Nearly a third of children in the UK live in poverty. Millions of people rely on food banks to survive. Our economy is performing worse than Russia’s. Every plea for help meets the same response from the government: there isn’t enough money. Yet we’re about to spend £120 million on a parade. Why? Because the parade is for the King’s coronation and the King is more important than normal people.
This is the canker at the heart of our constitution. I’m sure many members of the royal family are very nice people. But the essence of democracy is that we all share an equal basic value. That’s why we are all entitled to a say in how our country is governed. The institution of monarchy is a visceral rejection of this premise. It demands we accept that some people are inherently superior – deserving of immense wealth, privilege and power at the expense of everyone else.
We have a monarchy because King Charles’ ancestors were better at conquest, repression and torture than their rivals. Any legitimacy beyond that of the sword was based on claims to divine ordination. As James I put it: “…kings are God’s lieutenants on earth”. Monarchs, in their divine specialness, promoted and profited from slavery until well into the nineteenth century. Even today, jewels looted from British colonies appear in various royal regalia. The King has been praised for permitting some research into the Royal Family’s links to slavery but continues to live in Clarence House (built by William IV, an enthusiastic investor in, and advocate for, slavery). Today’s royals may distance themselves from their forbears’ crimes, but they appear content to enjoy the spoils.
We have a monarchy because King Charles’ ancestors were better at conquest, repression and torture than their rivals
The presumption of the royals’ superiority runs through our politics and society, epitomised by the requirement for (elected) parliament to obtain symbolic “royal assent” before passing new law. Behind the scenes, the monarch can secretly alter legislation that will impact their personal interests (the late queen used this to ban scrutiny of her investments). Royals enjoy direct access to ministers to lobby for their favourite policies, not because of any policy expertise or representative legitimacy, but because they were born to the right parents.
Apologists claim that the “sovereign grant”, at around £100 million, is a relatively small price to pay for the “economic benefits” (mainly tourism) of the monarchy (although the absence of a monarch doesn’t seem to have dented tourism to Versailles). This understates the true cost of the monarchy. When the value of the various “private” estates (held onto from the days when all “state” land was owned by the monarch), security, and tax exemptions are added, the true cost easily exceeds £1 billion. Regardless of the specific cost, we are, in principle, in the same position as medieval serfs: compelled to pay taxes so our betters can live in unimaginable luxury.
The monarchy claims to be “above” politics. But the proposition, that some people should enjoy immense privilege by virtue of birth, is a quintessentially “political” one. Seemingly endless public resources are devoted to promoting that political position. The £8 million spent on sending a portrait of the King to every school in the country (ensuring that children, from an early age, know the King is special) is just the start. The BBC (which is content to platform the far right and climate change deniers in the name of “balance”) regularly airs pro-monarchy programmes and news items without the contrary position. The police have arrested people demonstrating peacefully against the monarchy, or simply stood by while they are beaten by pro-monarchy thugs.
Today the monarch is justified as the “ultimate public servant”. But what other public servant is paid a multi-million-pound salary and allowed to avoid tax? The line is just a reconfiguration of the old presumption of superiority: reminding nurses, doctors, teachers, fire-fighters, refuse collectors (and the many more public servants working excruciatingly difficult jobs for barely more than minimum wage) that they come a poor second to those designated as special by accident of birth. Indeed, while dramatically increasing the size of the “sovereign grant”, successive governments have cut public-sector pay to the bone. Ironically, the “public servant” routine is shelved at the first sign of scrutiny. The government spends public money to prevent journalists and researchers from revealing how the royals use the privileges afforded them by the taxpayer on the basis that it is “private”.
The monarchy is by no means the only way in which we reject the premise that we are all basically equal. The racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic discrimination that still blights our institutions and society flows from the assumption that some people are ultimately less than others. That belief is baked into our very identity as a nation: the King is the symbol of the UK. Our national anthem asks a deity to bring glory to the King, not the nation as a whole. Until we can form a national identity, constitution, and society based on something other than identification with the descendants of a medieval warlord, we can never truly experience democracy.
Sam Fowles is a barrister, Director of the ICDR, and a lecturer at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He tweets at @SamFowles
