This week has been difficult for those of us who want to see a fully democratised, 21st-century polity that doesn’t have a hereditary billionaire as its head of state. Everything from the gratuitous wall-to-wall media coverage to the arrest of anti-monarchy protestors and the state-sanctioned cancel culture of those who dissent has laid bare the fact that this transition is as much about coercion as consent.
But, strangely, these acts have not been the most difficult thing to reconcile in this tumultuous week. Instead, it has been watching the livestream of tens of thousands of fellow citizens from all walks of life, quietly queueing for up to nine hours to file past a coffin while bowing and curtsying. My initial response was one of bemusement followed by a touch of despair. Why, I asked, would so many people, often with so little, show such deference to an institution that is the very embodiment of the inequalities of wealth and power that permeate our country? Because until republicans can fully understand this sentiment, we will struggle to win the argument for transition from constitutional monarchy to constitutional democracy.
To gain that insight you need only listen to the same people interviewed, almost continuously, on television and the radio about why they’ve attended. People are clearly moved, with some in the queue talking about their parents’ deaths or, more commonly, about wanting to be a part of “history”. Thus, many are not there to honour the institution of monarchy or a royal individual; what is prevalent is the expressed need to feel part of something more than themselves.
So how can democratic politics fulfil that function instead? If we think about our current political class replacing monarchy, that is clearly not the answer. How many prime ministers in the past 50 years would you queue up to pay final respects to? Probably not that many. But therein lies a fundamental truth about the institution of monarchy – it is a distraction. It is a spectacle exalted for exemplifying virtues that should be typical in public life and public behaviour. Casting such behaviour as exceptional allows the likes of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and the economic elites they represent to break and exploit the rules for their own benefit and that of their very narrow class interest – of which the monarchy is an integral part.
For half of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, our common life was destroyed by the privatisation of water, energy, public transport and council housing, by the desecration of our land through fracking and sewage in rivers, and by the despoliation of our common wealth in the selling off of children’s and elderly care homes to private equity groups. This all took place without so much as a royal murmur of disapproval.
Yet, at the same time, the royal family managed to exempt itself from more than 160 different pieces of legislation for its own economic advantage, such as the waiving of the 40% inheritance tax on the crown estate’s estimated £15.2bn of royal assets.
So while republicans should respect the language of “duty” and “sacrifice” monarchists have so forcefully claimed that the royal family makes on our behalf, we should not pretend that the reality is anything other than a lie. That is not what monarchy is. It may provide a symbolic way for us to recognise other people’s sacrifice and commitment to society – but the monarchy itself risks nothing and does not suffer, save for having the lives of the royal family become the stuff of celebrity gossip. Through it all, it remains the backbone of a power structure that traces its roots back to feudalism.
The idea of divine and indivisible sovereignty embodied in the monarch has been passed on to parliament. There it continues to legitimise the power of a close-knit elite community resistant to the fact that in a complex modern society all of us have a stake, and all should have a voice.
If you doubt this cultural trickle-down and its replication in the fabric of our social, political and economic life then simply look at the schools our King, his sons and the leaders of industry and finance attended. Eton, Harrow, Westminster – the training camps for the next generation of generals, captains of industry and prime ministers. Perhaps in a genuine democracy, our legislature could offer real checks and balances against such hereditary power. Yet more than half our legislature remains not just unelected, but increasingly distinguished only by having helped to fund the party of hereditary privilege – the Conservative party. Another 92 directly inherited their exalted positions.
If we as a country are to move away from the constant democratic gaslighting of this political class, we must make constitutional, democratic reform a political priority. It isn’t a sideshow to be relegated behind the NHS, the energy crisis or climate issues. Discussion of the monarchy, our politics, our constitution, is something to be vigorously aired, not shut down or even temporarily suppressed.
In a UK that needs such deliberation, my own party would be wise to give expression to such democratic sentiment.
But as we’ve seen this week, republicans must also offer something that goes beyond the material technicalities of politics and governance. Sacrifice, timelessness and ritual need not be bound up in ermine and gold. We glimpsed that most recently during the pandemic. The sense of belonging, of something shared, the clapping for those who risked their lives – who sacrificed for all of us. This is good politics; politics that demands of people that they sometimes act and feel in a way that goes beyond themselves and which is connected with the past and future of our society and community.
Perhaps a republican head of state could be regularly chosen from those who display these qualities. People who put their lives on the line such as the military and firefighters, but also people who commit in other ways like nurses and teachers, who give up their time to kids whose successes they may never live to see.
The British people have never, through democratic means, been given the chance to try something different and approve or reject constitutional monarchy. Instead, those who have exercised their so-called democratic rights have been shut down, intimidated or arrested.
Observing this I was reminded of a Chinese media student who shadowed me while I was a BBC reporter. During one conversation, I mentioned the massacre of Tiananmen Square. She hadn’t heard of it, so I showed her John Simpson’s now famous report on the tragedy. She watched it. Then she said: “Yes, this is probably true. But then I’m fully aware of the nature of the regime I live under. But you? You delude yourself you live in a democracy. So who’s the bigger fool?” She was right. It really is time for us to wake up and understand the flawed reality of the very limited democracy we inhabit.
Clive Lewis is the Labour MP for Norwich South
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