Britain makes Royal Succession more equitable. Does not realize irony in doing so.

   by Roland Hulme

Britain's Insipid Political Correctness has reached new levels of absurdity.

Royal succession inconsequentially more fair

Today, leaders from the Commonwealth and Britain's Prime Minister announced their intention to change the "unfair" system of royal succession – that dictated the next in line for the throne should be the eldest male child of the reigning monarch, passing over any older daughters.

"The idea that a younger son should become monarch instead of an elder daughter simply because he is a man is at odds with the modern countries that we've all become." David Cameron explained.

I am speechless.

Not because I have any problem with the gender of our next ruling monarch – Britain is essentially a matriarchy and historically we've always done better with a Queen ruling over us (many would argue the same about having a woman in 10 Downing Street.)

My problem with adopting this neat, twee, oh-so-21st-century change to the system is that it's absurd.

Why should you attempt to bring "equality" to a system of choosing a head of state that is by its very nature inequitable?

Making the rules of succession "less unfair" neatly ignores the fact that they're completely, absurdly, delightfully unfair to begin with. The King or Queen becomes so because of who their parents are; which is really the most "unfair" way of choosing a head of state possible (it was so unfair it even kicked off the French revolution.)

If you want to make the system "fair" have an election instead, or start choosing the next King or Queen based on some kind of X Factor weekly voting system, or a popularity poll, or something.

Don't start pretending that the system is now "fair" just because a girl can be as eligible as a boy to sit on the throne. That girl or boy still need to be the eldest child of a specific individual from a royal dynasty that stretches back hundreds of years.

It's not meant to be fair. It's not meant to be "politically correct." It's royalty, for God's sake!

If you're going to keep this grossly unfair, anarchic, backwards system of picking the head of state (which incidentally, I think we should – I'm definitely a royalist) we should at least stick with the same grossly unfair, anarchic, backwards traditions regarding it that we've maintained for longer than our Kingdom's been United.

Changing the rules to appease these blithering busybodies undermines the significance of having royalty in the first place. Those archaic "rules" and traditions exist as they do for a reason.

They have a long, storied and occasionally bloody history that shaped the way Britain's royalty works. They deserved more respect than to be changed simply to appease Guardian-reading nitwits who seem determined to suck the glory out of everything traditional and British.