Are you a citizen of the UK or a subject in the UK?
Whatever you think it is the latter. We are not even citizens of our own country we are all subjects of the monarch.
I remember Princess Anne’s wedding, but it was Charles and Diana’s wedding that annoyed me first. Not only the extravagance while the country was in a financial crisis, but also the way the whole country came to a halt – whether you liked it or not. I remember being on holiday on the Norfolk Broads at the time and I said something about the life of privilege they led. Someone told me they did, but different rules applied to them, they lived a life in the public eye and could not divorce.
(Even worse was when the country came to a halt when Diana died to have an orgy of self-flagellation from people who did not know her. Both BBC Channels showed footage at the same time and the country shut down for the funeral. Yet less than a third of people watched the funeral and the level of complaints was so high that policies were changed for when the Queen Mother died).
We all can see how that turned out. Whilst the Queen may behave the same cannot be said of any other member of the family. Margaret’s drinking and lechery. Philip’s adultery. Harry’s dressing up in a Nazi uniform. The ongoing behaviour of Charles, Camilla and Diana, not to mention the more recent revelations about Andrew.
Yet there are more important issues. The Queen and Prince Charles are consulted about legislation that affects them, being allowed input. Why? It took years to get copies of Charles’ letters released and then Freedom of Information Law was changed to stop it happening. It was clear that he had blatant self-interest, including wanting state money for quack remedies like homeopathy.
It has recently become clear that rather than an archaic piece of theatre that this has been used to change legislation. The scope of affecting The Queen or Charles extends to anything in their private life as well as in their state roles. The Queen negotiated for animal cruelty laws to be unenforceable on her estates. Maybe because the House of Windsor likes shooting animals so much? This is a serious point though – politicians still kowtow to the Royals and defer to what they want.
One argument in favour of the monarchy is the dislike of the idea of an elected, political head of state (and I will address political change in another post). Yet this flounders on two points – firstly the Queen has shown that she will not interfere when she should (even flunking the one time she should have when she should have stopped the illegal pro-roguing of Parliament) and would another monarch be like that? She seems to have no issue intervening in her own self interest. If you say that she had to take government advice, then she is just a figurehead and no break on constitutional malfeasance.
(For those who say that she could not interfere in a serious political way it is worth remembering that she enthusiastically conspired with the Governor General of Australia in 1975 to overthrow a legal government and has spent huge sums of money trying to stop the proof being revealed, but the Australian courts have done it).
The Royals used to be funded by a Civil List, but every time they wanted a rise it was a PR nightmare. In 1971 there was an extended debate about this in Parliament in a select committee. Except the whole thing was stage-managed and questions cleared with eth Palace in advance – it was all a sham. The Queen Mother even got a rise in her payments, despite her declining level of official activity – she was able to keep a staff of 50 people up to her death. The Civil List was to cover costs for official activities so was all (or mostly depending on who it was) tax free. Yet the Queen and her father and grandfather, as well as younger royals made savings from this, tax free, and used it for personal activities. This was actually fraud but of course it was never prosecuted.
The Cameron government replaced it with a sovereign grant – 25% of the Crown Estate income (despite it being owned by the public not the Crown). A little-known clause is that the money can never go down so if there is a bad year the percentage goes up rather than the funds cut.
The Queen and Charles also get the income from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall despite there being a very strong legal case that they transferred to the government over two hundred years ago.
The cost of the monarchy that they advertise also does not include the huge costs of security provided by the Police. Even minor royals like Eugenie and Beatrice have round the clock royal protection teams. Harry and Megan were rightly told to pay their own costs when they exited the UK.
Even their public engagements add up to rather less than you would believe from the publicity. It has been worked out that Charles is effectively paid £38,000 per engagement (and that includes ones that he lists that actually relate to his private businesses). Even the hardest working Royals do no more than the full time equivalent of 75 days a year. As for royals like Andrew, who used his trade ambassador role to fly about, play golf and earn the nickname Handy Andy at our expense- my blood boils.
Recent research shows that the royal’s value as a charity patron are non-existent. The overwhelming majority of their appearances and efforts go into charities they have set up. The cost of security for these appearances is a state donation to the causes closest to their hearts, rather than what the nation considers important. Details of patronage and the cost to the nation are impenetrable and the palace will not provide any disclosures.
Andrew, his mother’s favourite, it seems that no amount of evidence and accusations of his sexual misadventures are enough for him to actually do the decent thing and be interviewed by the FBI. He is still listed as patron of an NSPCC campaign that ended over ten years ago on the palace website.
There are other things like royal wills now being habitually sealed, not a longstanding privilege but one that started in the twentieth century. The monarch’s was sealed by longer tradition but others started to be sealed due to legacies to mistresses and illegitimate children, this morphed into hiding wealth and avoiding Estates and Inheritance Tax. A new wrinkle introduced in the 90s was that assets passed on from the Queen Mother to the Queen (and thence to Prince Charles) would be free from Inheritance Tax. The idea was to stop assets like Balmoral or Sandringham having to be sold – in practice it has been used on all assets. Instead they are already using it to avoid tax on personal wealth.
The Royal Family have made it clear that they think Inheritance Tax (or Death Duties or Estate Tax before that) is unfair on wealthy landowners. They have used every legal wrinkle to reduce the tax. It is interesting than when Margaret died her children had to sell some assets to pay Inheritance Tax. They sold a small part of the Estate – the funds raised from these 97 pieces were greater than the probate value of the whole of her estate two years earlier. It would seem that the valuation (and thus the tax) was massively under stated. The assumption that has to be made that this has happened on all those other times will have been sealed).
I could go on. And on.
We are a grown-up country it is time for a grown-up way of running it. The assets that belong to the UK are ours – a cut down Royal Family can be kept as an attraction. Self-financing and paying for their own security.
In 1977 for the Silver Jubilee there was a bank holiday and street parties (the government bribes the country with special days off and the like to promote the monarchy). The Sex Pistols, enfant terribles of punk rock, released their version of God Save the Queen. It was banned from radio and TV, yet it made number one for the Jubilee. Instead the charts were fixed so it remained at number two.
While groups of the privileged and unelected remain at the top of the country Britons will never be free.
Forty-three years later it is still true.
God Save the Queen
Playlist:
- Anarchy in the UK
- God Save the Queen
- Holidays in the Sun
- Pretty Vacant
- Bodies
- My Way
- Silly Thing
- EMI
- Submission
Five Miles Out 