Both have the potential to be role models to the young.
The sixteen countries with Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state have voted unanimously to reform the succession laws. Male primogeniture - where a younger son can ascend to the throne ahead of an elder daughter - will be abolished before the birth of another royal heir, as will the rule that states an heir to the throne cannot marry a Catholic. The agreement was concluded at a meeting in Australia, where David Cameron called the rules 'outdated' and 'at odds with the modern countries we have become.' He has most definitely won back a small proportion of his female voters, and he may have just saved the monarchy.
The existence of the monarchy is pretty much assured for the rest of the Queen's lifetime. It is probably guaranteed to outlast the reign of Prince Charles, assuming that he comes to the throne. After that, however, it is in the badlands. Just over half, according to the Mirror, think that there will still be a monarch on the throne in half a century's time. Its primary supporters, the Boomers, will mostly be gone, and the current thirty and forty-somethings will in all likelihood have retired. The reins of society will belong to today's teenagers and twenty-somethings, and, while they are not openly hostile to the idea, the monarchy is less entrenched in their minds than it is in previous generations: no longer will it be able to stay silently out of view and expect the perception of its ceremonial importance to endure. They will need convincing. They will need to know why the monarchy is relevant to them: the quickest and easiest way to ensure that it isn't is for it to preserve archaic traditions.
The scrapping of outdated laws that no-one, save for older Anglicans, sees the sense in any more brings the monarchy into their century.
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This is the second update of today. This was the first one. There will in all likelihood be another, on the latest news from the Czech Republic - and its avowedly Eurosceptic President Vaclav Klaus - on the eurozone crisis.
I don't think the monarchy is in any real crisis in the future in Britain. Don't forget that the monarchy is no longer an exclusively British institution. Britain could legally become a republic on its own and leave the other Commonwealth Realms as monarchies sharing the British royal family, but in reality because of the Statute of Westminster if Britain sought to end the monarchy (being the "home realm") it would need to consult the other Realms - it would need to be done in concert. In Australia that requires a double majority referendum and in Canada the consent of every federal province. There are also the smaller realms such as Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands which are more ardently loyal to the monarchy than Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In Australia it is actually our Gen Y (which includes myself) who are most sceptical of change to a republic, while the ageing baby boomers are the most republican. So the republicans here have conceded that their cause is well off the agenda for at least another generation.
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