[toyg]

She wasn't necessarily so when she "took office" and formed her views on what her role had to be. At various stages, up to the 80s, a large segment of the population would have happily done away with the monarchy, which is unthinkable today. In a way, her constitutional profile as a weak ruler was a way to sneak the institution past turbulent times.

The next ruler will probably find himself, from the very beginning, more popular than powerful. The temptation to wrestle back some power from an unpopular political class will be strong, and there are very little safeguards. This wouldn't necessary be a bad thing: the UK system values pragmatism over principles, maybe restoring some royal privileges could be useful to get us out of the current ideological rut.

[Silhouette]

> the UK system values pragmatism over principles

I suspect that's because, for better or worse, a lot of people in the UK do as well. Personally, I'm always torn on the House of Lords. In principle, as an institution, the Lords is an anachronistic affront to democracy that obviously has no mandate and no place in legitimate government for the 21st century. Pragmatically, I can't help noticing that the elected representatives in the House of Commons often seem incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery or showing any empathy whatsoever for their constituents, while the Lords actually has a fairly respectable track record for getting in the way of bad legislation. I would much prefer a second chamber (or entirely new system) where everyone with any kind of power to act on behalf of the people also had a democratic mandate, but until such a system comes along, I suspect as a practical measure we're actually better off with the Lords than without.

[geden]

Have you considered the that maybe one of the reasons the House of Lords works (and I believe most people are of the view it at least sort of does) is because they ARE unelected, and thus don't have to pander to any interest other than their own humanity?

Given the state of politics in the west, perhaps leaders in society should be appointed in a similar way to jury service.

[Silhouette]

I think there is potential in having a second chamber where the people making decisions serve a long term in office (possibly until they choose to retire) unless they are actively recalled. As you say, that puts them above the need to make decisions based on the worst kind of reactionary politics, as often happens to those serving for terms of only a few years who always have one eye on the re-election campaign fund.

On the other hand, I think getting into such office in the first place should be about more than buttering up the current PM. Rather like the US Supreme Court, if all you have to do to reach such high office is receive the assent of someone who may themselves be on the way out politically by the time they appoint you, there is a very real danger that too many bad apples get in and then can't readily be removed.

I've often mused idly over the jury service for politicians idea. For a while, I wondered what would happen if we ran a staged process where randomly selected citizens were invited to join the second chamber for one term of office, lasting quite a while (say 6 years), with a new intake every other year so you never have a chamber full of people who haven't figured out how things work yet. The difficulty I always run into is that like jury service, it probably has to be compulsory rather than an invitation if you're going to get a reasonably representative group, but unlike jury service it is clearly not reasonable to require people to give up several years of their lives for public service. And you can't really do it on shorter terms of say one year, because then the administration of the day can just wait out a hostile second chamber and hope for better luck next time before steamrollering through all the bad legislation it really wants in one favourable year.

[geden]

I'm optimistic enough to believe that as technology increasingly eliminates most kinds of material scarcity, and human network effects & education continue to eliminate violence, then the question would be, well, really, why wouldn't you want to be in public service?