I have never felt more lonely in my republicanism, or more wedded to it

‘While the Queen’s death has entrenched my republicanism, it seems to have done the opposite to much of the country.’ Photograph: Reuters

I have always harboured a secret fear that I could be a “soft royalist”. The ingredients were all there: I’m a history buff who is fascinated by the machinations – and sordid gossip – surrounding Britain’s monarchs of yore; I have a weakness for nostalgia; I own the updated version of Tina Brown’s 2007 biographical opus of Diana, Princess of Wales. I have no particular personal dislike of the royals as individuals and I have found myself feeling truly sympathetic, such as when Queen Elizabeth II lost her husband of 73 years during lockdown.

But the past 12 days have revealed just how staunch my republican principles really are; they fortified them, in fact. It seems obvious: rather than passing the sceptre, we should be taking this opportunity to throw it on to the scrapheap of history. Never has the fiction of a divine right to rule seemed so threadbare.