IT’S PROVING TO be a bad time for republicans in the UK. With the latest Ipsos MORI poll showing 80 percent support for the monarchy, the popular response to the Queen’s Jubilee has rather poked them in their bilious eye. And that’s despite the supercilious counter-propaganda by people such as Polly Toynbee telling us how awful the monarchy is and what brainwashed, forelock-tugging drones the common folk are for enjoying it all. Look at all that privilege, all that wealth, all that pointless, self-deluding ceremony, the Pollys say, look at all those people pretending they have a nation and national identity that’s worthy of any respect. Look at them trying to live in the past, too frightened to work out their diminished and insignificant place in the modern world. What children they are, falling for these fairytales. 

Putting aside Polly’s majestic delusion, when it comes down to the everyday practicalities, try as I might, I can’t think of a single thing that would be improved by abolishing the monarchy and replacing it with a republic. The class system would still survive (irrelevant as it really is – but that’s another story), privilege would still remain in various forms, unemployment would not go down, wages would not increase, the national deficit would not be reduced, the education system would still be useless, the NHS would still be expensive and bursting with bureaucrats, politicians would still be overpaid, incompetent and interfering, the rich would still be rich, the poor would still be poor, the BBC would still be left wing, social mobility would not be improved, councils would still be closing libraries, football would still be played by overpraised louts, our every phone call and internet action would still be logged, the EU would still be making most of our laws and draining us of cash, banks would still be thieving bastards, the cost of owning and running a car would still keep on going up and the health nazis would still be haranguing us for being too fat or too thin and for eating and drinking the wrong things. Taxation would not be reduced, neither would the amount of legislation dumped on us, officialdom would not be diminished and the retirement age would not come down. And traffic wardens would still exist.

So the prospect of no real change topped off with an elected head of state in the figure of some self-important ex-politician and a revamped House of Lords equally stuffed with elected party goons is not appealing. Sometimes acquiescing in the status quo is not just the easiest but the most sensible thing to do. Long may the republic remain a distant dream of the bilious few.

– Michael Blackburn.