Letters have flooded in to The Guardian on the proposed repeal of the Act of Settlement. One which caught a readers' eye deals with the issue of the Commonwealth realm's approval of such changes to the succession:

In your report on government plans to amend legislation governing the succession to the throne (End of the Anglican crown - 300 year bar to be lifted, September 25) you suggest that this would require "the consent of member nations of the Commonwealth". This is slightly misleading. There is general agreement that it would only be necessary to obtain the consent of the 15 other "Commonwealth realms" - members that retain the Queen as their head of state. Nevertheless, the requirements for unanimity across the Commonwealth realms, and for any changes to be legislated for in each of these states, are significant obstacles to reform.

The passage of such legislation is likely to provide a focus for broader debates about the future of a largely absentee monarchy. It is also bound to revive interest in the quite separate issue of whether it is any longer appropriate for the British monarch to be "head of the Commonwealth". In previous decades British policymakers have shied away from this sort of reform precisely because it was likely to raise more profound questions about the whole bizarre system. Indeed, one wonders whether, on further consideration, they might once again simply decide to "let sleeping dogs lie".

Philip Murphy
Professor of British and Commonwealth history,
University of Reading

Professor Murphy's final paragraph is very interesting.