This House would abolish the British monarchy

It was, however, mostly innacurate nitpicking, so he has left me an awful lot of rebuttal to get through, after which I shall contribute another substantive. Firstly, my opponent made the bizarre statement "The UK is not a democracy. " I don't know where my opponent lives, but as a resident of the UK I find this statement both odd and unfounded. The UK is a parliamentary democracy in a constitutional monarchy. Perhaps my opponent would trust the CIA's view of events [1]. My opponent then called me out for my use of the word 'racist'. I would like to ask my opponent to refrain from nitpicking unless he can do it accurately, as religious racism is a subsector of racism. If it will make my opponent feel happier, I shall replace my use of the word 'racist' with 'discriminatory'. The Opposition then said that the Queen does not exist to represent the people, however we feel that this contradicts their case. If the Queen doesn't exist to represent her people and be a figurehead then the question the Opposition asks is: "what DOES she exist for? ". On the point of the separation of the church and state my opponent has made the assumption that the monarch acts in these circles separately. She doesn't. Every year she gives a Christmas Message in her capacity as HEAD OF STATE which also gives a Christian message coming from her capacity as HEAD OF THE CHURCH. The two couldn't be any more fused than they already are. [2]Moving onto the Opposition's second stream of rebuttal, we never said that the Queen was too old to rule. We said she would die soon and that time would be ideal for abolishing the monarchy. The point about Charles's age is irrelevant as, under our proposals, he would never become King. And Prince Charles has broken with just about every royal convention in the book with regards to his involvement outside of his royal life, for example his lobbying activities. And we on side Proposition think it perfectly appropriate to make judgements about what Charles will be like as King - it's what people do with democratic elections all the time. People have to make a judgement about what they THINK will happen, and the notion that we shouldn't do this for Charles is frankly absurd. My opponent's first contention is nonsense - we are in no way suggesting that those holding office should not be allowed to hold office. That really WOULD be absurd, racist and highly discriminatory. Our argument is that the fusion of power caused by the Head of State automatically being Head of the Church is wrong because of the conflicts of interest which lie therein. We do not intend to marginalise anyone, as we believe the present system marginalises those who do not belong to the "state religion". We believe the foundation of a liberalist society is the abolition of state religion, as it removes marginalisation and makes the country more open to different faiths. Moreover, the state religion has caused major problems for the UK in the past, notably the rift between Catholics and Anglicans around the time of Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. This is arguably one of the root causes of the Irish troubles and we believe it is a logical extension to abolish the state religion. And on the Opposition's final contention, we've already stated our intention to replace the Queen with a new figurehead, the President. So there will still be a figurehead for the UK. If the Commonwealth still wants to retain its link with the UK, perhaps the President could retain the title of HONORARY President of these other nations, but only if they should so wish (recent trends in countries such as Australia suggest that these nations would like to remove the Queen as their Head of State). With all of that rebuttal out of the way we hope to have demonstrated that the Opposition has no real case. With that we move onto our third substantive. Substantive III: We have much better things to spend £30million onIf the Queen were to drop dead tomorrow (although we accept she may not), we would still be in a global economic crisis. In 2013, the UK Government paid the monarchy a salary of £30million for staffing expenses and their own personal expenses. However, this £30million figure does not even include all the assets which are owned by the Government but which are reserved for the sole use of the Queen. Not only is the Government forced to hold onto assets such as Buckingham Palace and St James' Palace, along with many other royal residences outside of London such as Balmoral and Windsor Castle, but the Government must pay for their upkeep. When Windsor Castle was mostly destroyed by fire in the year 1994, it was John Major's Government which had to foot the bill for refurbishing. So this £30million figure is a simple drop in the ocean of how much we spend on someone who is nothing but a hereditary figurehead, who does not hold the job on merit, who serves no real purpose yet constitutionally wields unprecedented power which cannot be blocked. The choice is simple. If we establish a republic, we could sell off all but perhaps two of these residences. This alone would generate more than enough income to pay for the transitionary cost - there is a MASSIVE shortage of property in West London. We won't be paying this extortionate sum for someone who has essentially become an invalid historical anomaly, we'll have millions of pounds extra per year to spend on things which are actually effective, and we'll have a President who won't be overpaid and will be able to empathise with the people's problems because he has not been simply born into unimaginable luxury. In a country where politicians are seen as out of touch, this will do wonders for restoring faith in politics. Summarising this speech and our case so far, we've already demonstrated why a Republic of Great Britain is better than the status quo, we've made the case for why the time for action is now, and we have now demonstrated that the Opposition have no real arguments to back up their case and we have now shown the major economic benefits of this proposal. I now invite Opposition to give their final substantives. [1] . https://www.cia.gov...[2] . http://en.wikipedia.org...