It is a truth universally acknowledged, some might say, that modern shadow banking is a menace to the proper functioning and oversight of our financial and economic system.
We appear, more widely, to have something akin to shadow governance, But a small example of that, in this country, and what we quaintly call its dependencies, is the British Crown.
While, in previous centuries, the monarchy wielded real, substantial and avowed power and privilege, various rising sections of society displayed extremely vigorous and ultimately effective opposition. Yet, now that it has declined into a kind of genteel Disneydom, any hostile preoccupation with it is generally regarded as impolite or immature.
I used to have some sympathy for that notion, although my chief objection to full-blown republicanism was always the dreadful necessity to elect a president, but now it seems to me that the lingering and near impenetrably obscure constitutional prerogatives of the crown, and the remaining prestige or fascination of the monarchy, create an attraction between it and those who naturally operate in the shadows - which future monarchs, born in a different time and themselves accustomed to a role with even less constitutional clarity, may not be so effective in restraining.
'The night cometh when no man can work.'
