The Reincarnated Whiggish Rabble

I made a New Year’s resolution to be less partisan on The Monarchist blogspot, to take the high road as it were and to avoid the excessive rants of a die-hard Tory. Because it is true that monarchy today cuts across the political spectrum, that it naturally finds support in every party grouping and every walk of life. That monarchy itself, as the sovereign representative of the people, presides over the politics and remains above the stray. As is obvious, there’s no politics, where there's no power.

But we also know that certain political parties and their leaders are patently antimonarchist in their tendencies, be they Helen Clark’s Labour in New Zealand, the rampant republicanism of Australian Labor, the devine right of Liberal rule in Canada and the sovereignty undermining Labourite Europhiles of Great Britain. These parties are the Whigs of our times, the natural successors of 1679 and all that, who follow in the long tradition of weakening the Royal Prerogative whenever the opportunity avails itself. It continues even to this day: the Conservatives as the inheritors of Toryism are still the party most supportive of monarchy and the Liblaboury are still the Whiggamores wittling it all away. Whig or Tory, same old story.

In the heyday of Whig-Tory competitive politics, when the two-party political system really took off (circa 1780s), it was the Tories under the stewardship of William Pitt the Younger who stood foursquare against Charles James Fox (photo above left), the radical Whig leader who flirted dangerously with the ideas of the French Revolution to the horror of his fellow Parliamentarians, not least of whom was Edmund Burke, the principled Whig who crossed the chasm most abruptly to stand with the Prime Minister. We are the Commonwealth inheritors of Pitt's legacy, of the British Parliamentary heritage that still survives. The two oldest political parties in the world changed their names as we evolved from a Parliamentary aristocracy (Whig and Tory) to a Parliamentary democracy (Liberal and Conservative), but the political culture is still there. The traditions and sentiments persist. The institutions exist even as we have evolved. Because, and this is the key part: The monarchy goes on.

So it is up to all of us that this continues to hold true. To fight the political descendants of Charles Fox and stand foursquare against the reincarnated Whiggish rabble. As Burke said, all that is required for the undesirable to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Well, we're doing something here. All principled Whigs are invited to join. To keep alive the legacy of Pitt.

(Originally posted by Beaverbrook here)