POLITICALLY NEUTRAL - SO HOW CAN THEY SUPPORT VARIOUS CAUSES?
As Head of State, The Queen must remain politically neutral, since her Government will be formed from whichever party can command a majority in the House of Commons. The Queen herself is part of the legislature and technically she cannot therefore vote for members of another part of the legislature. Under the Maastricht Treaty, The Queen and other members of the Royal Family would be entitled to vote for the European Parliament, or to stand for election to that Parliament. However, the Queen and her family never vote or stand for election to any position, political or otherwise.
However, on occasions Prince Charles has publically aired his concerns:
National Gallery Extension, Trafalgar Square, London
On 30 May 1984 Prince Charles sent shock waves through architecture when he lambasted modern design, describing a scheme by Peter Ahrends for the a towering extension to the National Gallery as a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend". The plan was scrapped and a post-modernist design was chosen instead. "The result is not as exciting but looking at it now we can see it does work well," said Amanda Baillieu, editor of Building Design.
He has also not been afraid to comment on other proposals as, for example, when a skyscraper was designed to replace a Victorian building, "It would be a tragedy if the character and skyline of our capital city were to be further ruined and St Paul's dwarfed by yet another giant glass stump, better suited to downtown Chicago than the City of London," said the Prince.
Genetically-modified Crops:
"What we should be talking about is food security, not food production - that is what matters and that is what people will not understand. And if they think it's somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another, then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
"Any GM crop will inevitably contaminate neighbouring fields”, making it impossible to maintain the integrity of organic and conventional crops. For the first time in history this would lead to "one man's system of farming effectively destroying the choice of another man's" and "turn the whole issue into a global moral question." There was substantial evidence "to show that a growing world population can be fed most successfully in the long term by agricultural systems that manage the land within environmental limits".
What do you think?
Should all members of the Royal Family have to remain politically neutral as after all they have many years of experience?
By having their say is it possible that they can raise awareness and support what many actually think?