The Imperial Monarchy
“The True North is indeed strong and free.”
So said the King in the Canadian Parliament as he visited his second oldest realm; the Dominion of Canada.
Ostensibly a routine visit, the visit marked the first time the Monarch made a speech from the Throne in Canada since 1977. In reality, it is an implicit rebuke to Trump’s designs on Canada, showcasing that the Great White North will defend its sovereignty.
In theory, this demonstrates the equality of realms under the Crown. The King, often reduced to an English anachronism, is active in his other realms and the Monarchy as a dynamic, global institution.
Canadians themselves do not seem enthused by the visit, with 83% of Canadians indifferent to the visit. Protests also took place, including from First Nation groups, who called on the Crown to enact the colonial era treaties. Despite this, much of the commentary has been complimentary.
From a UK perspective, rather than demonstrating the Monarchy’s strength, the Canadian visit exemplifies Britain’s difficult relationship with the idea of other nations having ownership of the Crown.
British Ministers were unhappy with the King’s visit, on the grounds it may provoke Trump and catch Britain in the crossfire. British Ministers pressured the Canadian government to keep the King away from any controversy, in spite of the fact that Charles is King of Canada separately from his role as King of the United Kingdom.
The speech and event were much less ornate and controlled than the British equivalent. More importantly, it did not go as UK Ministers wished. The King made explicit reference to Canada as a free and independent nation in troubled geopolitical times. It is undoubtedly the most political act made by a Monarch in living memory.
Much attention has focused on the politics of this intervention. Less so to the implications behind the attitude of UK Ministers.
The message from Whitehall to the rest of the Commonwealth realms is clear; we may share the Monarch but ultimately, he is ours to use. In Whitehall, the imperial monarchy still reigns.
We see this elsewhere in attitudes towards other Commonwealth states flirting with republicanism. When Barbados severed ties with the Monarchy in 2021, Tom Tugendhat blamed it on Chinese influence, suggesting also that the Monarchy acted as an important vector for British interests.
This was the original intention behind the creation of Commonwealth realms. It became standard practice for the departing British colonial regime to grant independence to colonies as Commonwealth realms, not as Republics. With the older white colonies like Canada, it was assumed that the Monarchy would provide a link to the ‘mother country’ and keep Britain’s far-flung dominions within its political orbit.
Retention of the Monarchy ensured that as formal imperial rule retreated, the greatest imperial institution of all retained a presence on every continent. But that presence is now under threat.
This year, Jamaica is expected to abolish the Monarchy. Several other Caribbean states are moving towards this direction, removing the King’s likeness from coins, calling for reparations from the Monarchy and from Britain for the slave trade.
Just as the Monarchy’s innate Britishness makes it vulnerable to ‘territorial republicanism’ from the devolved governments, its innate imperial nature means that it is most vulnerable to republicanism in the Commonwealth; it undercuts the international, liberal, dynamic image that the Monarchy has tried to create and confines it to an evermore insular Britain.
The global reach of the Monarchy is one of its great assets, both for itself and for British foreign policy.
But that asset reduces in value every time a country democratises or even undermines the role of the Monarchy as a “British” institution. In this sense, Canada’s assertion of the Charles’s role as King of Canada and the Caribbean wave of republicanism represent the same threat to Britain’s influence. If British Governments cannot use the Monarch as a means to influence other nations, they are left with an archaic institution that they can show off to tourists but not much else?
The Commonwealth model of shared Monarchy was based on the understanding that the King would always live in the UK and continue to treat his other realms as far-flung lands, leaving the business of state to Governors-General and local ministers. How does Britain navigate a world where there are less realms dotted around the world? Or when Charles continues to give more politically-bent speeches in other realms?
The flip side being, how does a Monarchy retain its identity if it starts opening 15 Parliaments every year? How can it claim to represent 15 nations at once, if it starts moving around and following the wishes of each Prime Minister, no matter how divergent?
The simple answer is they can’t. It is a catch-22. The British state and the Monarchy have a symbiotic relationship and it is based on the implicit understanding that the Monarchy is the British state’s trump card. The King, in his admittedly admirable stance against Trumpian imperialism, has undermined that relationship, opening the door to new challenges.
Just as the devolved parliaments can challenge the Monarchical state domestically, so too can the former empire challenge the imperial Monarchy. Whether it is a slew of new republics or a more independent Monarch unleashed by his other ministers, it won’t take much to bring the whole thing tumbling down.
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Interesting I share ambiguous feelings towards the use of the monarchy’s soft power. Starmer’s offer of a state visit to Trump was I think one of the most inept and badly timed example of this. I saw the visit to Canada a tad more favourably while hoping that the Canadians would sup with a very long spoon, and those who are republicans will stand firm and not forget that this anachronistic institution is well past its expiry date. It cant be healthy to be exporting this example of inherited privilege. How does it shore up the new class of oligarchs who are so damaging.
Cathie – my understanding was that Mark Carey invited Charles and would have had a lot of influence over Charles speech to Canadian Parliament. Carney was utilising King in his fight against Trump’s wish to take it over especially as Trump obviously admires the monarchy.
The state visit invitation that Starmer gave Trump in such an unctuous manner was not surprisingly badly received in Canada. Charles invited Trump (at Starmer’s prompting) to visit at the same time as Trump was openly trying to replace him as Head of State of Canada. ( It is odd how commentators in UK absolve Charles from the Trump invite but praise him for speech in Canada).
From Charles perspective the visit to Canada would hopefully help diminish the damage done to him personally by UK invite.
There was a Martin Kettle article in Guardian on this subject and the article and many of the comments demonstrated what this article states.
I’m not a great admirer of either the monarchy or Charles as a person. But in fairness to him there is a lot of metaphysical stuff about monarchs having dual or multiple bodies or persons. If you go down that line, Charles as king of the UK is a different person from Charles as king of Canada. It can’t be easy having to do these multiple role-switches.
He’s a different person?
That’s what the theory says. There’s a 1957 book – a study in ‘medieval political theology’ – called The King’s Two Bodies, plus literature discussing it. Not a million miles from angels dancing on pinheads.
On further thought, things are even odder. In some sense Charles King of England is a different person from Charles King of Scots. CKE is head of the Church of England. CKS is very definitely not head of the Church of Scotland, and in theory he and his ministers cannot challenge the spiritual supremacy of the Church of Scotland. That’s what it says in the Church of Scotland Act 1921 and its Declaratory Articles – still in force. That’s the reason for the oath Charles swore before his coronation.
Interesting but is this not what diplomatic work is all about? Role switching and the like? If the monarchy has any use at all, it is this – a head of state, dong the kind of work that elected politicians struggle to do as they cannot body switch in the same way. Most countries have a head of state in one form or another for good reason. If you look at Trump, or even Macron, they do not fulfil this role well though. For me it is because they are elected and in the case of Trump, the worst kind of charlatan politician. Some elected heads of state do do better, but I do not see it as a valid point of principle given the role.
I don’t fundamentally disagree. But I think this misses the key point that Charles is the head of several *different* states with different constitutional structures which may have competing or contradictory national interests. How can Charles be expected be to act honestly and with a clear conscience? It’s a bit like a double agent claiming that he can spy for A against B today and for B against A tomorrow without any conflict of interest.
As heads of state go, it’s hard to beat Ireland’s Michael D Higgins, all the more so for him being elected.
Niemand – if an elected head of state is not undertaking role well they can always be voted out by public. This is the fundamental difference between elected and hereditary heads of state. I always thought that those who support non elected heads of state are basically not willing to take responsibility for their own actions. Poorly functioning heads of state either democratic or hereditary are as a result of having constitutional and legal systems which are not sufficiently robust as we have seen in USA.
I am interested you state that Macron is a failure- could you supply some background as to why you assert this.
Dennis – what interested me from Martin Kettle article in Guardian was the argument that Charles had no say in UK invite to Trump for State visit but it was Charles decision to agree to Mark Carney’s invite to open Canadian parliament. This promulgated the different role of monarch in UK as opposed to dominion’s which has its roots in Empire mentality.
The whole episode of UK state invitation showed that when push comes to shove the UK doesn’t consider the implications for other commonwealth countries if UK interests are involved.
There is no doubt that many Scots were involved with, actively supported and benefited from the British Empire. One reason that I have come to support independence for Scotland is that independence is that it would be a clean break from and repudiation of this past.
“it was Charles’ decision to agree …” Did Charles have any choice in the matter? Constitutional lawyers seem to disagree on what freedom (if any) the monarch has to disregard official advice given by a prime minister, and it gets worse when there are several different prime ministers in the game. It may well be that Canada and the UK have different rules and conventions – I simply don’t know.
My concerns about the ideological impact of the idea of royalty and privilege is echoed in this Guardian article about the reactions of the indigenous people of Canada to this visit. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/30/king-charles-first-nations
An intriguing article, highlighting one of the many anomalies that afflict the UK constitution. The unreformed and apparently unreformable Westminster Parliament combines the role of parliament of the UK with relics of its historic role as an imperial parliament presiding over dozens of disparate polities.
The lines between these different roles are poorly articulated and little understood, and some of this obscurity is clearly intentional. It allows UK government actors to intervene by backstairs means in the politics of other sovereign and avowedly democratic states.
As Reuben Duffy suggests, this two-faced activity is doubly damaging, even from a UK unionist perspective. It undermines the monarchy which the UK government claims to value; and it also undermines the UK’s own long-term influence as soon as it is spotted.
From the perspective of Scottish self-determination, such self-defeating UK behaviour may be considered helpful. But it does nothing for the reputation of democratic politics.
The risk to the reputation of democratic politics applies only insofar as people believe the myth that Westminster is in some form an institution of democratic politics.
Belief in that myth is in rapid decline.
Except it quite clearly is some form of democratic politics. Is it as much a myth as, say, Putin’s Russian democracy? Or the ‘democratic’ elections in Iran, or even Hungary?
Heavy critique is one thing and justified, but you are creating myths of your own.
I hope I made it clear that I have a low opinion of Westminster as a forum for democracy. But I don’t think anyone should deny that it is *in some form* democratic. Democracy is not a binary either/or. States (and other institutions) can be more or less democratic. The UK is not good but by any standard I recognise it is more democratic than Russia. You could argue the case that it is more democratic than the USA.
There’s an important point of principle here: democracy can’t and shouldn’t be understood as an absolute. It always involves give and take, negotiations among autonomous actors who have different views and interests and who may quite reasonably disagree about the best way of defining democracy. If it anything, it is open-ended.
@Dennis Smith, while the USA had extensive disenfranchisement in the overtly racist ‘Jim Crow’ period and did not have nearly full adult franchisement until recently apart from various forms of official (felony), unofficial and local exclusion, there are far more directly-elected officials in the USA, they don’t have hereditary lords, bishops and political appointees in Congress AFAIK, and their head of state is elected (albeit through a less-than-democratic electoral college). And whatever its defects, the USAmerican Constitution provided for codified rights (if not exactly a guarantee of democracy).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States#Milestones_of_national_franchise_changes
Meanwhile the British quasi-Constitution has nothing to offer the People, being based on a pyramid of theocratically-anointed hereditary monarchy, with large swathes of policy kept away from public influence by royal prerogatives (which executive power was somewhat copied by the USA but is not so sweeping, at least in legal theory), and the People are Subjects not Citizens (whatever the latest rebranding says, the same rebranding that insists in spite of all common sense and stark evidence that the British no longer have colonies). Do Chagos Islanders get a vote? They might have done in another Empire like the French.
But more pertinently, perhaps, whatever the British vote for these days, they get the same neoliberal policies, NATO membership, the democracy-killer of nuclear weapons, and a bottom Empire to the USAmerican top. Couple that with a billionaire press (no 1st amendment here) and a judicial system better at locking up protesters, journalists and whistleblowers than real criminals, and there’s clearly something rotten in the British imperial state. Meanwhile actual criminals run, rule and legislate for the country.
Of course, democracy should mean more than just an informed and enfranchised electorate able to influence all areas of government policy, but it would be a start.
Yes, the British monarchy is imperial (and far more than merely ceremonial), as is its quasi-Constitution. And I welcome this Empire perspective.
In many modern electoral states, the head of state (HoS) has a role in defending the codified constitution. Such political constitutions tend to stipulate important restrictions on the HoS, that they cannot serve for life or more than two terms of office, for example; that they can be impeached for various reasons; that they cannot simple rule by fiat (or dictat).
But the British have no codified constitution, and their quasi-Constitution is designed to remove accountability for the hereditary unremovable HoS. The Royal Prerogative is a means of over-riding what exists of constitutional safeguards and bypassing Parliament, quite the reverse of limitations in other nations.
Take the example of South Korean (Republic of Korea) President Yoon Suk Yeol, who declared martial law, but the nation’s courts impeached him “citing his betrayal of the public trust and serious violations of the law which failed to protect the Constitution”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_crisis#Impeachment_verdict
There is not a similar recognised check on executive power for the UK/British Empire, though our monarch has the authority to declare martial law (see our emergency legislation).
In fact, Elizabeth Windsor (despite all the resources of a reigning monarch) signally failed to defend the British quasi-Constitution by illegally agreeing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to prorogue Parliament. Honestly, Liz, you had one job! But seriously, Elizabeth Windsor must have been behind the constitutional coup which removed the Australian Labor government of Gough Whitlam. Among many much worse things. Maybe Liz even bumped off the odd UN Secretary General who walked in front of her colonial cannons.
For many more substantial criticisms of British monarchy see the Republic UK campaign sites (I agree broadly with their criticisms but disagree with their elected-HoS alternative). And for all those constitutional coups and worse, Declassified UK.
But the issue of Charles Windsor being head of armed forces of UK, Canada and so on, and maybe choosing where to point British nukes, we might have to deepen our investigations. Who is to be held to account for our military misdeeds and abuses? We cannot even put Ministers of the Crown in jail for theirs. Interesting to consider the rare case of Henry Dundas…