[BRIEF NOTE] Michael Ignatieff, anti-monarchist?

[rfmcdonald]

A minor news story today, coinciding with Charles and Camilla's visit to Canada, is the news (National Post, Globe and Mail) that in 1992 Ignatieff was decidedly critical of the British monarchy and Charles. This could complicate his meeting later with said prince.

In the Ignatieff article, which was published in the Montreal Gazette in 1992, the politician writes about the separation of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. “Listening to the separation announcement, I found myself wondering exactly why this shambles was so magically preferable to an elected presidency.” And Mr. Ignatieff, who is a disciplined writer, states, “the British now have to decide whether to admit how republican their history actually is or whether to continue with the fantasy that they are ruled by kings and queens.”

Given all this, what does Mr. Ignatieff say when he meets the Prince? Quit? Stay? His spokesman Michael O’Shaugnessy says none of the above. “The Leader is focused on the issue of H1N1. Right now, Canadians are worried about lines for flu shots, not lines of succession. This is not an issue Canadians are focused on. He looks forward to his meeting with Prince Charles later in the week.”

It wasn't very kind. He wasn't impressed with the aftermath of Charles and Diana's separation.

"Listening to the separation announcement, I found myself wondering exactly why this shambles was so magically preferable to an elected presidency," Mr. Ignatieff wrote at the time.

"Dignity, authority and respect -- all the qualities peeling away from the monarchy by the hour -- are there to behold in the distinguished figure of Richard von Weizsacker, Germany's president. He has even used his office to speak for the German liberal conscience. Could someone tell me why the current Speaker of the British House of Commons could not do just as well? At least she has no family we would have to endure."

He railed against the "schizophrenic attitude" of the British news media and public: "One minute, the tabloid hounds are licking the royal hand, the next day they are biting it off" -- a phenomenon Mr. Ignatieff described as "a rabid kind of pornopopulism."

He argued in the article that Charles and Diana's coming divorce meant Britain was "heading into a constitutional No Man's Land. The problem is not that the monarchy is failing to live up to some rosy family ideal. The British Royal Family never has, and in any case that is not its job. Along with the dutiful, diligent and much-loved Queen, we have had madmen, philanderers and incompetents on the throne."

He argued, too, that mingled with Britain's monarchist history is a strong strain of republicanism in which "the rights of freeborn Englishmen, the sovereignty of Parliament and the independence of the judiciary were all won in essentially republican struggles against monarchical power."

He concluded: "Now is the time for the republican tradition in Britain to find its voice again. Such respect for the monarchy as I have makes me believe they deserve a more honourable opponent than rabid pornopopulism."

What, I wonder, does Ignatieff think about Canada's ties with said monarchy?