Our monarchy, however restrained and “constitutional” it is always said to be, is actually a totalising system. We are all the monarch’s subjects. Ministers, members of parliament, military personnel and police officers in England and Wales all swear oaths of allegiance to the crown. All our mainstream media are preoccupied by the monarchy, as the days since the Queen’s death have relentlessly made clear. Whenever there is a big royal occasion, most journalists, politicians and other public figures speak about it with one approving voice. These rituals are so familiar that their strangeness in a society that is supposed to be a diverse, irreverent democracy – and their particularity to this country – is not much noticed and even less discussed.
One consequence of our monarchy’s half-hidden domineering quality is that, at moments of great royal drama and ceremony like now, this country suddenly finds little room left for anything else. Since the Queen’s death much of public life has been suspended: strikes, football matches, parliament, party politics, the Lib Dem and TUC conferences, key decisions by the new government and the Bank of England, even a “festival of resistance” planned in London by the usually fearless and single-minded climate activists of Extinction Rebellion. A country which, by general agreement, is in the middle of one of its worst peacetime social, economic and political crises, with much of its population terrified about how they will get through the winter, has prioritised more than 10 days of elaborate mourning instead.
If you’re a monarchist, this may be all is as it should be. Honouring someone who ruled for 70 years – to whom 15 prime ministers had to defer, as we are constantly reminded – and establishing her successor may well feel more important than a few lost days of crisis management. Especially as the Conservatives have hardly shown much aptitude for or sense of urgency about that task in recent months. Elizabeth II is likely to be remembered, a monarchist might argue, long after Liz Truss and her sketchy cost of living policies have been forgotten. Even Charles III, starting his reign at 73, may well outlast the leaderships of Truss and Keir Starmer.
Yet for many other Britons – barely heard from since the Queen’s death, except as the victims of dubious arrests – the monarchy’s supreme position is not reassuring. Largely unremarked, support for the monarchy has fallen quite significantly over the last decade, from 80% in 2012 to 62% in 2022 – despite the latter figure being recorded in the runup to the platinum jubilee. Among Scots, Labour voters, minority ethnic Britons and people under 50, monarchism has either become, or looks likely to eventually become, a minority position.
The idea that the whole country is mourning the Queen and welcoming her successor is a fiction: energetically disseminated, seductive for many in a time of division, but a fiction nonetheless. There is no single “national mood” about the royal family, and there never has been, whatever most journalists and politicians say.
Instead there is an assortment of feelings, even right outside Buckingham Palace. During a couple of hours in the crowd there the day after the Queen died, I overheard people joking about her coming back to life, gossiping about one of her grandsons and his sex life, and claiming that there had been more flowers outside the palace after Diana died. People bringing flowers were certainly in a minority; most of the crowd were just sitting or milling around, looking curious rather than sad, watching the scene and all the TV cameras watching them. Conversations were slightly muted, probably out of respect. But in the pubs nearby, people were shouting and drinking as if it was just another Friday evening.
The obvious contradiction between the official line that the country has paused for “the period of national mourning” and the reality that most of our everyday life, and the crises that threaten it, carry on, can almost certainly be sustained until the Queen’s funeral next Monday. A lot of powerful forces, including Labour and Conservative parties competing to seem the most patriotic, have a vested interest in the Queen’s long-planned send-off being seen as a pivotal and successful event. At times when emotions and people need to be mobilised on a large scale – wars are another example – this country is good at putting on spectacles, and at pretending that significant dissent or apathy about them does not exist.
For a state that since Brexit has cut itself off from its neighbours, and that consequently interests the outside world a little less, the Queen’s death may be an opportunity that will not happen again. Arguably the most famous woman in the world has passed away. It feels unlikely that foreign journalists and audiences will ever be as interested in her successor. In that sense, as well as the sense that they are a distraction from our crises, the current commemorations are what Michael Gove would call a “holiday from reality”.
In the short term, the Queen’s long goodbye will probably revive support for the monarchy. But over the longer term, the reign of her more divisive, less historically resonant son may cause that surge to fade, and the decline in royal popularity to resume, even accelerate. With Charles, known for his impatience with staff and extravagant lifestyle, the sense of entitlement, which is as fundamental to the royal family as a sense of duty, is more obvious.
The poorer country that the UK is likely to become over the next few years may also be less tolerant of one of the world’s most lavish monarchies. The Queen’s old-fashioned, relatively plain public persona, and the length of her reign – to an extent, she continued to be judged by rather deferential, mid-20th century standards – means that modern Britain’s appetite for a less self-effacing ruler has not yet been tested.
If you’re a republican, these days of royalist fervour may be painful in so many small ways: having to avoid the BBC, having to listen to confessions of fondness for the Queen from fellow republicans, even feeling that you don’t belong in your own country. But for monarchists, between now and Monday may be as good as it gets.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
