AS 2024 draws to a close, Scots have made it entirely clear what they think of the royal family, with a poll showing almost two-thirds would back independence if the monarchy was removed.
This was a six point rise from the previous poll which put support for independence at 54%.
But it’s not just in the UK the royals are facing a struggle to hang on to relevance. Across the world it appears the end is nigh, much more so than it is on these shores in fact.
We spoke to Our Republic’s Tristan Grayford to look back on some of the key news stories of 2024 concerning the royal family and why it might just be the beginning of the end for them.
Polls break records
Not too long after the royals enjoyed another lavish Christmas at Sandringham, two polls came out back-to-back showing for the first time that less than half of people in the UK wanted to keep King Charles as head of state.
The first came on January 8 after campaign group Republic commissioned a Savanta poll asking the public whether they preferred a monarchy or an elected head of state.
The results showed just 48% said they would prefer the royals.
To prove it was not a fluke, another poll 10 days later from YouGov found just 45% of people in the UK supported the monarchy.
In Scotland, the results were even more stark. A mere 33% of people preferred the royal family – the lowest figure out of all the UK nations - according to the pollster's data.
The opposition to the royals north of the Border was further solidified in a poll commissioned by Our Republic in May, which produced similar results.
Three polls all showing the same thing – the monarchy are rapidly losing appeal.
Gray told The National while he wasn’t surprised by the results, he was shocked by how little was made of them in the press.
“I was surprised how little deal was made about it.
“The unquestioned head of state who is expected to stay in power until they die and be automatically succeeded by their son, and no one is really questioning that half of people are not interested. That should be a bigger deal.”
King Charles accused of ‘genocide’
Later in the year, one of the most notable moments which attracted interest across the online world was when Charles was berated by an Australian senator who told him “you are not my king” and demanded a treaty between Australia’s First Nations and its government.
Senator Lidia Thorpe waited until the end of a landmark speech Charles gave at Australia’s Parliament House, in the nation’s capital of Canberra, in October to verbally attack him and claim “genocide” had been committed against the Commonwealth country’s indigenous people.
It came amid Charles and Camilla facing protests in Australia from indigenous rights activists.
Charles was also snubbed by all of Australia's state premiers ahead of his tour, with not a single one of them agreeing to meet the monarch.
On the protest from the senator, Grayford said the days of Charles “playing emperor” around the world will soon be over as demonstrations from nations exploited by the British Empire continue.
He said: “There’s never going to be a case where the monarchy is going to be able to go anywhere in the world where they are not going to get confronted with the horrors their family have reigned over.”
NEW: This is the moment King Charles's speech in Australia's Parliament House was interrupted by Senator Lidia Thorpe, who told him: 'You are not my King' 🗣 'You have committed genocide against our people.' pic.twitter.com/KkExsbCGTb
— The National (@ScotNational) October 21, 2024
Over the Tasman Sea in New Zealand, Maori tribes made a rare call this month for Charles to intervene in their politics but Buckingham Palace said it was a matter for the New Zealand government.
“This shows the emperor with no clothes situation where Charles goes around the world claiming to be this unifying figure, but when he can actually do something unifying on behalf of an ethnicity that has suffered because of his family, he won’t lift a finger,” said Grayford.
Asked if we would soon see the end of the monarchy in Commonwealth countries, Grayford said: “Absolutely. I think we are more likely to see the end of the royal family as a globetrotting set of billionaires within our lifetimes. The UK is more of an open question.
“I also think we need to separate those two as very distinct issues. We need to be clear that when we’re talking about the end being nigh for the global emperor version of the monarchy, that’s for different reasons than the end is nigh for the king of the UK.”
The royals’ ‘secret millions’
At the start of November a story Grayford regards as “the biggest in the last five years” when it comes to the royals came as a result of a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation looking into the royal family’s “secret millions”.
The probe revealed how the King and Prince William’s private estates had struck rental deals worth millions of pounds with state schools, the armed forces and the NHS.
The investigation reported that last year the Duchy of Lancaster agreed a deal to store a new fleet of electric ambulances, owned by Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust in London, in one of the estate’s warehouses at a cost of £11.4 million over 15 years.
Meanwhile, the Duchy of Cornwall had charged the Navy more than £1m since 2004 to build and use jetties and moor warships on the Cornish coastline. The duchy will also earn around £600,000 over the lifetime of six different leases agreed with local state schools.
“I think this is the biggest story of maybe the last five years because it was someone other than The National pay attention to royal finances,” said Grayford.
“I think to have Channel 4 do a full Dispatches on it was a major moment and showed there are media outlets who are willing to put a magnifying glass on the royals.”
Coronation cost £72m…allegedly
Closing out the year was the revelation the King’s coronation we were all handed a bank holiday for last year cost a whopping £72 million.
That was what the official accounts suggested anyway, but republicans were not at all convinced that was the entire bill.
However, Grayford said he was less bothered about the cost of the Westminster Abbey ceremony, and more about how it looked to normal people grappling with rising costs.
“My main issue isn’t the fact it was £72m, it’s that it was rubbing it in the face of people who are struggling with the cost of living crisis saying ‘look at all this gold and jewels’,” he said.
“Never mind the money, just the appearance of it [I had an issue with]. You’d have thought that a man who claims to care about the people he serves would’ve gone ‘people are really struggling, I’m going to have a more modern looking ceremony’.
“It was a £72m ego trip.”
Nothing has changed, except everything has
Overall, it was a year where the distance between the thoughts and experiences of the general public and the royals only deepened, but Grayford said in his view the family have far from accepted that regular people are going off them.
Asked for his assessment of the royals’ year, he said: “I really feel like Charles has just ended up being bogged down in the fact that everyone around him, including him, expects things to just be the same forever and therefore there’s no need to change, no one is going to question them, they can just keep doing the same grubby deals that have been unquestioned for decades.
“They don’t realise that the world around them has changed. It’s been almost the same story on repeat this year which is ‘we’ve found out Charles and his house have been doing this grubby thing for years’ and the response from the household is always [negligible].
“They don’t seem to have any crisis comms or any other response other than ‘this is how we’ve always done this’.”
