It isn’t just one bad apple, overthrowing the monarchy system must be central to our socialist project argues Marcus Strom.
The controversy surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – the man formerly known as Prince – has also exposed the peculiar undemocratic nature of Australia’s constitutional arrangements. That Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has indicated Australian support for removing Andrew from the line of succession (a requirement given the Crown is an Australian monarch, not just a British one) may strike some as decisive. In reality, it is the safest of safe bets – and nowhere near enough.
Removing one royal from the line of succession raises the obvious question: why stop at the eighth in line? Why not remove one through seven – and indeed the entire hereditary principle itself? The monarchy isn’t just a problem when one of the royals fucks up, it is an institutional bulwark against popular sovereignty and democratic control, not only in Britain but in Australia, Canada and everywhere Charles is head of state.
Yes, Andrew’s behaviour has been particularly odious – but remember it is not his misogyny and allegations of rape, use of prostitution, (all male royal activities going back centuries) that has seen him arrested. It is leaking of ‘state secrets’ to his pal Jeffrey Epstein: state secrets of the Crown.
Merely calling for removal of the eighth in line to the throne sits uneasily with ALP’s commitment to a republic in the National Platform. But like many things that sit in the National Platform, they are implemented at the discretion of the parliamentary party and, of course, with Royal Assent. Party members – like our citizens – are not sovereign.
Andrew’s notoriety is framed through the lens of scandal and moral outrage, much of it connected to his associations with Jeffrey Epstein. However, focusing on a single royal as the problem risks misunderstanding the deeper issue. It allows a safety valve within the system, much along the lines of an ‘heir and a spare’. This time the spare can be thrown to the dogs to save the monarchy.
But the privileges and protections that allowed such entitled behaviour to flourish are not the realm of Andrew’s alone. They flow from the institution itself.
Monarchy is not an ornamental curiosity perched atop the Australian system. Monarchism is woven into the constitutional fabric. The Crown is the legal foundation of executive authority, military command and vast reserve powers that sit counterposed to democratic principles. Anyone remember Gough?
To pretend that republicanism is simply a matter of “tidying up” these arrangements – swapping a distant monarch for a president wielding identical powers – is to miss the point entirely.
This is where the ‘official’ republican movement, most prominently the Australian Republican Movement, has long faltered. Its minimalist vision, promising continuity with cosmetic alteration, has failed to inspire. Australians have repeatedly shown little enthusiasm for models that leave existing power structures fundamentally intact. Symbolic change without democratic transformation generates neither urgency nor passion.
Left tails the liberal establishment on the monarchy
In general, the socialist left is much the same – but in reality worse, as it should know better than to tail after liberal constitutional ‘progressives’. The episodic republicanism of the ‘radical’ left is usually reserved for royal weddings, jubilees, or scandals, drawing attention to the cost of the ‘feudal relic’, only to recede once media attention shifts.
Even the death of Elizabeth II – heralded by some as a potential turning point –predictably produced a rise in monarchist sentiment. Such moments of transition tend to reinforce continuity, not disrupt it.
For many on the left, republicanism is dismissed as irrelevant because the monarchy is perceived as “British” somehow external to Australian political life, or just window dressing when the ‘real power’ lies with capitalists. Others reduce it to a nationalist gesture – a final severing of colonial ties, yet these perspectives are wrong and trivialise what is at stake. The question is not about cultural identity or historical symbolism. It is political power in our own constitution.
Genuine republicanism is not constitutional tinkering. It is the democratic and radical re-establishment of a state under popular and working-class control. It is about accountability, electability, and recallability of public officials. It is about dismantling unaccountable authority and replacing it with institutions grounded explicitly in popular sovereignty. This includes dismantling the Australian Defence Force, which pledges allegiance to the crown not the people, and replacing it with a popular militia.
A democratic republic means more than the absence of a monarch. It will require a new constitutional order: proportional representation to a single chamber, the removal of undemocratic veto structures in the Senate and the courts, real mechanisms of recall and strict limits on executive power. It would overturn secrecy in government and the concentration of authority in unelected offices. It would insist that political authority is as decentralised as possible and flows upward from the people, not downward from the Crown or President or ‘Nation’.
Seen in this light, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is not the constitutional problem. He is merely a reminder of the putrid institution of monarchism sitting atop our constitution. Removing one controversial figure leaves untouched the logic that produced the controversy in the first place.
If Australia is to confront the contradictions exposed by each new royal embarrassment, the solution is not selective adjustment. It is revolutionary-democratic renewal through radical republicanism. Not removal of one individual from the succession – but removal of the entire edifice.
That is why Labor Tribune calls for a democratic constitutional convention with full powers to establish a provisional government and a new republican constitution.
Such a democratic republic should:
- abolish the monarchy system and its constitution.
- reject presidentialism, monarchism’s undemocratic offspring.
- ensure election by proportional representation to a single legislative and executive assembly.
- abolish the senate, an undemocratic check on popular power.
- institute annual parliaments where MPs can be recalled and are paid no more than the average skilled wage.
- abolish the states and introduce meaningful regional-local government.
A democratic constitution must ensure:
- a treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, comprehensive land rights and reparations for lost lands.
- freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience.
- secularisation. Separation of church and state. Religion a private matter.
- election of the judiciary from qualified persons.
- disbandment of the standing army and a democratically armed population.
- citizenship rights for migrants and refugees; for the free movement of people.
- the right to work and the right to strike.
- the right to housing free from arbitrary eviction.
- an end to secrecy in government and business. Abolish ASIO, ASIS.
- workers’ supervision of management and production through workplace councils.
The fight for a republic is not a diversion from the fight for socialism. On the contrary, it is the means by which we open the political space for the victory of socialism and the democratic government of the working class. Socialism without democracy is impossible.