This week, the Guardian published a remarkable feature by Andy Beckett discussing the possibility of an army revolt should British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn form a government.

Beckett takes the prospect of a military rebellion seriously, recalling the military opposition to the Wilson government and the coup rumours that circulated when Thatcher seemed likely to lose to Labour in 1980.

His article follows an extraordinary intervention from a senior serving general, who, last September, told the Sunday Times that Corbyn would face “a mutiny” if he sought to scrap Trident or cut the size of the armed forces.

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“The army just wouldn’t stand for it,” the unnamed officer said. “The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.”

Beckett’s piece makes particularly interesting reading for Australians because it outlines the role the Queen might play in any anti-Corbyn revolt. The article quotes Michael Clarke from the Royal United Services Institute, a leading military think tank:

The armed forces don’t belong to the government, they belong to the monarch. And they take this very seriously. When [the Conservative] Liam Fox was defence secretary a few years ago, for his first couple of weeks he referred to ‘my forces’ rather than Her Majesty’s forces – as a joke, I think. It really ruffled the military behind the scenes. I heard it from senior people in the army. They told me, ‘We don’t work for him. We work for the Queen.’

“If Corbyn makes it into office,” Beckett says, “his republicanism may challenge this mindset rather more fundamentally.”

It’s a good illustration of how it’s quite wrong to understand the Queen as a harmless anachronism maintained merely to amuse tourists. The royal family possesses real power, particularly in times of crisis. That’s the point of the sovereign: the parliament changes but the monarchy doesn’t, with its permanence intended as a sort of mystical embodiment of national sentiment.

Some years back in a piece for Crikey, I penned a want ad to represent the succession protocols by which the monarch was chosen. It went like this:

Position vacant. Generous remuneration. No skills or qualifications required. Male applicants preferred. Definitely no Catholics. Atheists, Jews and Muslims need not apply.

As I said then, any reputable newspaper would refuse to publish that advertisement, since it violates so many anti-discrimination laws.

Since then, new legislation has amended the rules by which the throne is inherited, ending the old system of male primogeniture (in which a younger son took precedence over an older daughter) as well as the, um, traditional ban on Catholics. But the new tolerance only extends so far. The monarch must, for instance, be “in communion” with the Church of England, a stipulation which rules out not only Catholics (one hand giveth, the other taketh away) but also atheists and adherents of any other faith (sorry Jews, sorry Buddhists).

In any case, in the end, the whole caper rests on inheritance. If you’re descended from Princess Sophia the Electress of Hanover, you’ve a shot at the top job. If you don’t, then you haven’t.

The pitch has run like this: 'Help us replace the Queen with a president – it will make no difference at all!'

Mostly, the royal family spends its days engaged in lavish, taxpayer-funded pageantry designed to reinforce old-fashioned social hierarchies. But, in the context of political turmoil – or even the election of a reforming social democrat – the monarchy becomes a rallying point for all the most reactionary elements of society. We saw what that meant in Australia in 1975, when an unelected governor general (the Queen’s representative) removed a democratic government in a soft coup – a gentler manifestation of the kind of intervention Beckett found the British military to be contemplating.

Which is all by way of pointing out that there’s an obvious democratic case for republicanism.

Unfortunately, that’s not the debate we’re having. Since the defeat of the 1999 referendum, republicans have tended to downplay attacks on the monarchy and minimise the changes they’re proposing. In recent years, the pitch has run, almost literally, like this: “Help us replace the Queen with a president – it will make no difference at all!”

It’s not exactly inspiring – and, not surprisingly, the more the argument has shifted from democratic reform to national feels, the more support has tanked.

A ReachTel poll in 2014 found backing for a republic at a 20 year low, with less than 40% of respondents supporting the change. Crucially, enthusiasm for Republicanism among 18 to 35 year olds had plummeted, down to just 35.6%.

An ANU study into Australian Attitudes Towards National Identity recorded a similar trend, with the numbers backing a republic dropping consistently since the last failed referendum, and an article published this week in the Australian Journal of Political Science found that support for the monarchy has grown steadily since 1999.

The defeat in 1999 has been taken as proof that a successful campaign must be apolitical, that Australians will only support minimal reform, and that republicanism must be couched in a way that offends no one at all. Hence the logic of enlisting all the state and territory leaders behind the proposition that “Australia should have an Australian head of state”: to establish unanimity in the political class so change disrupts no one.

It’s a plan that might have worked back in the mid-80s when Bob Hawke used “consensus” as a winning slogan. But times are different now. Ours is an age of polarisation. It’s entirely utopian to imagine conservatives won’t fight tooth and nail against any republic, no matter how it’s worded. It’s even more utopian to think ordinary voters will embrace a referendum on the say-so of politicians.

Indeed, all the signs point to a quite different logic: the support of the political elite generally translates into either indifference or outright hostility on the part of the public.

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A campaign highlighting the reactionary role of the monarchy and arguing for an extension of democratic participation would, of course, be more confrontational than touting the so-called minimal model, largely because many of the arguments for the status quo depend, explicitly or implicitly, on the importance of an unelected head of state to check the aspirations of voters. In response, republicans would need to articulate a new system and then convince people of its merits.

But that’s by no means impossible. Most voters like democracy and they dislike who try to check it. Every survey shows, for instance, that people overwhelmingly want an elected head of state – it’s the politicians and pundits who quail at what that might mean.

There’s no Jeremy Corbyn on the Australian horizon and one doubts that anyone in the military frets overtly about the increasingly unlikely prospect that Bill Shorten will one day sit in the Lodge. Nevertheless, we now know that, in 1975, John Kerr engaged in protracted conversations with Prince Charles and the palace before dismissing an elected prime minister from office. If it happened once, it can happen again.

That’s the real reason to get rid of the whole damn family.