Fans of the monarchy will generally make two claims: ‘monarchy is a good system of government’ and ‘the Queen does a very good job’. There is a strong case for believing either of them. What seems astonishing is how many people manage to think both at the same time.
Monarchy is justified in the modern world on the principle ‘well, someone has to do it’. Someone needs to read out the Queen’s Speech; someone has to sign the bills to make them laws; the prime minister needs someone to resign at. A country without a monarch is like a living room without a television. Under a monarchy, the country knows which way to point the furniture.
This is the ‘monarch as Muggins’ argument. When the speaker of the House of Commons is chosen, they are ceremonially dragged to the chair, to create the impression they haven’t been ruthlessly lobbying for the position for years. Similarly, it is nice to think that the monarch would dearly love to be a newsagent in Retford but, due to the overwhelming peer pressure of an entire nation, has reluctantly agreed to be head of state until death.
So, a monarch just needs to be, rather than do. It’s appropriate, then, that we have found an unusual way of choosing who has to do it. Hereditary is really just a nice way of saying arbitrary. Which is just a posh way of saying, ’Shut your eyes and hope for the best’.
Jobs that involve doing something need to be chosen on the basis of ability or experience. But if your only requirement is to be, you need different selection criteria. You can’t choose someone at random, like jury service, and tell them they’re the Queen - as they could, with some justification, deny it. So we’re lucky that we have a family of volunteers to have their face on the stamps.
Maybe this is a snide and ungrateful view of monarchy. But at least this argument works. If monarchy is a good idea then the monarch must be essentially a mannequin. It needs to be a job that cannot be done well or badly. It needs to be as difficult as having a birthday. Because otherwise it is far too central a role to entrust to someone chosen by a kind of genetic roulette.
The alternative view is that the Queen does an amazing job. She performs a range of delicate balancing acts: being ceremonial yet human; engaging with the country’s well-being, yet remaining politically neutral; being a figurehead, yet also a servant. And all this in a country that is unrecognisable from the one in which she started back in the early 1950s. In public life, only Cliff Richard comes close to her achievement.
But if it can be done well, it can be done badly. This is more than simply ‘the Charles problem’. Charles is just a glimpse of how harmful a bad monarch could be - especially if we believe all the praise the Queen receives. For every positive thing the Queen has done, we must imagine an alternate reality in which it didn’t happen, or that something dreadful happened instead. That is what being a monarchist really means. Anyone can be a monarchist when there’s a good monarch. The real test is when you get a bad one. Charles III is easy - try Edward VIII. What if the Nazi sympathiser somehow weathered the abdication storm long enough to see Poland invaded. How’s your monarchism now?
We can ignore the argument that the royal family are essential to the tourism industry. Yes, people like to visit Buckingham Palace. But the attraction would be much greater if the royal family had recently been shot in their beds. No question - if the monarchy had just been violently overthrown, the punters would be queuing round the block. It would be the best thing ever to happen to the British tourist industry. Anyone claiming that tourism justifies the existence of the royal family is basically asking for regicide. It is essential these people are locked in the Tower urgently, for the Queen’s protection.
The next time someone says that tourism justifies the monarchy, just ask them, ‘Have you ever visited France? Sorry, let me re-phrase. Has anyone ever visited France?’
A more defensible pro-monarchy position points to the stability, the continuity, the certainty that it offers. Other countries are changeable. We, thanks to our monarchy, are resolute. And the present Queen’s long reign is a fine example of that quality.
But where does this long reign come from? To be a long-serving monarch requires more than just your own longevity - you also need your predecessor to die young. So a lot is down to the fairly early death of the Queen’s father in 1952. If the Queen’s father had lived as long as her mother did, Elizabeth II’s reign would not have begun until August 1997 - about three weeks before Diana died. Then how much credit would she currently be getting for her 16 long years of dutiful service? I have longer-serving shirts.
The circumstances of the current queen’s reign create an illusion of stability and certainty. But that is simply not borne out historically. Having a royal head of state has caused plenty of uncertainty in the past. Most of the stable features of the last 62 years of reign are the exception rather than the rule.
Because we all know what the norm is, don’t we? Every reign, unless something bizarre happens, fits this description: ‘The oldest child reigns from the parent’s death until their own.’ That is a basic summation of how the system always works, barring the occasional mishap.
Except that it hardly ever happens. That description certainly applies to the reign of Elizabeth II (unless something very unexpected happens before she dies). But the last one before that? I’m going to have to hurry you. No? It was George II, 1727-1760. In the nearly 200 years between 1760 and 1952, not one of the eight monarchs had a reign that can be described as: ‘The oldest child reigns from the parent’s death until their own.’
Maybe they just had a run of bad luck. So when was the previous one? Then, you’re looking at an even bigger gap - over 300 years. It’s Henry V, who reigned 1413-1422.
OK, best of three, who was it before that? Between Henry V and the Norman conquest there were just two more - Edward I (1272-1307) and Henry III (1216-1272) - the only time we’ve ever had two back to back.
Of the 42ish monarchs from William the Conqueror until today, only five fit the pattern of ‘the oldest child reigns from the parent’s death until their own’. Based on that historical analysis (if half an hour on Wikipedia merits such a lofty description) the odds of a monarch’s reign qualifying for that reassuring definition is worse than eight to one.
We want to believe in the smooth handover. It certainly feels as though monarchy provides certainty and continuity. But that is an optical illusion based on where we’re sitting. It’s not normally like this. We have convinced ourselves that, under a monarchy, the smooth handover is inevitable. The truth is, it has only happened once in the last 250 years. And that’s pretty long odds for the country to spin that roulette wheel.
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