This May, the Queen will celebrate 70 years in office, her platinum jubilee. She is already the longest-serving British ruler and, by then, will be second only to Louis XIV among European monarchs. Such longevity in office is phenomenal and will merit national congratulation and celebration.
The Queen has performed her duty of symbolising the British nation over an extraordinary era, from the end of empire, through joining and leaving the European Union, to a global technological revolution. She has known 14 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson. Though her “rule” is powerless and largely ritualised, she has performed with energy and dignity. She has steered her office away from controversy, and retained a sincere public affection. Given her bizarre occupation, she has been well-cast.
Today, age and the pandemic have forced the Queen to withdraw from ever more royal duties and public engagements, most conspicuously the recent Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow. She has indicated that she will join in this summer’s jubilee celebrations and will be applauded for doing so. But there already appears a sort of finality to that event, coming as it does with her now being 95 years old. The Prince of Wales is taking on ever more of the burdens of office.
The Queen may be fit, but she is clearly delicate. Any reasonable person would recommend retirement from active work for a woman of her age. Yet none in royal circles dares breathe the word abdication – a concept toxic to the royal family since Edward VIII’s enforced departure in 1936. It is accepted that serious incapacity might require the Prince of Wales to be made “regent”, though the confusions of regency under George III make it hardly appealing. Besides, if the prince is going to act as king for the remainder of his mother’s life, there seems little point in not crowning him.
The Queen has attributed her intention to continue in office throughout her life to the significance of her coronation “anointment”. According to the royal expert Hugo Vickers, this results from her alleged pact with God: “If you are an anointed queen you do not abdicate.” A poll at the time of the Queen’s coronation in 1953 reported that “three out of 10 people believed she could claim direct descent from God”. There is no constitutional basis for this. Popes are likewise supposed not to abdicate, but Benedict XVI retired in 2013. The monarchs of the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Japan, among others, have all given way to younger successors in the past decade.
Monarchy is not a human attribute but a constitutional function, in which one person performs the rites of statehood emphatically detached from political partisanship. It is an arbitrary convenience. That this person should be chosen by birth and religion is inherently absurd, but that is a relic of history and one that has served surviving monarchies well. It suggests a people secure enough in their democracy – and impotent enough in their monarchy – to have escaped the turmoil of republican revolution.
The world’s most stable and progressive countries – such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands – have hereditary monarchies. They are not stable because they are monarchies; they are monarchies because they are stable. Nor can the folksy language of deference and hierarchy be said seriously to stifle Britain. Tourists love it.
Nonetheless, the prospect now is of a prolonged period in which the person embodying the British state cannot fulfil the functions of office, while the country waits in possibly prolonged suspense. In Queen Victoria’s old age this meant constant rumour, uncertainty, feuding courtiers and an ill-planned ceremonial. It was a period of intense gloom. The death of a monarch in office also has to embrace the contortion of national grief overlaid with subsequent joyous coronation.
Monarchy’s most articulate analyst, Vernon Bogdanor, has argued that its “mystique and magic”, even if shorn of power, can rely for its legitimacy only on public opinion. It has no accountability to parliament or election, but depends instead on “the practical employment of its symbolic influence”. This means the personality of the monarch and their ability to conduct the necessary rituals to public satisfaction.
The Queen and Prince Philip decided in the 1960s not to seek the anonymous security of the so-called “cycling monarchies” of Scandinavia. They focused a spotlight on the heredity principle in refashioning the crown as a family, satirised as “the firm”. Their extended offspring became the world’s most celebrated royals, their every move predictably recorded by an ever more fascinated media.
This was and remains high risk. As was found during the divorce and death of Diana, Princess of Wales, it left the royal family vulnerable to mass public opinion. This is currently in decline. While a steady two-thirds of the British public still favour monarchy, that is by no means everyone. The longstanding Ipsos Mori survey shows its popularity sliding in just a decade from near 80% in 2012 to 60% at present. Hence the palace’s hypersensitivity to the media glare that has visited the allegations against Prince Andrew and the high-profile departure of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from the family. The crown has rescued itself from such controversies in the past, but it has done so largely through the personality of the Queen in drawing on deep reserves of personal affection.
After her death, this will be extremely hard for the Prince of Wales to regenerate. The moment of transition to any new monarch, not least after 70 years, must be one of intense delicacy. Nothing could therefore more aid Prince Charles in his succession than for it to be a planned transfer on the retirement of his mother and her blessing on his coronation. She has broken nearly all records for time in office. She has prepared the way for the Duchess of Cornwall to become queen. Charles has reportedly committed himself to Buckingham Palace.
A retirement in good health, like that of Beatrix of the Netherlands in 2013, a retreat to Windsor and Charles’s coronation would be a dignified and happy occasion. It would celebrate British monarchy not as a ritual of death and rebirth, but as a simple facet of the constitution. It would also relieve Charles of a deluge of comparison, especially if he decides on changes in royal custom and practice, as well he should.
Whatever is wrong with British politics just now, the monarchy cannot be blamed. At least Britain is avoiding the US’s current agonies of state. But monarchy’s stability depends on public favour. That favour can never be taken for granted. The Queen’s early retirement should be seen not as an “abdication”, but as prudent, considerate common sense.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
