Why didn't I see it before? A republic -just like the USA, France, Russia, Australia, Zimbabwe etc. That'll solve everything!

Fer fucks sake, even your history of 1649-60 is up the spout, but I can't be arsed to explain about the Protectorate or the rule of those lovely Major-Generals. It'd cut no ice anyway as I hear the buzzing a of a bee in the bonnet here and apian invasions of the headgear are generally impervious to inconvenient information, let alone reason.

You'd be better to seek inspiration and maybe -with caution and common sense- lessons for these times from the ordinary people of the period and their, perceptions, struggles and thoughts; from the likes of the Diggers, Ranters and Levellers, not from the wrangling of politicians striving to get a slice of state power for the rising middle class, to the exclusion and continued disenfranchisement of everyone else. Only slight adjustments were required from the old aristocracy -nothing too drastic as long as they weren't obstinate catholics.

The "commonwealth" and the wars which preceded it left ordinary people feeling used, betrayed, disillusioned and angry -and that's just those who avoided being tortured, flogged or shot for their beliefs. The sort of beliefs which would get you in trouble included equality, fair distribution of land and resources, opposition to the new war in Ireland or anything deemed "blasphemy". Women, of course, had to shut up and get back to the milking parlour -or else! It was a repressive and fickle theocracy, rather like Iran is now, only rather less stable or predictable. The "commonwealth" was as much bullshit in the 1650s as the "commonwealths" of Australia and various states in the USA are now.

I see your wee map doesn't include Ireland. That's where your precious "republican commonwealth" really got stuck into evictions, deportations, genocide and bloody war crimes, not forgotten to this day. Why not try googling for Drogheda? Haven't done it myself, but I reckon you won't have far to scroll down the 21st century tourist crap to get to the massacre, and probably a dose of the revisionism about it (yeah, yeah, the same sort of stuff as the holocaust deniers spout).

So do spare us any more bogus, half-arsed history lessons, please.

As French revolution had been, so tyranic and imperialistic. You are not saying something new. It is a matter of which regime was worse, nothing more and nothing less. Means this answer that you prefer the Kingdom instead of the Commonwealth? I don't think so.

Watch your beloved Second Republic of the State of Spain. Did recognised the First Republic of the State of Navarre? You know that the authonomous Vascon government in exile argued that its aim would be the restitution of the Vascon State, why the republican Spanish government didn't agree with that?

In the so called Second World War the authonomous Vascon government didn't reclaim the Vascon territories under the imperial French territories; why? Why if the reclaim was legitime didn't they agree a the democratic restitution of all Vascony. Why the Allies of the Second World War punished so hardly Vascony?

You think that you have given a rough answer; well it's fine. But, let me stand on a cronwellian aesthetic.