Off to France on royal wedding day

I am no republican but am off to France for the day - the tickets have been booked. In my view the monarchy is not helped by letting itself become soap opera. Or perhaps that is part of its strength, since it fulfills a psychological need.

However, republicans need to appreciate that a monarch has an essential important qualification for the job - they never wanted it.

Horrible things can happen under democracies. They are vulnerable to take-overs by rabble rousers, as we are seeing at the moment with the rise of the far-right all over Europe. I can think of one important democratic country which is run for the benefit of a military-industrial complex and is on a permanent war footing.

It is a safe assumption that Hitler would never have happened if Germany had turned into a constitutional monarch after 1918.

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