UK support for the monarchy falls below 50%: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/uk-support-monarchy-falls-below-160026996.html

cstross@wandering.shop

(It's partly the Prince Andrew scandal and partly the King not being a patch on his mum's popularity: when Andrew is yeeted overboard there'll be a slight remission. But my money is on majority opposition to the monarchy setting in within a decade *unless* King William can turn it around.)

rk@mastodon.well.com

@cstross

While a monarchy is of course an outmoded concept I do like the idea that there’s someone who is (supposed to be) beyond politics and whose job (as it were) is to maintain the dignity and basic structure of the government.

I’m thinking of Juan Carlos I during Spain’s attempted coup in 1981, for example.

The problem is that there’s no guarantee of the monarch doing the right thing, and they only have soft power anyway, and there’s also the whole “heredity power is bad” thing…so yeah.

valhalla@social.gl-como.it

@rk @cstross that's the job of the President in a parliamentarian republic, and there is no *guarantee* that they will do the right thing, but at least they have been chosen every few year because they look like they will