Only oath MPs should swear is to their constituents

In order to take your seat and vote or even speak in Parliament, you are required to take the oath. These days having an allegiance to God is optional. But to the monarch, their heirs and successors? Well, that part is deemed far more important than any deity, or even a pledge to truly and faithfully represent the people you have been elected to serve.

When I qualified my Westminster “swearing-in” oath last July with just such a sentiment it attracted some criticism, even outrage in some quarters of the media. While that didn’t lose me any sleep, the truly preposterous bit which stuck with me was that I was accused of showing disrespect to the King and his family by even doing so.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. I made it clear that I was a proud nationalist and that my first loyalty was to my constituents. That holds no disrespect to the monarchy or to monarchists. However, the reaction by some certainly showed utter disrespect to those who favour a republic.

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Seamus Treacy and Barry Macdonald are not well-known names in Scotland. They came to public prominence when, as members of the Bar of Northern Ireland, they applied to be admitted to the Senior Bar in April 1999.

In November 1999 they learned that they had been successful in their applications. Subsequently, they were told that before being “called”, they would be required to make a declaration stating that they sincerely promised and declared to “well and truly serve Queen Elizabeth and all whom I may be lawfully called upon to serve in the office of one of Her Majesty’s Counsel learned in the law according to the best of my skill and understanding”.

Both objected to making this form of the declaration and took the matter to judicial review. In court, their own QC contended that to demand such a declaration discriminated against them because it ran contrary to their principles and was therefore an affront to their political sensibilities.

They and others in future, he advanced, should be asked instead to declare simply that they would well and truly serve any client. They won their case. So, if it is now possible in one part of the UKingdom to swear an oath in a position of public office to those whom you are truly there to serve, why then is it that the oath for MPs to take their seats is still required in its current form?

The personal popularity of the late Queen Elizabeth both here, in Ireland and around the world cannot be denied. However, it should also be remembered that she did intervene in the last days of the 2014 referendum campaign, as she did ahead of the 1979 devolution referendum. The monarchy always keeps out of politics, we are told, except of course when it doesn’t.

What the monarchy symbolises in politics though is outdazzled in terms of the wealth it holds. Last year, The Guardian newspaper estimated the King’s personal wealth including property and other personal assets to be in the order of £2 billion – a figure described at the time by a royal spokesperson as “a highly creative mix of speculation, assumption and inaccuracy”.

Predictably, no official figure was offered to counter this. However, with His Majesty climbing this year’s Sunday Times Rich List with a more meagre £610 million fortune, it’s clear that between what is owned personally and what is held in trust for him through accident of birth, his personal inherited wealth is surely beyond the dreams of avarice.

"But isn’t monarchy good for tourism?” comes the cry from some quarters. It’s hardly a principled argument, nor does it even enjoy the benefit of being true.

After all, the Schonbrunn Palace and the Palace of Versailles both throng with tourists attracted by their history and splendour and extravagance, despite none of the descendants of the Habsburgs or the Bourbons laying claim any longer to one of their doubtless many spare rooms there.

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Other versions of monarchy are of course available. Across northern Europe, particularly in social-democratic Scandinavia, there are examples of constitutional monarchies that serve their purpose more frugally, modestly and transparently than the House of Windsor does here.

It’s been a while since my party last debated the role of the monarchy in an independent Scotland. But while you’d be right to detect my strong personal republican and democratic tendencies at this point, it’s not a debate that I’m in any hurry to see being re-opened.

The SNP have long spoken of a “social union” that transcends the political union, and our leaders in the past have made great play of the fact that it is the Union of the Parliaments that we seek to undo, rather than the Union of the Crowns.

(Image: PA)

For many post-independence, retaining the monarchy as a symbol of that shared history will be important in helping bring people together, whether they happened to be opposed to independence or in favour. It is only through tolerance and understanding of views other than our own that we stand a chance of winning over the middle ground and helping us reach the levels of support for independence that we need to reach a tipping point.

In getting there, some matters are better resolved collectively between all of us in Scotland after we have won independence.

If Scotland wants to continue to have an unelected head of state, then it shall be so. As with independence, it must be the people who live here who ultimately make that decision.