7 War and Religious Leader

In our last blog, we noted that the queen is not only the Head of State but also ‘defender of the faith’. The faith in question is the Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church), which has the queen as ‘Supreme Governor’ (source) and is also the only religious group which has members within the House of Lords. Other religious groups and denominations get no representation (although to be fair, they make up a very small proportion of the total legislators, 28 out of 789 source).

Just to note, our argument here isn’t against the privileged position of the Church of England (that falls under democratic rather than constitutional reform), just that the Head of State should not endorse or promote a religion that could be viewed as providing her access to legislators. The ‘Black Spider Memos’ show that members of the Mountbatten-Windsor family are not adverse to using their position to gain political and legislative changes (source).

The queen is also head of the UK armed forces as Commander and Chief (source), whom all officers and soldiers must swear allegiance to. No oath to their country or the rule of law is required, just to the queen. This doesn’t mean that she leads the soldiers, but it does allow her to appoint her son to the rank of Vice Admiral just a few months after allegations made in a US court about his extracurricular activities (source). 

Our proposal would have the Cat Queen be an entirely civil and secular role. We do not believe that a cat should be Head of State, head of her own religious group with legislative influence and Commander and Chief of the military at the same time. We don’t want her being able to appoint her kitten to a senior military position, regardless of how qualified that kitten may be.

The Church of England would be free to keep whoever they wanted as their leader. They would not need to change a thing. We’d recommend that the ceremonial position that the head of state holds with regards to the military should be ended, and that the oath of allegiance soldiers make should instead be directed to the people and/or the rule of law, but this isn’t necessary. Senior military personnel may want to stick with tradition and swear their loyalty to their Cat Queen and we wouldn’t want to make a change that upsets someone just for the sake of it. The whole point of the Cat Queen is to help keep these traditions alive whilst removing the chance of personal failings creeping into the role.

It's still better than the recent military recruitment posters!

Would you keep the Cat Queen as Commander and Chief? Let us know in the comments section below!

Beira Nevis