REPUBLICAN

I used to really like The Tudors. I used to think it was just the right balance of boobs, bastards, and beheadings. Or something like that. And I remember thinking and even saying once or twice that getting rid of the Royal Family would be an act of “cultural vandalism” akin to Henry VIII’s destruction of the monasteries. I no longer think that. And I’m beginning to wonder whether the Reformation might not have actually been one of the best things that ever happened to this country. Because, like the monarchy now, the monasteries’ main area of expertise seemed to have been exploitation of the people they claimed to serve. Hoodwinking people with ceremony and show while indulging in lives of peace and privilege. Maybe Henry was right. Burn it down. Dismantle it. Brick by brick. 

The place where I work is named after an old queen. I received complaints after referring to the Royal Family as “a load of racists and paedophiles”. I had to have a meeting. I was advised to be more “cautious”.

The estimated cost of the coronation is one hundred million pounds. I wonder why they have to estimate it at all. Surely there was a budget. Surely someone is counting the cost. And that seems like a very conservative estimate to me. I doubt king Charles would even be able to have a picnic for much less than that.

In offering his justification for attending the ceremony, Nick Cave claimed that the coronation was likely to be “the most important historical event in the UK of our age”. I can’t imagine what might make him think this. It is no more “important” or “historical” than the arcane rituals of privilege that take place behind closed doors at Eton or the Bullingdon Club, or the Garter Throne Room. There is nothing strange or weird about it, as Cave asserts, or “Shakespearean” as Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian. The “mystery” and “strangeness” is purely functional and, therefore, not really mysterious or strange at all. Its purpose is to guard and maintain the grotesque and inexcusable privilege of its participants. Its just part of the act, a performance, nothing more. It’s like kids raiding a dress up box; except it’s not kids it’s powerful old people, rich beyond measure, yet grey in soul and spirit, and the dress up box is the nation’s treasure. 

Maybe the old queen’s coronation was an important historical event. She was young and offered hope and change at a time of great upheaval and hardship. It was the first time many people had watched a live television event. Things like that were special then. Momentous, even. You can understand that. This time round, even most of the royal’s traditional supporters seem a bit nonplussed. And you can understand that too. Charles has nothing to offer. Hopelessly out of touch, divorced from the reality of his subjects’ lives, disfigured by his birthright, grey and doddering, the only things Charles can hope to symbolise are the corruption, cronyism, inequality and decay at the heart of “this sceptred isle” that really, in this age of Grenfell and food banks, double-digit inflation and stagnating wages, should be “sceptred” no more. 

Where’s Henry VIII when you need him?