For many years, perhaps decades, the republican cause in this country has held its breath while effectively waiting for Queen Elizabeth II to draw the last of her own. If that sounds insensitive, it is in fact a testament to the strength, as well as the longevity, of her reign. Earlier this year, leading up to the Queen’s platinum jubilee, I spent a fruitless couple of days attempting to elicit the views of serving politicians who were known or thought to have republican sympathies. Hardly any responded and only one would go on the record. That exception was Clive Lewis, the Labour MP and 2020 party leadership candidate, who articulated the problem of being an open republican. “The Queen is seen as someone who is hard working, humble, etc,” he said. “I think that makes it very difficult for the republican argument to be put forward. But I think when she does pass away, that will open up the possibility of conversations about the future of our democracy.”
This month, after 70 years, the longest reign in British history, that moment finally arrived. However, it brought forth the most prolonged glorification of, and visible public support for, the crown since the Queen’s coronation in 1953. While this funereal fanfare may have been concentrated on the late Queen, rather than her successor, King Charles III, the sheer scale of both the state-orchestrated and public acts of bereavement seemed to reaffirm the centrality of the monarchy to British life.
There was the near total saturation of media coverage, posters commemorating the Queen on every high street, streams of commercial enterprises all eager to demonstrate their respect, the postponed sporting events, the huge crowds at Buckingham Palace, the slow progress of the coffin in Scotland and then the flight – said to be the most tracked in history – south, the heavy air of solemnity beneath which Prince Andrew managed to creep back into public life, the lying in state, “the queue” with its five-mile tailback and close to 24-hour waiting times and of course the resplendent funeral itself on Monday, which was hastily made a public holiday.
However one looks at it all, it certainly hasn’t felt like a lift-off moment for republicanism. Yet for Graham Smith, who heads the pressure group Republic, the commemorations were much less impactful than he expected them to be. “I thought there would be a more prevalent sense of mourning and a lot more shouting down of dissenting voices,” he says.
It’s hard to imagine what a more prevalent sense of mourning would have looked like – massed wailing? Mandatary black clothing in public? As a spectacle of popular sentiment, it was by any reckoning astonishing, with the Queen’s coffin in Westminster Hall acting like the Ka’bah in Mecca, the centrepiece of something that looked very much like an almighty pilgrimage. And as for tolerance of dissent, that wasn’t the experience of the barrister Paul Powlesland, who was threatened with arrest for carrying a blank piece of paper in central London that, if written upon, he was informed by a policeman, had the potential to “offend people, around the King”.
But Smith, who is promoting the hashtag #NotMyKing, is adamant that the public response to the Queen’s death was smaller than it seemed. “It’s a minority interest that has been projected by broadcasters as a national outpouring of grief,” he says. It’s true that much of the broadcast and press coverage often seemed as if it had been scripted by Nicholas Witchell, the BBC’s famously obsequious royal correspondent. Indeed, so alienated were many people by the proceedings, says Smith, that Republic gained “thousands of new members”. But the problem for republicans is that the monarchists seemed to gain millions of new supporters, if the public desire to “show respect” is anything to go by.
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This extended display of mourning, or “necrothon”, as some cynics have called it, goes to the core of the longstanding division between republicans and monarchists. Dating back to the English civil war, republicanism has been seen as coldly rationalist, whereas monarchism has traditionally laid claim to the emotions. It’s the battle between head and heart, roundhead and cavalier, puritan and, what exactly, libertine? Only in this last polarity has republicanism scored a hit, with the various scandals of the royals’ private lives, most damagingly in the case of Andrew, exposing the decadence that is the disreputable companion of material privilege.
Smith says that his original plan was to keep a low profile during the mourning but he reversed that strategy in response to what he says was a high level of online debate. Of course to the vast majority of people, Smith’s profile is so low as to be invisible. This is a shortcoming that has afflicted republicanism ever since the death of Oliver Cromwell and one of the reasons why it has struggled in recent times to develop into an organised movement: it lacks recognisable figureheads.
There are, of course, well-known people who would describe themselves as republicans. Wikipedia has a list of advocates in the UK, people such as Russell Brand, Frankie Boyle, the former footballer Joey Barton and a disproportionately large number of journalists. Apart from a general overrepresentation of the awkward squad, it reads as a random collection of people, as though what they had in common was a star sign or a minor ailment. None of them is renowned for their republicanism or, if at all known for it, in a decidedly secondary or tertiary fashion. And some might even be surprised to see themselves on the list.
“You’re correct,” concedes Norman Baker, the republican former Liberal MP, who wrote a book called … And What Do You Do? that exposed the skeletons in the Windsors’ cupboards and performed a kind of cost-benefit analysis of the current setup. “We don’t have figureheads. I mean,” he adds, with due humility, “Graham and I are the two most identifiable figures.”
The author and activist Catherine Mayer, who wrote a revealing biography of the then Prince Charles and is also co-founder of the Women’s Equality party, describes herself as “an instinctive republican” but a cautious one who recognises the substantial role of the monarchy in British life. She believes the reason republicanism remains so muted is not so much because of a lack of a charismatic leader as a lack of a vision. “You need to root republicanism in an understanding of why the royals are part of a system that excludes so many people and serves so many people badly,” she says. “The bit for me that’s missing from British republicanism is the vision of the society you want to create.”
In her book on Charles, she says, she quoted Smith explaining the simplicity of republicanism – “You just cross out ‘queen’ and write in ‘president’” – but she adds: “That’s so not true. If you want change, you don’t go with the structures that are there. Yes, the crown is a very obvious symbol – and in some ways guarantor, of inequality – but it is by no means the only structural problem.”
Mayer has been a longstanding critic of what she sees as a lack of diversity in Republic. She says that in the past she’s attended meetings of the pressure group that have been little more than a talking shop for white, middle-aged, middle-class men. Smith rejects this characterisation, insisting that the profile of the membership has changed. “We’re getting a lot more younger people engaged and a lot more diversity with our supporter base. I think a lot of people of Caribbean heritage have been pretty angry about issues around Meghan and Harry but also reparations and colonialism.”
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In polls, the number of people who express some kind of support for republicanism varies between about 15% and 30%, depending on how the question is phrased and what kind of crisis the royal family happens to be undergoing at the time. But the heftiest support is always among the young. In a poll conducted earlier this year by YouGov for Republic, 27% of the population supported the abolition of the monarchy, but the figure was 40% in the 18-24 group, which was higher than the number in the same age group who wanted the monarchy to continue.
Like clubbing and backpacking, republicanism seems to be something people grow out of. But given that it’s the young who are accused of setting the “woke” agenda, it’s striking how little of their ire has focused on the Windsors in general and the sovereign in particular. The royal family remains manifestly uncancelled. Only Andrew, as a result of his friendship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and allegations of sexual assault, which he settled out of court for an undisclosed sum in a civil case earlier this year, has become a loathed figure among the young. And it will be instructive to see how Charles deals with his brother, who remains a counsellor of state, one of four people who can step in for the King.
Even leaving Andrew aside, it would be a challenge to conceive of a more anti-woke entity than the royal family. Equality and diversity are anathema to what is a feudal institution based on birthright, deference and the maintenance of bloodline. Throw in the fact that most British colonial exploitation and crimes, including slavery, were committed in the name of the crown and it would seem to embody all that the young find most offensive.
If republicanism could tap into this well of youthful anger and retarget the growing debate about empire and historical reparations at the most conspicuous symbol of British imperialism, then it might gain some momentum. When I ask Smith who are the young republicans making waves, he cites the political commentator Ash Sarkar, renowned for telling Piers Morgan that he was an idiot and she was a communist. So I call her up, but she’s on holiday and doesn’t want to speak.
Both Smith and Baker express their annoyance with the lack of republican voices seen on broadcast media, particularly the BBC, which has been at its most fawning in the past few weeks. But it is politicians who refuse to come out as republicans and “take the matter on” who most frustrate them. Lewis believes the royals are not just symbols but an integral part of a network of power and privilege and he describes the reluctance of the left to address the issue as “bizarre”. Even Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong republican, refused to look at republicanism when he was leader of the Labour party. He could see that there was no political advantage in entering into the debate. And that is a real problem in terms of turning republicanism from an idea into a movement. It’s a cause that’s seen as a sideshow, a “distraction” as the future Labour leader George Lansbury memorably put it almost a century ago.
The constitutional historian Peter Hennessy tells me that it would be a “huge” legal and bureaucratic undertaking to unscramble “a thousand years of history” and even Baker acknowledges that to scrap the monarchy would be complicated and would “take years”. Yet whatever the obstacles and practicalities, politics is also about symbolism and identity and we live in an era of Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement, of hashtags and toppled statues, when such things can have powerful significance.
The protest model from which Baker and Smith draw most optimism, however, is Brexit, a political movement that had limited traction then suddenly took hold, secured a referendum and won it. But, lacking a populist protest politician such as Nigel Farrage, an insurgent party such as Ukip or disaffected MPs who can apply pressure to their party, the republican cause’s chances of a gaining referendum on republicanism seems fantastically remote – unless something drastic occurs.
Which brings us back to Charles. A fickle mixture of diffidence and entitlement, he offers hope to the republican cause because he is much more likely to voice his opinion than his mother, who believed that monarchs, like Victorian children, should be seen but not heard. Now 73, he has campaigned against modern architecture and in favour of green issues but not without a tendency to reveal a spoilt nature. While the consensus opinion seems to be that he enjoyed a good mourning period, with a speech to the nation that was well received, there were also several telling hiccups.
The first came when Clarence House, his base as Prince of Wales, rushed out redundancy notices almost as soon as the Queen died. “A massive own goal”, as Mayer puts it. Then he announced that his son William would take over his position as Prince of Wales, inflaming Welsh nationalists, who once again saw London intruding without invitation into Welsh affairs. And finally he was filmed having a tantrum over a faulty pen while signing the visitors’ book at Hillsborough Castle, near Belfast, one of no less than 12 stately homes the King possesses.
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As the country slumps toward recession amid a cost of living crisis, and homelessness and food banks grow, republicans will be looking for a Marie Antoinette effect, the let-them-eat-cake indifference that was said, perhaps apocryphally, to help spark the French Revolution. As much as Charles would like to be seen as a good egg and sensitive soul, it’s his desperate yearning for the public’s respect that could prove his undoing. “He’s always had the potential to be in some ways more engaging than his mother and move things on for the monarchy,” says Mayer. “But he’s also always been his own worst enemy. Those two aspects of his character have long coexisted and there’s no reason to think why, as king, they would cease to coexist.”
It doesn’t matter if he manages to rein in his activism and political statements, she believes, because he would still be hobbled by a past that includes dubious methods of charitable fundraising – he reportedly received more than £2.5m in cash between 2011 and 2015 from the former prime minister of Qatar and his close aide Michael Fawcett resigned last year after “cash for honours” allegations. “There is also a body of opinion he feels very passionate about, like net-zero carbon emissions and anti-fracking, that will put him at odds with this government,” says Mayer.
The money
The sovereign grant, funded by taxpayers, is paid to the royal family every year. For 2021-22, the sovereign grant was £86.3m – equivalent to £1.29 per person in the UK. Prior to 2017, the Queen received 15% of the crown estate profits from the previous two years, with the government keeping the remainder, but from that date it was agreed she would receive 25% for the following 10 years to help pay for a £369m refurbishment of Buckingham Palace.
The property
Dating back to the Norman conquest in 1066, the crown estate is a collection of land and property across the UK. Its net revenue profit in 2021-22 was £312.7m, with net assets of £16.5bn. It also has £15.6bn worth of properties; 241 are in central London, including the whole of Regent Street.
What tax?
The Queen’s net worth, according to the Sunday Times rich list 2022, was £370m (a £5m increase on 2021). King Charles III will not pay inheritance tax on this, although he has volunteered to follow his mother’s lead in paying income tax.
The Duchies
The monarch also receives money from the Duchy of Lancaster private estate, which covers more than 18,000 hectares (almost 45,000 acres) of land and in the last financial year generated £24m in profits. The Duke of Cornwall (now Prince William) benefits from the Duchy of Cornwall, which in the year to 31 March 2022 generated about £21m (former duke Charles voluntarily paid the top rate of income tax – 45% – on the duchy’s earnings).
The palaces
The crown estate owns 22 royal residences: Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Clarence House, St James’s Palace, the Palace of Holyroodhouse and Hillsborough Castle; Balmoral and Sandringham are the personal property of the family.
The land
The rural crown estate includes 106,000 hectares (263,000 acres) of agricultural land across the UK and 26,900 hectares (66,500 acres) of common land, principally in Wales; it also includes about 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) of forestry. Half the UK shoreline is owned by the crown estate and includes the seabed out to 12 nautical miles, about 65% of the Welsh foreshore and riverbed, a number of ports and marinas and 1,762 offshore wind turbines.
The art
There are more than 1m works of art in the Royal Collection: including paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Caravaggio and Leonardo da Vinci. According to a 2017 report by valuation firm Brand Finance, the Royal Collection is worth £10bn.
The jewels
The crown jewels were valued by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors at £4.5bn in 2019. There is a private ATM in Buckingham Palace, which also has its own cinema, post office, swimming pool, surgery and chapel.
Paradoxically, being at odds with a Tory government would go down well with many of those with republican sympathies, thus neutering antipathy towards the monarchy. This is one of the more perverse royal survival mechanisms – that from time to time some members of “the Firm” come to be viewed almost as popular figures of resistance against the establishment. The King’s first wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, successfully pulled off this manoeuvre, although she was seen as a conscientious objector to Windsor hypocrisy, not as an opponent to a government. To some extent, Diana’s son Harry and his wife, Meghan, have inherited this mantle. How Charles deals with the Sussexes could have a bearing on how successful he is in defusing the time bomb of a colonial reckoning, both at home and in the Commonwealth at large. Equally, Mayer believes that any republican organisation that wants to expand its following needs to attract “the kind of people whose dislike for the monarchy has been radicalised by what happened to Meghan and Harry”.
In other words, so embedded in British culture is the royal family that anyone wishing to defend or dismantle it will need to recruit dissident royals to their cause. The other main threat facing Charles is the disintegration of his kingdom by means of secession. In Northern Ireland, with Sinn Féin now the largest party, as it jointly is in the republic, the prospect of a united Ireland is an increasingly viable topic for discussion. In Scotland, the combined effect of Brexit and a Conservative government that has barely any local support has also galvanised calls for another referendum on independence. In Wales too there is growing discontent.
Again, these situations offer opportunities to the republican cause – if a kingdom is no longer united, does it need a king? – but they leave republicans at the mercy of external agendas. Do they want to be seen as in cahoots with republicans in Ireland? Do they risk being positioned in opposition to the very makeup of the British state, a stance that would be presented as unpatriotic? “I’m not sure that Scotland will separate,” says Smith. “But if it did, I would say within a decade it would become a republic. This would be dynamite under the foundations of the monarchy, not least because we would see what the alternative was.”
Given all the pressures on the union and all the constitutional headaches that abolishing the monarchy would involve, the likelihood is that the majority of the British – and certainly of the English – population will remain loyal to the crown. Even Baker recognises this fact, which is why, he says, he supports the idea of a “bicycling monarchy”, along the more modest lines of the Scandinavian or Dutch royal families. In logical terms, this makes sense. After all, there’s been talk for years of the need to slim down the royal family. It’s the emotional reality that gets in the way. Many of us may not understand it, or much like it, but it’s in its extravagant exceptionalism, its outsize pomp and pageantry, as writ spectacularly large in the past few weeks, that much of the appeal of the British royal family lies.
Baker concedes that some of this splendour could be retained but dismisses the need for ceremonial prominence as a foundation on which we decide how to organise our democracy. “It’s as if we should base our constitution on what tourists want,” he complains. “And in any case, what’s the royal palace with the most visitors in Europe? The Palace of Versailles – and they got rid of their monarchy in 1848.” He says it’s akin to the other objection to republicanism he most often hears: do you want Tony Blair as president? “Well, no, we don’t,” he answers himself. “But we wouldn’t elect him, would we, so that doesn’t count.”
No, we won’t elect Blair as president, nor, given the current lack of demand, will we elect anyone else. That could all change with the reign of Charles III, who may or may not turn out to be the king the republican cause has been waiting for. But if that’s to happen, he will have to gather together all his petulance, insecurity and overweening sense of privilege and make a complete hash of things, because republicanism doesn’t yet look as if it’s any fit state to make the case itself.
