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.
Sandwiched between wall-to-wall coverage paying tribute to the deceased monarch, or the live blogs dissecting the meaning of the pearl choker sported by the Princess of Wales in Westminster Abbey, multiple stories testify to the suspension of common sense required to maintain the existence of the royals, justifying cancelling medical appointments in the middle of a deadly NHS backlog, or arguing for the right of the new king not to pay inheritance tax on the hundreds of millions he has inherited from his mother.
Yet while reaction to the Queen’s death has entrenched my republicanism, it seems to have done the opposite to much of the country. The overwhelming might of tradition has worked its hegemonic magic and rallied support for the royals, even among my peers, the much touted “young Brits” who had supposedly “turned their backs on the monarchy”.
YouGov polling from 11 September found that while 18- to 25-year-olds were more unsure about the monarchy than older cohorts, 40% still supported its existence; this figure hits 53% among 25- to 49-year-olds. King Charles has enjoyed a significant boost in popularity since suffixing his name with III – the same survey found the percentage of people willing to agree with the statement that he would “make a good king” had increased from 32% in May to 63% last week. Younger respondents are less effusive in their support for him, but it is still there.
Data also suggests that republican sentiments held while younger are likely to be eroded by age. Only 14% of under-35s were willing to say the monarchy was “very important” to Britain in 2021, in contrast with 44% of those aged 55 and over. According to the poll maven John Curtice, this is a historical pattern – that gap is much the same as it was in 1994. Those who have cautioned republicans essentially to wait out a short-term boost of support for the royals after the Queen’s death may find themselves disappointed.
Even armed with that realism, it is still jarring to watch so many fall into line, on cue. There are different subsections, of course: from the diehard, committed Royalists-with-a-capital-R, to those who claim republican tendencies but have found themselves capitulating in the face of the state machine, seeing it as a mark of “respect” to Elizabeth not to actively oppose the continuation of the monarchy via her son.
Mini culture wars are playing out via public mourning. As a friend theorised earlier this week, for some (mostly centrist and rightwing media pundits, it has to be said) monarchism has become a means of “left bashing” – see the likes of Dan Wootton of GB News, who has long paired his tiresome “war on woke” with royal coverage so sycophantic you suspect even the Windsors may find it distasteful. One interesting exercise in tracking political fragmentation is looking at the supporters of the pressure group Republic from 2012 – it’s hard to imagine those names uniting for any common cause today.
Then there’s the “royalist or not, it’s hard not to be moved by this celebration of the Queen” approach, which seems to include younger people wanting to partake of some – partly manufactured – collective feeling. It’s a surreal feeling to be suddenly so out on a limb for thinking: “Well, actually, it’s very easy not to be moved.” If I’m moved to any particular emotion, it is anger that enforced mourning will bring further suffering to the already struggling, that dissenting voices are being repressed, that the concept of “respect” is being invoked by so many and yet afforded to so few.
On Saturday, I pushed my way through throngs of royal mourners in central London on my way to a smaller gathering, just yards away, outside New Scotland Yard. The demo was to protest at the police shooting of an unarmed 24-year-old Black man, Chris Kaba. As we stood there, listening to the heartache of Kaba’s bereaved family and friends, along with relatives of some of the 1,833 people who have died after contact with the police in England and Wales in the past 32 years, a woman stalked past and shouted, “Someone’s mother has died.”
It was a moment so surreal, the violence – and I don’t use that word lightly – of it so shocking, it was hard to fully comprehend. The sentiment, so often silent had been uttered, loud and clear. One life is not equal to another. To live in a country governed by royalty means fealty not just in deed but in thought. It means a commitment – often unconscious – to preserving inequity, whether the royalism is “soft” or not. Perhaps some day soon, republicanism will regain its non-partisan footing. But until then, I know where I stand, and I have never been more sure of being wedded to such an unpopular belief.
Moya Lothian-McLean is a contributing editor at Novara Media
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