The monarchy lives - but too often in a time warp

Can a hereditary class that lives surrounded by great privilege understand let alone practice diversity and inclusion?

In 2012 the playwright David Hare wrote of the Queen, then celebrating her diamond jubilee, that the secret of her enduring hold over the nation lay in her silence.

Constitutional monarchists echo this sentiment in a slightly different form. The secret of the crown’s success, they argue, is that it doesn’t do very much.

In a turbulent and unpredictable world the royal family just is: a quiet, reassuring all-weather presence anchored in continuity, convention personified.

Queen Elizabeth II is the exemplar. What you see is what you get. As government’s stumble and debase themselves, the sovereign remains resolute, dependable, above the stink, in Hare’s memorable phrase.

In her 95th year she is (almost) as popular as the young woman who was hurriedly called back from safari in Kenya in 1952 to assume the throne. Given the ups and downs of recent British history, that’s quite an achievement.

But the narrative of the still, unchanging centre in succeeding storms, while tempting, is flawed. The British monarchy may sit above party politics. But in its own, buttoned-up way, it is an intensely political institution, its fate subject to the push and pull of events like any other.

Its resilience in the face of repeated accusations that it is out of touch, lies in its ability to adapt just enough, and just in time, to pacify its critics.

The institution of the monarchy is peculiarly tin-eared

In the outpouring of emotion when Diana died, the Firm responded by loosening its stiff upper lip - a bit. Scandals and dramas (Harry and Meghan, Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein) are parried with practiced skill. The legend obscures the stain.

But, as a collective, as a corporation, the House of Windsor, despite its unique institutional memory, remains peculiarly tin-eared. It comes over, time and again, as a closed, privileged, inward-looking outfit, painfully out-of-step with the times.

William and Kate’s inauspicious Caribbean tour is the latest example.

The future king and queen but one, were sent to the West Indies on a charm offensive ahead of the Queen’s 70 years on the throne. Perhaps, the Foreign Office thought, other ex-colonies in the Caribbean might be dissuaded from following Barbados in ditching the monarchy.

The trip turned out to be a bungled exercise in hope over experience. It was dogged by protests, rising calls for slavery reparation and the enduring anger over the Windrush scandal.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, blunt to the point of discourtesy, told William in an awkward meeting, that his country too would be “moving on”.

The UK apart, 14 countries still have the Queen as their head of state. It seems reasonable to ask why territories thousands of miles away want a constitutional link to London and the royal family? Closeness comes through personal relationships not institutions.

In fairness William and Kate never stood a chance. The choreographers in the Foreign Office and the palace were tone-deaf to the prevailing mood, trapped in a time warp, one foot firmly in the 1950s.

William in military uniform and Kate in a vintage dress reviewing the troops in the same open Land Rover used by the Queen and Prince Phillip in 1962 bordered on parody.

What seemed like a nice sentimental nod to the ageing Queen’s connection to the Commonwealth looked to many, both in the West Indies and Britain, like a throwback to Britain’s colonial past.

The royal tour is an anachronism well past its sell-by date

The royal tour as a post-imperial roadshow is an anachronism, well past its sell-by date. Like The Archers it badly needs a makeover, something intimate, contemporary and mindful of the sensitivities of others.

Britain and its ex-colonies share a common history. But not common memories. Ruled and ruler have very different perspectives.

To the British ruling classes imperial Britain was a flawed but essentially positive project, even if it occasionally lapsed into brutality.

To its ex-colonies their past relationship with the mother country was never anything other than coercive. The occupying power ruled to suit itself, leaving only when it was forced to.

The descendants of slave owners argue that while slavery was abhorrent it was put right with the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. That was then this is now. We should move on.

The descendants of slaves argue, not unreasonably, that the wealth of ex-colonial powers like Britain is in part the direct result of colonialism, oppression and slavery.

Both Charles and William spoke of their sorrow about slavery in their respective trips to the West Indies. But neither apologised. Many took offence at this omission. What would it cost, they asked, for the monarchy, which colluded with slavers, to say sorry? The answer, presumably, is that an apology implies culpability and opens the floodgates to reparations.

Does any of this matter. Well, yes, it does.

The royal family remains the most compelling soap opera on the planet. But the sovereign and her immediate advisers are, first and foremost, an instrument of policy, an arm of the state. What the state, Her Majesty’s Government, does it does in her name.  

Britain is becoming increasingly multi-cultural. The world ever more complex. How equipped is the institution of the monarchy to navigate these waters? How many of its senior cadre are in tune with this changing world?

How many, not to put too fine a point on it, are people of colour (or women) who understand the impulses that drive movements like Black Lives Matter and feminism? If the monarchy is truly above politics it cannot take sides.

With very few exceptions, the courtiers who advise the monarch, the ‘men in grey as Diana called them, tend to be drawn from the military, the diplomatic service and the upper classes.

Here we come to the nub of the matter. At its heart the monarchy is all about privilege. Mostly white privilege. It sits at the top of a hierarchy that has a vested interest in keeping things as they are.

The honours system, nominally the Queen’s but in practice Downing Street’s, is a hotchpotch of the good, the bad and the corrupt.

How can a self-perpetuating group, steeped in great wealth and privilege that sets itself apart understand let alone practice inclusivity and diversity?

Republicans argue that the only way to reform the monarchy is to abolish it. Maybe. But before we reach for the cancel button it’s worth pointing out that of out of the top seven countries in the World Happiness Index four (Denmark, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden) are slimmed-down bicycle monarchies.

A republican Britain is not a runner at least not in the foreseeable future even though 40 per cent of millennials would like one. The monarchy is woven so tightly in the country’s fabric that unravelling it would make Brexit look like a minor hiccup.

But a country that insists it is a meritocracy and yet places at its pinnacle a family that lives off vast, inherited, unearned wealth will continue to have a credibility problem.

When the Queen relinquishes the throne and Charles becomes king we can expect more of the same. Charles is well-meaning , woke to some, but he is 72. Is a man who purportedly has someone squeeze his toothpaste capable of real change?

It will fall to William, if and when he succeeds his father, to find a way of re-imagining the monarchy if it is not to wither on the vine.