The Queen graciously permits democracy to take place. How nice of her!

The quaint spectacle of a prime minister asking permission of his sovereign for a parliamentary dissolution took place yesterday.   And the Queen graciously consented.

Now of course, she didn’t really have a lot of choice.  Ever since the 1701 Act of Settlement it’s been recognised that the monarchy exists at the behest of parliament rather than the other way round.  Realistically, she’s not going to refuse any such request.

But either symbolism is important or it isn’t.  If it isn’t, then it’s just tiresome.  If it is, then the symbolism is horrible.

Britain’s global reputation is of a class-ridden society in which who you know is far more important than what you know.  The UK is viewed as an amusingly obsequious nation in which people naturally defer to their social betters.  In this context,  ritual of an elected politician deferring to a hereditary dynast is both apt and depressing.  Every time this happens, it sends out the message that democracy is something that is periodically conceded on a discretionary basis by the ruling class.

Of course, this message is far from false, on a daily practical basis.  The UK has become a “born poor – die poor” nation with one of the lowest rates of social mobility in the developed world.  The UK will not last much longer I think, following Scotland’s almost unanimous rejection of the dominant Westminster cult of austeriarchy, and will be replaced by the TKK (Truncated Kingdom of Kick-Down).  Within this nasty country, the deference paid by prime ministers to dynasts, long an empty formal convention, will have a more potent symbolic force.  The theologians of austeriarchy have finally identified the mysterious “Sin against the Holy Ghost” and have decreed that it is “not being born into a wealthy family”.  For this unmentionable crime, Christ’s agony on the cross can serve as no expiation and its punishment is to be visited upon the sinner’s children, and children’s children and children’s children’s children forever and ever amen.

With university fees the highest in Europe, with unpaid internships ensuring that the plebs will never get their fingers in the door of a range of lucrative professions, the only political message offered is to hate and fear those who might be grabbing at your heels.

Of course, prime ministers need to ask permission for an election from SOMEONE in a parliamentary election.  But at least in Ireland, s/he will be asking it of someone who has themselves been elected.  When Enda Kenny asks for a dissolution of the Dail some time in the next year and a bit, he’ll be asking Michael D. Higgins, who has a perfectly good mandate of his own.  One version of elective authority will be deferring to another.  The doctrine of popular sovereignty, the idea that sovereignty is ultimately lodged in the Irish people, will be upheld.

In the UK, the whole “gracious permission” thing coming from a monarch to a minister was always rather embarrassing.  But given the ever more ruthless context of social exclusion in which the coming election is taking place, it’s become embarrassingly appropriate.