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The Queen’s Coup

declassifiedaus.org

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Re: The Queen’s Coup

#61

Post by snapcaster »

nomdep wrote: post #48
Taniwha wrote: post #37

People may remember that the CIA also had a hand in this sordid episode, documented in the movie The Falcon and the Snowman (based on a real case) where someone working in signals (much like Edward Snowden) watching all the telexes go by realised that the US was taking part in the downfall of another democratic government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falcon_and_the_Snowman

During the 60s an 70s, taking part in the downfall of democratic governments (see South America) was an usual Tuesday for the CIA

I'm sure they've stopped now though :)

Re: The Queen’s Coup

#62

Post by PaulHoule »

It’s funny, I have read a lot about various intrigues in the UK parliament and felt I understood them (I was talking w/ a political science prof the other day about Disraeli and the Corn laws) but everything invested read about the Australia affair has come across like one of those personal conflicts that you can’t make sense of because they a talking about it a mile a minute without filling in the context. Is there a good account of it that would make sense to an American?

Re: The Queen’s Coup

#63

Post by rswail »

goodcanadian wrote: post #29
rswail wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GG is the "Queen's Representative" in Australia and is appointed by her on the advice of her Prime Minister. She is "Queen of Australia" in this role, not Queen of the UK. As such, her advice to Kerr should have been "Take the advice from the PM and the legal advice he has asked the Solicitor General and Attorney General to provide to you". That should have been it. Anything else is improper and against the rules…

I actually think that is an advantage in Australia and Canada. The Governor General is not the monarch, but is (effectively) appointed by a democratically elected official. That gives them more freedom to actually wield that power (albeit extremely rarely). I, personally, think it is very useful to have that neutral referee with real power. As you say, the King is much more constrained in the UK. Although, he theoret…

I don't agree. Parliament, representing the votes of the people, should be Supreme. The constraints on monarchy or a non-political head of state should be absolutely clear. The so called "reserve powers" have no place in a nation with a written constitution.

Almost the single job is to call on someone to be Prime Minister and form a government that holds the confidence of the House of Representatives. Then swear in who that person advises you to as members of the Executive Council.

We recently had the ridiculous situation that the Prime Minister advised the Governor General to swear him in as a "secret" additional minister in a number of ministries. That is now the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry.

Re: The Queen’s Coup

#64

Post by denton-scratch »

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #5

Crucial to this piece is "blocking of supply"; unfortunately there is no explanation of what this actually means.

"Supply and confidence" is an expression used to refer to the arrangement between the party of government and a weaker party, that refers to the fact the weaker party will vote with the government on budgets and confidence motions. It doesn't imply a coalition, and the weaker party can't expect ministerial posts.

Re: The Queen’s Coup

#65

Post by denton-scratch »

doingtheiroming wrote: post #11

The assumption that things like this necessarily increase support for republicanism is probably misplaced. In Italy and Greece Governments have been effectively overthrown by the EU (or ECB/IMF) in fairly open ways with technocrats put in charge. In both countries support for the EU is running at very high levels despite that. Higher levels in fact that when it happened. The U.K. monarchy clearly lacks the wherewitha…

> In both countries support for the EU is running at very high levels despite that.

Both countries are beneficiaries of EU munificence. I wonder whether that has anything to do with it?

Re: The Queen’s Coup

#66

Post by amanwithnoplan »

3pt14159 wrote: post #59
anonymous_sorry wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The monarchy means that prime ministers, who are generally only directly elected by people in a small geographic constituency, get to exercise the power of a head of state, via the monarch. Even weirder in this case, the prime minister (not directly elected by the general populace) appointed an Governor General (not elected at all) to a position with monarchic powers, and that power was used against him.

I know this seems weird to outsiders, but as a Canadian I quite like it. Having PMs elected by MPs means that it is harder for a single rabble rousing politician to sweep to power and distort the use of, say, the military. Having Governers General appointed by PMs, and confirmed by the monarch, means that someone outside of politics (usually a well respected figure like a university president or astronaut) holds the…

>someone outside of politics [...] holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called

This seems like only a theoretical red line. If/when the GG does anything against the advice of the PM it's a crisis moment. There was a bit of a media fuss in 2008 but then the GG just did as she was told, no?

Re: The Queen’s Coup

#67

Post by csa »

orangepurple wrote: post #58
Jedd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I am aware of a 51/49 class split between Liberal and Labor over Gough .. This may be a somewhat outdated appraisal of the situation. The number of people voting for neither of those parties (including coalition members) has been steadily growing for years, with the most recent federal election reaching 33%. I recall, more hazily, that the previous federal election (so several prime ministers ago) it was just n…

Quoted post unavailable.

> the Democrat party... are consistently better organized, more presentable, better funded, more advanced psychological operations, better connected, and more coherent than their Republican counterparts

In the US? Are you serious?

- The Federalist Society is a decades long conservative/Republican effort to stack the courts. It worked. There is no liberal/Democrat parallel that comes even close in terms of scope and/or effectiveness.

- For decades Republicans worked to stack state legislatures with their people, and they gerrymandered aggressively once in control so that they could keep it. It worked. You get oddities like Austin (famously liberal city) with only 1 or 2 of 5 state reps being democrat. Or states like Minnesota (edit: maybe Wisconsin… I can’t recall) that (until this week) voted consistently for Democrats in statewide races but had a Republican-majority state legislature. There has been no liberal/Democrat parallel that comes even close in terms of scope and/or effectiveness.

- The Koch brothers for decades led many initiatives to support Republican causes with money and infrastructure. They moved away from the Republican Party with trump in the lead, but there are a ton of folks like the Kochs who are looking for a new figurehead to stand behind. There has been no liberal/Democrat parallel that comes even close in terms of scope and/or effectiveness.

Meanwhile…

- Democrats can’t nominate better candidates than Hillary or Biden when much more electable candidates were available, mainly due to the periphery of the party insisting on getting their (very non-centrist, very non-electable) candidate or they just don’t vote. Hence Trump winning an election in 2016 and almost winning an election in 2020, both of which should have been slam dunks for Democrats even with the electoral college being what it is.

- You get congressional Democrats who play nice when they are in control, then get completely taken advantage of when they are not in control. Mitch McConnell is the master of this type of abuse. There are many reasons for this, but one clear one is a lack of unity in the Democratic voting bloc. Republicans are much more consistent at executing “win at all costs” congressional strategies than Democrats are.

Note that I wish the above were not true — I am embarrassed by the current state of politics in my country — but I see the reality for what it is.

Re: The Queen’s Coup

#68

Post by denton-scratch »

rswail wrote: post #27
goodcanadian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But calling it the "Queen's Coup" is overegging the pudding. It was very much John Kerr's Coup. Yes, I find the detailed history fascinating, but I am a bit unconvinced by the spin put on it. Clearly, the claim that the palace had no idea it was coming is false, but I don't read the supposedly damning quotes from the letters as the Queen (or anyone else in the palace) giving partisan advise about what action to take.…

The GG is the "Queen's Representative" in Australia and is appointed by her on the advice of her Prime Minister. She is "Queen of Australia" in this role, not Queen of the UK. As such, her advice to Kerr should have been "Take the advice from the PM and the legal advice he has asked the Solicitor General and Attorney General to provide to you". That should have been it. Anything else is improper and against the rules…

> If the Queen had tried to do the same thing in the UK, Parliament would immediately remove the Crown from power.

That's very far-fetched. MPs take an oath of loyalty to the monarch on taking their seat. The entire House of Lords hold their positions wholly by the grace of some monarch or other. Without an electoral mandate, it's inconceivable that Parliament would dismiss the monarchy.

Yeah, I know, it's happened once or twice before; but the last time was 400 years ago, and the world has changed.

Re: The Queen’s Coup

#69

Post by bee_rider »

orangepurple wrote: post #58
Jedd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I am aware of a 51/49 class split between Liberal and Labor over Gough .. This may be a somewhat outdated appraisal of the situation. The number of people voting for neither of those parties (including coalition members) has been steadily growing for years, with the most recent federal election reaching 33%. I recall, more hazily, that the previous federal election (so several prime ministers ago) it was just n…

Quoted post unavailable.

This is sort of tangential, but it doesn’t match what I’ve seen at all. Democratic Party voters are notoriously flaky, turnout is a constant struggle. Every election starts with a struggle between the progressive and centrist branches. The Democratic Party generally represents a larger chunk of the populace than the Republican Party but turns that into middling electoral success (which doesn’t seem to indicate much organization), has failed to block the Supreme Court from becoming a partisan Republican institution, and manages to barely pass like 1 big law per president.

Re: The Queen’s Coup

#70

Post by nirimda »

Jedd wrote: post #45
ggm wrote: post #30

I am an avowed republican, I waited until I didn't have to swear alleigence to the crown to take my citizenship in Oz. But I am aware of a 51/49 class split between Liberal and Labor over Gough, and so the belief this "they tried to overthrow Gough" thing translates to "OMG the republicans will win" is ludicrous. Enough people think Gough was bonkers, That even Razor-gang Malcom Frazer was better. I am glued on Gough…

> But I am aware of a 51/49 class split between Liberal and Labor over Gough .. This may be a somewhat outdated appraisal of the situation. The number of people voting for neither of those parties (including coalition members) has been steadily growing for years, with the most recent federal election reaching 33%. I recall, more hazily, that the previous federal election (so several prime ministers ago) it was just n…

> I recall, more hazily, that the previous federal election (so several prime ministers ago)

The most recent federal election was this year. The previous federal election was 2019. There were no changes of prime minister in that time; Scott Morrison was the prime minister going into the 2019 election, and Scott Morrison was the prime minister going into the 2022 election. I realise this takes a bit of getting used to, since the last prime minister to get from one election to another was John Howard.

> a lot of ersatz democracies where only two realistic options are presented to the population to pick from.

Only the US has two realistic options, or else your statement is meaningless. Come up with a countexample.

In the UK and Canada there are three parties who regularly win general seats namely the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems, or the Tories, the Liberals and the NDP. They both also have Greens who can win certain seats. Moreover they also have various regional parties e.g. Bloc Quebecois or the SNP who compete against the general parties in their regions of interest. In such a system, there might only be two realistic possible governments foreseen by observers, but voters act as if there's more than two realistic options to vote for, and they vote for more than two options, and more than two options get seats.

Various other countries have two-bloc politics where you can give your vote to a left coalition or a right coalition, and to a certain party within that coalition. For instance, in NZ you can vote for Labour or the Greens if you like the left, and you can vote for National or ACT if you like the right (notice how the Greens got a ministry after the last election, even though Labour got a majority in their own right). But in such a situation there's clearly more than two realistic options to vote for, even if there's only two possible governments foreseen.

(Not to mention that you can also get the situation where no precommitments are made, or the precommitmentments are rendered vain by results, and coalitions have to be formed after the election. But I assume this is regarded as the ideal.)

Fundamentally the way people choose to describe a political system depends on the conclusions they intend to draw from it. The UK and Canada are substantially similar, but people want to praise Canada in comparison to its neighbor, and criticise the UK in comparison to its neighbors, so the UK gets called a "two-party system" and Canada gets called a "multi-party democracy". (Both are also sometimes describe as having proportional voting, since minor parties win: but this is false. Neither Canada, nor the UK, nor France have proportional voting.)

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