The Royal Pain of Brexit

Bill Shorten has promised a plebiscite on the “Australian Republic” in his first term, a pledge that fills this lapsed republican with anxious dismay — lapsed because the debate about the Australian Head of State has been so corrupted that, were a republic to come about, it would be a divisive moment, not a uniting one.  With the current head of the Australian Republican Movement a grandstanding social justice warrior and all-round goose on constitutional matters,  the only way to avoid the upwelling of poisonous social-media vituperation and the brandishing of identity politics is to spurn the debate altogether.

What prompts this thought about our own situation is the current impasse in Britain with regard to implementing the will of the people as expressed in the Brexiteers’ victory at the ballot box. I wonder, does the Monarch have a role to play? Parliament exists to give effect to the will of the people, whose interests the Queen was crowned with the responsibility to…