Well, maybe not.. but upon the death of the late Queen (a living Saint in many people’s eyes) the resultant sycophancy was overwhelming. It focussed my ire. And so, what next for the monarchy? At the time this question was largely drowned out (negative answers certainly were) by a positive tsunami of extravagant national admiration of the late 96 year old, and a grief which beggars belief – given that less than 1% of the population had ever met her in person and far less than that ever benefitted from anything she ever said, (or, more likely, had written for her).
As I grow older I face another ‘coming out’. Many years ago there was the No God issue – now I ‘bite the bullet’ again, and must admit that I am a closet republican. This flies in the face of 60 years of admiring state occasions, (we do them well) but never really questioning the need for all the deference to this branch of the Establishment.
One part of me relishes the popular accounts of the suggested inbred idleness of certain elements of the monarchy: with a wry smile I hear of eggs specially boiled and of toothpaste squeezed by ever-attentive flunkies. Another part, if any of it is true, is quite repulsed. I have seen countless flowerbeds tarted up ahead of a Royal Visit. Are these dignitaries really so stupid as to suppose that every town looks this pretty all the time? No comment. Will Prince Harry’s memoirs denounce this unchallenged high life – this entitled attitude? Will they change anything, or will the key members of ‘The Firm’ continue in their absurdly pampered lifestyles regardless.
We, the taxpayers, fund the Royals’ lifestyle — cosseted living, cosseted travel and so on, for what? On one side of the balance sheet there is tourism; hoards flock to London and elsewhere, to drink in the palaces and the pageantry. Set against this the enormous personal wealth of sovereign and other members of our royal family (cash, possessions and real estate) all unearned in any serious nine to five sense, passing from generation to generation, distancing them surely from the realities of daily life for most of their subjects? Set against it the elevated status of the monarchy, not just the flower beds, but the free meals, the ludicrous choreographed deference (codes of etiquette when meeting a royal personage: ‘You must not speak until spoken to’, and so on!). Set against it the privileged legal status of the monarchy.
And here I don’t just mean the sovereign’s exemption from the requirement to hold a driving licence (and doubtless many more areas of special treatment) but the many everyday laws from which he/she has exemption. Most will be aware of the (purely cosmetic) royal assent to any new Act of Parliament. How many know of what might be called the royal dissent? At a recent count there were over 160 UK laws from which the Queen or (then) Prince Charles gained exemption through their lawyers. And these are in serious areas, such as Landlord and Tenant Law, Labour Relations, Sex and Race Discrimination and so on. So, royal employees are retained under far less favourable terms than others; a number were summarily dismissed, it is said, upon Charles’s accession – surplus to requirements as he moved home. Tenants in royal properties are denied the right to escape from potentially crippling leases. Environmental and conservation measures are evaded. The list goes on.
To his credit, it is said that the new king seeks a less extravagant coronation than his immediate forbears, in keeping with the straitened times in which most of his citizens live. However, I doubt whether King Charles III will be the last monarch to be cosseted, raised above the rest of us, perhaps not even William V, or George VII. But questions must be asked in a modern democracy as to how long this should go on. Just a point – the £101 million spent annually on royal security is more public money wasted but I have no real intention of actually harming any of them – and I doubt there’s any real point in anyone else doing it either.