We also, apparently, accept that some of the most civilised people in society will have to hide themselves away because of a police and tabloid cock-up, and from fear of the mob. I find that frightening.
December 21, 2010
The truth about Vince's war
I suppose Vince's remarks were unwise, but that is easy to say. Personally, hardly a day goes by without me saying something seriously unwise. What they also seemed to me to be was overwhelmingly true.
We may not actually be at war with the Murdoch press, but if we are not at war with corporate privilege and monopoly power as Liberal Democrats, then we need to be. That is the abuse of power which now threatens our liberty, just as Murdoch tightening his grip on the UK media is a threat to our freedom of speech. The role of Liberals now is to launch the battle against monopoly, over our minds as well as our wallets. The affair of the taped interview this afternoon was indeed a battle lost in this undeclared war.
The Conservatives may be led kicking towards the same position. Labour will not; in fact they were the first to rush to Murdoch's defence, as usual, this afternoon. What I find fascinating is that, although this central issue was barely mentioned in the party's manifesto, it seems to loom increasingly large in the minds of Lib Dem ministers - Vince Cable included.
That is as it should be, because - although it has gone almost unmentioned for half a century - the historic role of Liberals is to fight monopoly. Today was a setback, but it did at least articulate that central truth, and not before time.
We may not actually be at war with the Murdoch press, but if we are not at war with corporate privilege and monopoly power as Liberal Democrats, then we need to be. That is the abuse of power which now threatens our liberty, just as Murdoch tightening his grip on the UK media is a threat to our freedom of speech. The role of Liberals now is to launch the battle against monopoly, over our minds as well as our wallets. The affair of the taped interview this afternoon was indeed a battle lost in this undeclared war.
The Conservatives may be led kicking towards the same position. Labour will not; in fact they were the first to rush to Murdoch's defence, as usual, this afternoon. What I find fascinating is that, although this central issue was barely mentioned in the party's manifesto, it seems to loom increasingly large in the minds of Lib Dem ministers - Vince Cable included.
That is as it should be, because - although it has gone almost unmentioned for half a century - the historic role of Liberals is to fight monopoly. Today was a setback, but it did at least articulate that central truth, and not before time.
Ugh, utilitarians...
Utilitarians, ugh, they make me shudder. And for some reason those in authority who make me shudder most, when I hear them in the radio, are actually refugees from the old New Labour regime like Lord Browne or Lord Freud. There was something about New Labour, with its contempt for history and its narrow view of the world - measuring everything in terms of money - which made it the most utilitarian government in history.
This is what I wrote on Open Democracy about the mismatch between Lord Browne's university funding plans, now partly adopted by the coalition, and the hugely important idea of measuring well-being:
http://tinyurl.com/2wykdpa
This is what I wrote on Open Democracy about the mismatch between Lord Browne's university funding plans, now partly adopted by the coalition, and the hugely important idea of measuring well-being:
http://tinyurl.com/2wykdpa
December 18, 2010
Subsidising the nuclear industry
The week since the worst moment of the fees vote has seen a whole tranche of recognisably Lib Dem ideas announced by the coalition, not the least of which was the Localism Bill and the ambitious re-organisation of the electricity market to boost renewable energy.
I'm not sure I'm getting used to the roller-coaster of emotions which being in government brings. Perhaps I was too idealistic; perhaps I was naive. On the other hand, there is a great deal which remains exciting and which I'm hugely proud to be part of.
I don't want to be part of a party that demands feeding all the time, a chirupping beak that is never quite full.
But I must admit that I am getting sleepless nights about energy policy (I never thought I would see the day that I could write that sentence!).
Because, as well as the vital aspects of the energy re-organisation, there are things that are so unwelcome - and such anathema to me as a Liberal - that I find it hard to stomach. I don't want as a tax-payer to be subsidising an energy form I regard as corrosive, dangerous to our security and irresponsible in the way it hands over its pollution for my children's children's children to deal with. I am absolutely determined that we should not subsidise nuclear energy.
I know we are all different. We all have our pet issues. It just so happens that this one is mine. I joined the Liberal Party in 1979 because we opposed nuclear energy, and because we voted against the Sellafield reprocessing plant (and weren't we right - it's been a staggering expensive and polluting white elephant ever since).
I believed Chris Huhne when he made his 'watch my lips' promise.
I know the pressure he must have been under. I believe in his integrity and determination, but nonetheless, we are now sponsoring a new generation of nuclear white elephants.
1. The new tariff system will give nuclear a guaranteed price over and above what the market would manage.
2. The government provides the insurance for the nuclear industry, because the consequences of an accident are so vast that no insurer would do it in the market.
3. The government will subsidise the clean-up, reprocessing and storage, for centuries, of the waste - a huge burden on our descendents.
I would be so delighted to be told that I am wrong. Nonetheless, I believe this is what is happening. DECC would no doubt explain that, given that nuclear is included in the government's policy, these subsidies are necessary. That is true - but that isn't what we promised.
I'm not sure I'm getting used to the roller-coaster of emotions which being in government brings. Perhaps I was too idealistic; perhaps I was naive. On the other hand, there is a great deal which remains exciting and which I'm hugely proud to be part of.
I don't want to be part of a party that demands feeding all the time, a chirupping beak that is never quite full.
But I must admit that I am getting sleepless nights about energy policy (I never thought I would see the day that I could write that sentence!).
Because, as well as the vital aspects of the energy re-organisation, there are things that are so unwelcome - and such anathema to me as a Liberal - that I find it hard to stomach. I don't want as a tax-payer to be subsidising an energy form I regard as corrosive, dangerous to our security and irresponsible in the way it hands over its pollution for my children's children's children to deal with. I am absolutely determined that we should not subsidise nuclear energy.
I know we are all different. We all have our pet issues. It just so happens that this one is mine. I joined the Liberal Party in 1979 because we opposed nuclear energy, and because we voted against the Sellafield reprocessing plant (and weren't we right - it's been a staggering expensive and polluting white elephant ever since).
I believed Chris Huhne when he made his 'watch my lips' promise.
I know the pressure he must have been under. I believe in his integrity and determination, but nonetheless, we are now sponsoring a new generation of nuclear white elephants.
1. The new tariff system will give nuclear a guaranteed price over and above what the market would manage.
2. The government provides the insurance for the nuclear industry, because the consequences of an accident are so vast that no insurer would do it in the market.
3. The government will subsidise the clean-up, reprocessing and storage, for centuries, of the waste - a huge burden on our descendents.
I would be so delighted to be told that I am wrong. Nonetheless, I believe this is what is happening. DECC would no doubt explain that, given that nuclear is included in the government's policy, these subsidies are necessary. That is true - but that isn't what we promised.
December 14, 2010
The snobbery of the BBC
There are undoubtedly some worrying aspects about the Localism Bill – not to mention the perverse incentives to stay poor enshrined in the change in housing tenant status – but overall it is an important and urgent piece of legislation.
I've sent out in the New Economics Foundation blog how the ideas in it have emerged here. Slightly triumphalist, but the genesis of some of the policies in the Sustainable Communities Act are pretty clear.
But one of the first reactions thrown up has confirmed what Simon Jenkins used to say about the BBC: they do have a policy; it is to centralise.
I heard him say that years ago while I was listening to an item on You and Yours asking when the government was going to legislate to make people's front door numbers legible. It was dramatically confirmed yesterday when they used a clip from the Vicar of Dibley to illustrate how parish councils might work under the Localism Bill.
This reveals partly that the BBC is ignorant of the difference between a parish council and a parochial church council. It also reveals their staggering snobbery about the idea of local people taking decisions, and about local government in general.
That isn't to say that there are no risks in devolving decisions quite so radically. I'm not clear what provisions there will be for appeals and oversight. There will certainly be mistakes and abuses. But they will be less than the sheer inflexibility, the vast waste of resources, the demoralisation and the damage done by the centralised system, and the certainty of that continuing without some kind of major decentralisation.
So stuff the BBC, I say – and the idea that decisions can only taken, under close guidance, by Oxbridge types with Masters in Public Administration. And only then, very occasionally. What the Localism Bill sets out is a means by which neighbourhoods can begin to take charge of their own destiny.
Yes, many of them won't. Yes, there are also cuts. Yes, many local authorities have dismal jobsworth cultures after decades of recruitment on the basis of obedience to process. But this is the beginning of a way out of dull, clone town mediocrity, which impacts far more heavily on poor people than rich ones, and I'm excited about it.
I've sent out in the New Economics Foundation blog how the ideas in it have emerged here. Slightly triumphalist, but the genesis of some of the policies in the Sustainable Communities Act are pretty clear.
But one of the first reactions thrown up has confirmed what Simon Jenkins used to say about the BBC: they do have a policy; it is to centralise.
I heard him say that years ago while I was listening to an item on You and Yours asking when the government was going to legislate to make people's front door numbers legible. It was dramatically confirmed yesterday when they used a clip from the Vicar of Dibley to illustrate how parish councils might work under the Localism Bill.
This reveals partly that the BBC is ignorant of the difference between a parish council and a parochial church council. It also reveals their staggering snobbery about the idea of local people taking decisions, and about local government in general.
That isn't to say that there are no risks in devolving decisions quite so radically. I'm not clear what provisions there will be for appeals and oversight. There will certainly be mistakes and abuses. But they will be less than the sheer inflexibility, the vast waste of resources, the demoralisation and the damage done by the centralised system, and the certainty of that continuing without some kind of major decentralisation.
So stuff the BBC, I say – and the idea that decisions can only taken, under close guidance, by Oxbridge types with Masters in Public Administration. And only then, very occasionally. What the Localism Bill sets out is a means by which neighbourhoods can begin to take charge of their own destiny.
Yes, many of them won't. Yes, there are also cuts. Yes, many local authorities have dismal jobsworth cultures after decades of recruitment on the basis of obedience to process. But this is the beginning of a way out of dull, clone town mediocrity, which impacts far more heavily on poor people than rich ones, and I'm excited about it.
December 8, 2010
Introducing the vampire squid
"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
That was how Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi introduced his article on Goldman Sachs last year. There was something rather thrilling about the words, as if someone had finally told the full truth about the banks. Every generation has its own blind spot about moral outrage. In the eighteenth century, it was slavery. At the beginning of the twenty-first, it seems to me to be financial services - the huge and inflationary rewards, the corrosion of the real economy.
To celebrate the occasion, my colleagues at the new economics foundation have released a short animation about the vampire squid, and I thoroughly recommend it:
http://www.neweconomics.org/press-releases/who-will-tame-the-giant-vampire-squid
Green MP Caroline Lucas has tabled an early day motion in the Commons drawing attention to it, and three Lib Dems have signed already (Leech, Russell, Hancock).
That was how Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi introduced his article on Goldman Sachs last year. There was something rather thrilling about the words, as if someone had finally told the full truth about the banks. Every generation has its own blind spot about moral outrage. In the eighteenth century, it was slavery. At the beginning of the twenty-first, it seems to me to be financial services - the huge and inflationary rewards, the corrosion of the real economy.
To celebrate the occasion, my colleagues at the new economics foundation have released a short animation about the vampire squid, and I thoroughly recommend it:
http://www.neweconomics.org/press-releases/who-will-tame-the-giant-vampire-squid
Green MP Caroline Lucas has tabled an early day motion in the Commons drawing attention to it, and three Lib Dems have signed already (Leech, Russell, Hancock).
December 6, 2010
Eminent Corporations gets review
This is kind of immodest of me, but how can I sell my new book (Eminent Corporations) if I don't pass on the review in the Financial Times this morning?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/67413078-009f-11e0-aa29-00144feab49a.html#axzz17KnIDlNz
OK, it is the other side of a log in (which is free). OK, they call me Daniel not David. But it is good to be noticed, and I can't help feeling - what with Caroline Spelman's outrageous decision to allow the sale of cloned meat and milk without labelling - that the strange history of Britain's big companies needs telling now more than ever.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/67413078-009f-11e0-aa29-00144feab49a.html#axzz17KnIDlNz
OK, it is the other side of a log in (which is free). OK, they call me Daniel not David. But it is good to be noticed, and I can't help feeling - what with Caroline Spelman's outrageous decision to allow the sale of cloned meat and milk without labelling - that the strange history of Britain's big companies needs telling now more than ever.
November 18, 2010
If I ask nicely, could we rethink the euro?
A decade or so ago, when we were all very exercised about the euro, there were two kinds of people who were against it. One was nationalist head-bangers; the other was the people - including Liberals - who were afraid that fluctuating exchange rates played an important role.
I was in the second category (definitely not the first), and felt somewhat alone in the Lib Dems.
Those in favour of the euro at the time, though otherwise charming and sane, took on a kind of Napoleonic certainty when it came to discussing currencies. Which is a way of saying that they didn't engage much with the exchange rate argument.
There seemed to me to be a danger that one interest rate could not possibly suit the whole of Western Europe. It was bound to suit the cities at the heart of Europe, but prevent those peripheral places and nations from devaluing when they needed to. It would trap those poorer cities and nations in a currency which was too valuable to suit them, and would usher in fierce populist right-wingers in their devastated cities.
Unfortunately, that is what seems to be happening - and, sure enough, in the outlying nations like Portugal and Ireland. Before the euro, Ireland could devalue and balance their economy by doing so. Now they have to cling to the mast, cut everything in sight and hope - like Phineas Fogg, chopping up the train to feed the fire that drove it - that there will be something left at the end.
That is an illiberal disaster and it should not have happened. None of which suggests that the euro should be abolished. We need more international currencies. But we can't survive without other currencies that serve our needs alongside them.
There is still a Napoleonic tendency that doesn't really believe in economics. I'm hoping maybe, maybe, if I approach them very delicately, we might have a rethink on the euro...
I was in the second category (definitely not the first), and felt somewhat alone in the Lib Dems.
Those in favour of the euro at the time, though otherwise charming and sane, took on a kind of Napoleonic certainty when it came to discussing currencies. Which is a way of saying that they didn't engage much with the exchange rate argument.
There seemed to me to be a danger that one interest rate could not possibly suit the whole of Western Europe. It was bound to suit the cities at the heart of Europe, but prevent those peripheral places and nations from devaluing when they needed to. It would trap those poorer cities and nations in a currency which was too valuable to suit them, and would usher in fierce populist right-wingers in their devastated cities.
Unfortunately, that is what seems to be happening - and, sure enough, in the outlying nations like Portugal and Ireland. Before the euro, Ireland could devalue and balance their economy by doing so. Now they have to cling to the mast, cut everything in sight and hope - like Phineas Fogg, chopping up the train to feed the fire that drove it - that there will be something left at the end.
That is an illiberal disaster and it should not have happened. None of which suggests that the euro should be abolished. We need more international currencies. But we can't survive without other currencies that serve our needs alongside them.
There is still a Napoleonic tendency that doesn't really believe in economics. I'm hoping maybe, maybe, if I approach them very delicately, we might have a rethink on the euro...
November 17, 2010
Why Liberals might like a good royal wedding
The prospect of another royal wedding makes me feel old. The last big one seems like yesterday – my first few months as a reporter on the Oxford Star – but it is actually, by definition, a generation ago.
Not quite sure what I've been doing in the intervening years. Washing up, I think.
There are Liberals among us who believe their political beliefs lead them inexorably into being republicans. So let's mark the occasion by explaining why Liberals really ought to be constitutional monarchists.
I suppose the reason I would describe myself like that is history. It is the antidote to the kind of utilitarianism imposed on us from New Labour, where their ignorance of history led them to make the most extraordinary mistakes (invading Iraq, for example) - plus an all-pervading dullness and technocracy which is fast becoming the main thing I remember from the Blairbrown years.
Citizenship is a key Liberal concept, and – to be citizens – we need to know who we are, as Simon Schama said in the Guardian last week. The continuity of the institution of head of state provides an absolutely vital factor in this. We don't have to navigate our self-identity via President Blair.
But the real reason is that the monarchy is the antidote to fascism and extreme nationalism. Monarchies take those emotions and render them harmless in a little bit of ceremony, flag-waving and tradition. Without that lightning rod, the inevitable forces of nationalism - which are powerful in former empires - can become fierce and demanding, because there is no monarchical tradition you can compare them with and trump their patriotism with.
Throughout the twentieth centuries, former monarchies which became republics invariably became fascist states, with disastrous consequences for us all.
It is all very well to somehow tidy away the monarchy, because it somehow seems more equal to do so. But then it won't be us that will suffer first from fascist violence. It is cheap at the price.
Traditionally, monarchs are supposed to be bastions against the tyranny of the executive. That was why the Peasant's Revolt appealed to the king. We have the worst of both worlds – the monarchs powers are used by the Prime Minister to bypass Parliament. It isn't the monarchy we should worry about as Liberals – it's the powers of the monarchy.
Not quite sure what I've been doing in the intervening years. Washing up, I think.
There are Liberals among us who believe their political beliefs lead them inexorably into being republicans. So let's mark the occasion by explaining why Liberals really ought to be constitutional monarchists.
I suppose the reason I would describe myself like that is history. It is the antidote to the kind of utilitarianism imposed on us from New Labour, where their ignorance of history led them to make the most extraordinary mistakes (invading Iraq, for example) - plus an all-pervading dullness and technocracy which is fast becoming the main thing I remember from the Blairbrown years.
Citizenship is a key Liberal concept, and – to be citizens – we need to know who we are, as Simon Schama said in the Guardian last week. The continuity of the institution of head of state provides an absolutely vital factor in this. We don't have to navigate our self-identity via President Blair.
But the real reason is that the monarchy is the antidote to fascism and extreme nationalism. Monarchies take those emotions and render them harmless in a little bit of ceremony, flag-waving and tradition. Without that lightning rod, the inevitable forces of nationalism - which are powerful in former empires - can become fierce and demanding, because there is no monarchical tradition you can compare them with and trump their patriotism with.
Throughout the twentieth centuries, former monarchies which became republics invariably became fascist states, with disastrous consequences for us all.
It is all very well to somehow tidy away the monarchy, because it somehow seems more equal to do so. But then it won't be us that will suffer first from fascist violence. It is cheap at the price.
Traditionally, monarchs are supposed to be bastions against the tyranny of the executive. That was why the Peasant's Revolt appealed to the king. We have the worst of both worlds – the monarchs powers are used by the Prime Minister to bypass Parliament. It isn't the monarchy we should worry about as Liberals – it's the powers of the monarchy.
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