Some believe the monarch to be one of Britain’s most crucial symbols: author Tina Brown has said that “people won’t know how to be British” once the Queen has popped her clogs and left this mortal plane. Others believe the role the royal family plays is far less pivotal. Glen Newey’s now infamous essay About as Useful as a String Condom remains one of the greatest expositions of this argument in cultural criticism today, nearly 20 years on from when it was penned in the aftermath of the Golden Jubilee.
That we will all flounder and forget how to exist as a country as Brown suggests seems unlikely, and Newey’s scathing deconstruction of the monarchy’s inherently anti-democratic nature, while apt in many ways, misses out the kind of “magic” surrounding the royal family that really does draw some people in. The fact remains that this family — in all their dysfunctional glory — has been designated as the national one.
