When John Howard put the question to the people, a grassroots-based organisation, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, came together to lead the No campaign to victory.

Unable to restrain themselves even while the world was mourning the passing of our beloved Queen, some “republicans” had to declare that the end of the reign would finally deliver that silver bullet, a politicians’ republic.

DEFEAT

This is based on the proposition they did not hold at the time that the 1999 defeat can only be explained by the Queen’s popularity.

This is as fictional as the lies they made up about John Howard – that he rigged both the Convention and the question and somehow imposed the Keating-Turnbull model. [see video below]

That the consequence of installing a politicians’ republic would be the trashing of the constitution and the break-up of Australia is of little concern to “republicans”.

As former WA premier Barnett warned “if anyone wants to introduce a republic, dissolve the Australian Federation and the Constitution, then the risk is Western Australia may not rejoin”.

Indeed, it is at least arguable, as former chief justice Sir Harry Gibbs noted, that a change so fundamental to the federation compact would require the support of all and not just four States.

And yet frivolous reasons are constantly offered for stripping Australia’s oldest institution from the Constitution.

Thus a recent editorial in The Australian Financial Review supporting republican change relied in part on Jamaica being a republic – which it isn’t.

This recalled two prominent republican politicians who, in demanding Australia become a politicians’ republic, both mistakenly added: “After all, Canada is”.

The AFR’s reason for getting rid of the nation’s oldest document is that the royal link is “anomalous”.

Although the AFR apparently mulled over this for 23 years, the founders would have seen this as a grossly inadequate indeed laughable reason for such massive change.

The final decision was left to the people in a Swiss-style referendum not only to prevent change being made “in haste” or “by stealth” and to encourage public discussion.

DESIRABLE

It was also to delay change until there is “strong evidence” that the proposed change is “desirable, irresistible and inevitable”.

When you consider that standard, it is little wonder that support for that folly, the Voice, has reportedly collapsed.

After the Financial Review’s misstep, The Australian’s Peter van Onselen tried to revive the use of plebiscites to lock in the vote, notwithstanding that after two decades of pushing them, even the ARM has given up.

Plebiscites are designed to deny people any details of the proposal, the reason why the two Napoleons used them so often.

Unsurprisingly, the constitutionality of this rort is in doubt, as a silk explained to conferences of both the Samuel Griffith Society and ACM.

Van Onselen then claims the 1999 NSW vote was “close”. Close? 46 per cent voted Yes, a low 44 per cent of all registered voters. Worse, 70 per cent of NSW electorates voted No, a record landslide in electoral terms.

As I’ve said, against a well-run No campaign, a second referendum will produce an even greater landslide No than in 1999. The elites have moved on and the fake republicans have lost the youth vote. They might as well close up shop.

The fake republicans make the very error which Hilaire Belloc identified long ago. (My thanks to a reader for reminding me of this giant).

Like most in their class, “republicans” think in words rather than ideas. This explains the endorsement of “climate change” rather than that factually discredited myth, “global warming”.

FLUIDITY

Then of course supporting the words “gender fluidity” overcomes the problem of contrary biological facts.

Belloc’s illustration of the error of thinking in words rather than ideas was prescient.

His was in the error of contrasting America as a “republic” with Britain as a “monarchy”. As he points out, the government of the United States is essentially monarchic, while the government of England is essentially republican.

Australia is even more a crowned republic. At the 1891 Convention, a proposal to allow, by careful wording, the governor-general to develop into a US-style president, that is an elected monarch, was roundly rejected.

Australia has long enjoyed republican government, as federalists such as Sir Henry Parkes and Australia’s first Prince of the Church, Patrick Francis Cardinal Moran, declared enthusiastically.

And as the founders who wrote the Constitution and sat on the High Court declared in 1907, the Governor-General is the Constitutional head of the Commonwealth and the King is Sovereign.