Priorities
Quoth Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy:
A cabinet minister has called for progress to be made on ending the 300-year old legal ban on Roman Catholics succeeding to the throne.
Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy, himself a Catholic, said he would like to see the 1701 Act of Settlement changed as it was clearly “discriminatory”.
Well, quite. But isn’t monarchy a little more discriminatory than that? The 1701 Act of Settlement states that only the Protestant heirs of Sophia, granddaughter of James I, can become King or Queen. So, no-one outside of a narrow aristocratic line can become head of state. Nor do they have any active or regular say in which of that narrow aristocratic line becomes head of state.
We don’t need to worry about the exclusion of Catholics from the succession. We need to worry about the very principle of succession.