Comment 19 by katy Cordeth :

I don't know what will happen, though, when the old dear breathes her last and goes to the big foxhunt in the sky. Charles isn't very prepossessing and has little moral authority*, and his son is a product of the 21st century and someone I can't imagine is overly religious.

When you think about it, the whole country is still very much in the clutches of myth. Foreign affairs even moreso and likely influencing the homeland politics to boot. So politics is very much privy to the role of defender of faiths etc.

As to leadership? it's far more sensible to have an established long term educated and secular think tank than a democratically elected religious one in my view. An influential leadership icon for a secular world ahead of us. It's not so much about the democracy of who is in power as it is about the democracy of what the power is disseminating!