Good morning. Last year, King Charles and his late mother received £41.8m in income from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall – in real terms, about 16 times what the family received in 1952, when the queen came to the throne.
Since Elizabeth became queen, she and Charles received more than £1.2bn in income; the average British worker would have earned about £1.4m over the same period. The Duchy of Cornwall alone is worth more than £1bn, and the duchies pay no corporation tax or capital gains tax on their substantial investment portfolios. Given all of this, you may not be that surprised to learn that the royal family is extremely unenthusiastic to talk about it.
But while you can see their rationale, it is another question as to whether that is acceptable to the rest of us. Ahead of Charles’ coronation, the Guardian has launched a new series, ‘Cost of the crown’ – and the team reporting on it has frequently been met with royal silence.
Today’s newsletter, with investigative reporter David Pegg, is about why that is, how transparency on the royal finances has actually gone backwards, and what we do know about the subject they are so reluctant to talk about. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Scotland | Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon’s husband and until last month the SNP’s chief executive, has been arrested by police investigating allegations that £600,000 raised to campaign for independence was instead used for the party’s day-to-day running costs. Murrell was released without charge pending further investigation.
Business | The UK government has suspended its relationship with the Confederation of British Industry, as pressure mounts after the Guardian revealed multiple allegations of sexual misconduct by the lobby group’s staff. Sources said engagement had been “paused” pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations including rape and drug-taking.
US politics | The liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz has won her race for a seat on Wisconsin’s supreme court, flipping control of the court after a 15-year conservative majority. The race has been called the most important election of the year in the US, with abortion rights, redistricting and election rules at stake.
UK politics | Conservative MP Scott Benton has had the party whip suspended after he reportedly offered to lobby ministers on behalf of the gambling industry and leak a confidential policy document for up to £4,000 a month. Benton allegedly offered to “put parliamentary questions on the table” on behalf of reporters for the Times posing as representatives of a fake investment fund.
New Zealand | Jacinda Ardern has left New Zealand’s parliament with a highly personal speech, calling for an opening up of politics to those who may not see themselves as typical leaders. In her final address to the country, the former PM said: “You can be anxious, sensitive, kind and wear your heart on your sleeve … and not only can you be here – you can lead.”
In depth: ‘There is vastly more secrecy about their affairs than yours or mine’
Thirty years ago, John Major’s government published a plan for more open government that promised to challenge “areas of excessive secrecy”. As part of that white paper, the royal family faced a new challenge to the privacy of its records.
A year earlier, as David Pegg and Paul Lewis relate in this piece, the Queen herself acknowledged that the monarchy should not “expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty”. What followed, said David, was “a 12-year spring”, in which royal papers were released through the national archives like other official documents. “Occasionally things would come out which would cause a bit of embarrassment,” he said. “But everyone more or less got on with it.”
Since then, transparency about the royal family’s affairs has declined. When the freedom of information act came into force in 2005, the Royal Household was exempted from its provisions.
At the same time, their finances entered a new era, as well. In 2011, David Cameron’s government replaced the fixed income of the “civil list” with the sovereign grant, which is linked to profits derived from the crown estate – land formally owned by the monarch.
A “golden ratchet” clause ensured that their income would increase in line with the crown estate’s profits, but could never go down. Meanwhile, the government also insisted that income from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall – the land and property estates which provide a significant share of the royals’ income, and separate to the crown estate – were private money.
Through all of this, the royal family’s attitude to any scrutiny has been one of stubborn silence. Rory Cormac, a historian of Britain’s intelligence services, told David and Paul: “We think the intelligence services are the secret state. But they are like WikiLeaks compared to the royal family.”
This morning, new stories by David Conn reveal how William III profited from a slave-trading company linked to Edward Colston, whose statue was torn down in Bristol in 2020 – and reveal that King Charles has given explicit support for research into the monarchy’s tied to transatlantic slavery for the first time. Here are some key takeaways from the investigation into the royal finances.
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The British royal family receives more public money than European monarchs
In this piece, Rupert Neate, Henry Dyer and Ashifa Kassam compare the House of Windsor’s finances to those of their European counterparts – and find that the Windsors are comfortably on top. The Guardian estimates the public funding provided in the UK at between £86m and £122m – but an exact figure is not available, and there is no breakdown available of how much individual members of the family receive in “salaries”.
The royal house with the second highest income on the list is that of the Netherlands, which receives £44.2m (and is exempt from income tax, which the Queen and Charles, as Prince of Wales, agreed to voluntarily). Others are much more modest: in Sweden, the bill is £11.5m; in Belgium, £12.5m; and in Denmark, £14m.
As well as the sheer size of the bill and reduction in money available for more useful things, writes Polly Toynbee, this matters because of the story it tells us about ourselves: “Empty heads that wear the hollow crown are symbols of some of our worst tendencies – the growing weight of nepotism, inequality, privilege and inherited wealth.”
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They are very reluctant to talk about it
The royal family is protected in various formal ways from scrutiny of their affairs: as well as immunity from freedom of information requests, they are also exempt from laws that make wills public, for example. Meanwhile, the National Archives bans researchers from other public records of the family’s wealth. It took the Guardian’s Rob Evans 10 years to force the release of Prince Charles’s “black spider memos” lobbying government – and in general, royal correspondence with the government is protected. It is striking, said David, that “much of this secrecy is not reasoned – it’s just instinctive”.
As well as legal protection, the royal household is resistant to any sort of transparency, David said. “They are comfortable with dealing with enquiries about the endless Kardashianite drama that surrounds the family,” he said. “But when it comes to serious inquiries about matters of public interest, they’re a black box.
“If you’re investigating a corporation, they’re all over you – they want to talk off the record, they ask you what you’ve got, the challenge if anything is that they bother you so much. With this lot, it’s completely different. They are extremely constipated about what they divulge, and it seems to do them more harm than good.”
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The argument that their finances are private is flawed
When Buckingham Palace did respond to the Guardian’s questions, they argued that the royals’ financial arrangements should “remain private, as they would for any other individual”. But there are obvious differences between the King’s finances and anybody else’s – chief among them the fact that much of the income is ultimately derived from the public purse by dint of their birth.
“Even if it were true that they were the same as anyone else – that’s not actually how they’re treated,” David said. “There is vastly more secrecy about their affairs than there is for yours or mine, and they are the subject of extreme deference from the government. And the idea that this is all private is not an ancient tradition – it’s an innovation. So it seems like you would need a good explanation for why that is.”
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Any impetus for change is unlikely to come through party politics
King Charles himself has shown some awareness that in a time of economic hardship, escalating income for the royal family may be a liability: as this piece by Felicity Lawrence, Rob Evans and Henry Dyer explains, he decided to forego a potential £250m pay rise in line with increased profits of the crown estate so that the money could be spent on “the wider public good”.
Nonetheless, it would be surprising if the royal family were to set the agenda on examining its own income. “And there is not much evidence of political pressure from the main parties,” said David. Both Conservatives and Labour have sought to yoke themselves to the vast residual affection for the Queen, which does not suggest they would see much upside in picking this fight.
Nonetheless, there is some prospect that concerted public attention could force a rethink, as it did when the queen agreed to start paying income tax in 1993. “When that happened, it was a groundswell of popular opinion,” David said. “They had to roll with it.
“Our hope with these stories is that they won’t see them as some inchoate republican threat – that they recognise that, actually, there is some constructive criticism here. There is the potential for a forward looking monarchy to ask whether addressing this will ultimately put King William V in a stronger position.”
What else we’ve been reading
In the last decade, 50% of public toilets have been closed down, with no indication that they will reopen. The results are not pleasant, Emine Saner writes, with more and more people choosing to wee on the streets. Saner spoke to residents who are having to deal with people urinating through letterboxes and the local authorities waging a war on “wild toileting”. Nimo
In his analysis of the arrest of Peter Murrell, the former SNP chief executive and Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, Severin Carrell writes that the impact could be very serious: “A development of the magnitude of this arrest – and on the topic of SNP funding – may greatly dent [Sturgeon’s successor] Humza Yousaf’s attempts to rebuild the party’s support base and its finances.” Archie
Alex Hern spent a week using ChatGPT to see if it could make his day to day life easier. He asks the AI to help plan his trip to Japan, ward off strangers at the pub and explain board game rules concisely. Hern’s concluding thoughts range from alarm at the AI’s ability to make up bizarrely specific statistics and delight at some surprisingly tasty cocktail and dinner recipes. Nimo
James Meek writes brilliantly for the London Review of Books about the proliferation of videos produced during the war in Ukraine. Most haunting is his description of videos of Russian soldiers’ deaths posted on social media and accompanied with mocking soundtracks: “It’s easier to support a cause when nothing is done in its name that you find too sickening to watch.” Archie
Skinny eyebrows are back – but before you get the razor out, Morwena Ferrier warns of the long term implications of this kind of brow-experimentation. Nimo
Sport
Premier League | West Ham manager, David Moyes, was forced to endure taunts from Newcastle supporters, chanting, “you’re getting sacked in the morning”, after a 5-1 loss at home. Meanwhile, a first-half goal from Marcus Rashford (above) pushed Manchester United to a 2-1 win over Brentford.
Football | Chelsea are close to appointing Frank Lampard as their interim manager in what would be a stunning return to Stamford Bridge. As the club continue to search for a permanent replacement for Graham Potter, Lampard is ready to help on a short-term basis at Chelsea, where he played for more than a decade and was sacked as the head coach in January 2021.
Basketball | Jacob Uitti’s interview with former NBA player Kenneth Faried is a fascinating exploration of what happens after an athlete is forced to stop playing prematurely. After nine years and $50m in earnings, Faried’s defense-first skillset suddenly became redundant as the league evolved to emphasise shooting. Nonetheless, the 33-year-old aims to make a comeback, saying he is not motivated by money: “For me, the whole time, it’s been basketball. I’m not letting go of hope.”.
The front pages
The Guardian launches the ‘Cost of the crown’ series with: “Revealed: Royals took £1.2bn in private income from estates”. Under the headline “Police face questions over possible delay to arrest at Sturgeon’s home”, the Telegraph looks at the arrest of the former first minister’s husband. The Mail asks, “Is this real reason why Sturgeon walked out?”
The Times headlines an investigation with “Tory MP in gambling cash-for-access scandal”. The i says “No new smart motorways to be built amid safety fears”. The Financial Times reports “Ukraine ‘ready’ for Crimea talks with Kremlin if counteroffensive succeeds”.
Finally, the Mirror addresses justice minister Dominic Raab on its front page: “You can end this cruelty now .. what’s stopping you?” The paper urges Raab to stop the killers of Sabina Nessa from snubbing sentence hearings.
Today in Focus
Inside Tennessee, America’s most stringent anti-abortion state
Tennessee has an abortion ban so strict that even its Republican sponsors are having doubts about it. Stephanie Kirchgaessner reports on the reality of women’s rights in the state nine months after the supreme court struck down Roe v Wade
Cartoon of the day | Steve Bell
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
It has been almost a century since a ship carrying the entire Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra docked in Reykjavík — the first time that Icelanders were able to get a taste of a symphony orchestra. The late introduction of orchestral music to the country has had an expansive impact on the music scene in Iceland, with its “genre-blind” musicians paving the way for more progressive and interesting kinds of music.
The lack of barriers and silos in music has allowed countless indefinable artists to rise to critical acclaim, like the composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, who became the first woman to win an Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe in the same season for her score for the film Joker. “The good thing about Iceland is that anything is possible,” says pianist Víkingur Ólafsson.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
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