I’ve decided I’m more or less agnostic on the whole idea of the British Monarchy. Having been born there with all my extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents still over there, I can appreciate the history, the tradition, and the continuity it represents in the United Kingdom- but I also don’t live over there, so my tax dollars don’t go to pay for it and I don’t have to live with it on a full-time basis- though, given America’s fascination with the British royals, they’re more or less inescapable over on this side of the ocean as well.
America, I find, tends to fall into more or less three categories when it comes to the Royal Family. The first is utterly indifferent to the whole thing and could care less. The second vociferously disapproves of monarchy as a concept and will not hesitate to be vocal about it. The third will tune in for absolutely anything Royal. (I’m sure plenty of Princess Diana Memorial Plates were sold in the UK following her death, but I’m also very sure many, many more were sold in the United States.)
Being a dual citizen, my declared agnosticism sort of straddles both countries nicely. I don’t live with it and I don’t pay for it, so if the people of the UK get fed up with it and decide to get rid of it, well, then fair play to them. I also had absolutely no patience with the British right-wing media trying to make something out of the fact that President Biden didn’t go to the Coronation- I know it’s been a while since the last Coronation, but a quick Google search will reveal that no American President has gone to a Coronation, whether through random coincidence or general principle, I don’t know- but either way, there was a Revolution here so we didn’t have to go to things like Coronations, so I’m fine with it and y’all should calm down about it a little bit.
The other half of my citizenship- barring a complete scandal or breakdown of the existing British constitutional order,1 is in favor of keeping it. Unless you’re going to radically change the nature of British democracy (a possibility, if they decide to ditch the Monarchy, I’ll grant you)- then any elected head of state is going to be largely ceremonial and given the state of the British political class, I could see both of their major parties treating it as either a retirement gig for former Prime Ministers or a handy place to put people they’d rather not deal with. (Consider: President Boris Johnson, President Jeremy Corbyn or even President Jacob Reese-Mogg). Stephen Fry had a rather good take on it all that I came across on Tik-Tok— pointing out that the genius of the monarchy is that it can be for everyone and for nobody all at once, as it’s got a relatively little impact on people’s day to day lives and if you get in the business of electing a Head of State, then the ‘Not My King’ crowd would immediately become a large ‘Not My President’ crowd.
It’s easy to roll your eyes at things like history, tradition, and continuity these days, but in the era of ‘move fast and break things’ where institutions both large and small are under attack daily, I think it’s refreshing to hold on to things like the Monarchy. If for no other reason than the British Monarchy still does the pomp, circumstance, and all that, and, as it turns out, The Sex Pistols were right all those years ago: Tourists are, indeed, money.
Just for the sake of argument though, I went to the website of Republic UK just to see what the arguments were and was largely unimpressed. It seems to boil down to, “Well, it’s the principle of the thing” which is a legitimate argument, but I don’t think it’s going to catch fire and tip the scales against the Monarchy, at least not any time soon. Plus, there’s this:
And because we can’t hold the King and his family to account at the ballot box, there’s nothing to stop them abusing their privilege, misusing their influence or simply wasting our money.
Meanwhile, the monarchy gives vast arbitrary power to the government, shutting voters out from major decisions affecting the national interest. The King can only ever act in the interests of the government of the day and does not represent ordinary voters.
The monarchy is a broken institution. A head of state that’s chosen by us could really represent our hopes and aspirations – and help us keep politicians in check.
Maybe I’m missing some of the finer points of British democracy here— for sure, I have seen persuasive arguments that a Monarchy does give governments a certain amount of opaque space to work with that raises the potential for mischief, but my understanding is that the Monarchy derives its power and privilege from Parliament and rules in the name of the Parliament elected by the people?
If the government of the day doesn’t represent ordinary voters, I think that’s a Parliamentary problem. Plus, voters can (and should) demand transparency on how their money is spent. I think it’s a good thing the Monarchy pays tax now- even though that was a major sea-change when that happened in the 90s. (I do think Charles should have paid inheritance tax as well and hopefully, they advocate quietly for that to change too because I don’t think that was a good look right out of the gate.)
If the argument boils down to, “Well, it’s the principle of the thing,” then, buddy I’m here to tell you that you got another thing coming because we elect our head of state over on this side of the ocean and invest in them considerable amounts of Executive Power (more than they should have, really, but we live in the age of the Imperial Presidency) and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. We’re staring down a probable re-match between an 80-year-old President that wanders off script and says things like ‘Malarkey’ and our first orange President who remains just as charming as he was when he came down the escalator in 2016. (There’s a non-zero chance we end up with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as well, which isn’t an improvement.) Needless to say, Americans are just thrilled by it all.
The politicians over here cash checks, they’re not kept in check. And our hopes and aspirations? They’re more or less irrelevant to the process at this point- though occasionally, we get lucky.
Can the Monarchy be better? Sure it can. I think they’re pretty damn aware that they’ve skated by on the Queen being The Queen for a few decades now and King Charles is no doubt acutely aware that he’s not his mother and they’re going to have to get out there and get after it a bit if they want to keep the ship afloat, as it were.
But if you watched the Coronation, the signs were there. The new King wanted to be the Defender of All Faiths, not just The Faith and there were representatives of multiple faiths present at a Coronation for the first time. There were woman Priests and the diversity of the UK was reflected in the ceremony— I don’t know what the coverage was like over there, but I know I was hearing the words ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ a lot on ABC News- which if you want to be cynical about it, at least shows that the Institution is willing to adopt the language of the elites if nothing else.
Even the frankly weird, ‘Homage of the People’ thing2- where they wanted everyone to shout their allegiance to the new king- was toned down after the feedback they got.
I think people are underrating the new King. I think the Monarchy is going to be smaller, more cost-effective and I do think he’s going to be open to things that surprise people to modernize it. I expect more than a few nations will quietly ditch the Monarchy in favor of their own heads of state- it wouldn’t surprise me if Australia becomes a Republic in the next couple of decades and all of that is just fine— at the end of the day, when it comes to Monarchy in the year of our Lord, 2023, the people have got to want it and it’s understandable that some of them won’t anymore.
(I’m going to place a quiet marker down here that I might be wrong about, but: I think there’s going to be a quiet reconciliation with Harry and Megan at some point. I don’t think Harry is particularly interested in being a full-time working Royal and that’s fine, but I think you’ll see them here and there.)
We were there the week before the Coronation and it’s hard to gauge the mood3 of a country based on a week, but in London, people were already staking out spots on The Mall to get a good view. Down west, when we went to visit relatives, bunting was up, and villages and neighborhoods were preparing street parties and get-togethers both large and small— maybe people were just happy they have another Bank Holiday. Maybe people will take any excuse for a piss-up. Maybe it’ll wither and die and gently pass away into history.
But for right now, the crowds came out. They packed The Mall. They waved the flags and cheered the new King. The future has yet to be determined.
This is a fictional scene, but would largely be the end of the Monarchy which is why it’ll never happen- but that’s the kind of Constitutional breakdown I’m talking about.
If I’m guessing, this was largely due to the ending of hereditary peers in the House of Lords- so the aristocracy isn’t what it used to be, a fact they mentioned at the Coronation. So, originally, I think I read it was the ‘nobles’ that pledged their allegiance, and someone just kind of switched that to the populace at large.
They did scale it back- in terms of scale and attendance- which was good, but there were some dodgy arrests— but I think that’s less of a function of the Coronation and more a problem with the god-awful Protest Law the government brought in a couple of years back. (You saw similar high-handedness at the Sarah Everard vigil.) Had the Monarchy been thinking, they could have announced a 125 million pound donation to benefit food banks, services for the needy, etc- as I’m not sure they would have been allowed to pay for the Coronation themselves, but they could be more open to off-setting the costs in future somehow.