a third reflection...'a quick riposte to the royals post inevitable publication of baby shower pap snaps'

I have been bothered lately by a growing anxiety that the Royal Family are beginning to ‘modernise’, at least in the eyes of the British public who might once have sat on the proverbial boundary fence between constitutional monarchy and republic, thereby appearing somehow relevant.

Yes, what with Prince Hewitt’s ribald 21^st century antics, Wills and Kate’s pact with Hello magazine, the arrival of George-the-brand-new-Royal-Baby, and Kate’s raunchy sister, Pippa, the Royals have become celebrities, A-listers no less.  And every honest, hard working British citizen loves their celebs (and the magazines they appear in) to a fault, right?!  The Royal Family are so NOW.

Especially if on top of this they are great news for tourism, the armed forces, Schweppes Gin and Tonic, Pimms and Lemonade, Clinton cards and flag manufacturing.

Oh and we’ve also had a slew of free gifts from our benevolent heads of state (they’re a bit like a hydra aren’t they?), largely in the form of public holidays.  Even if on the occasion of the Queen’s jubilee it literally rained on her parade – life has a delicious irony every now and again.

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A quick aside - think irony, think Oliver Cromwell.  It’s amazing the rough time he’s been given by historians past and present, isn’t it?  Never mind that he was something of a visionary when he was, we are told instead, a fat, balding, blood-thirsty political heretic the rest of the time!

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Anyhow, on the weekend of the aforementioned Queen’s jubilee I was naturally in a pub, but no, I wasn’t raising a glass to Lizzie, more contemplating her exasperating and curmudgeonly insistence to, well, not die (or abdicate), and lo bring about the decline and fall, or gradual removal of the Royals from public and quasi-political life.

In a society that is quite rightly increasingly concerned with social justice and equity, quite how, where and why do the Royal Family have any place whatsoever?

Fine.  They are good for tourism.  But if they disappeared tomorrow people would still come from across the globe to see where they used to live – Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle – just as people go see Versailles. 

Fine.  They are ambassadors for Britain.  And in truth fairly hard working representatives of Britain on the world stage, but no more hard working than a travelling politician or government servant.  Nor will you find them doing anything ‘real’ on their travels beyond cutting ribbon and asking queues of people what they do for a living.

Thus isn’t it time we turned the Queen’s favourite question back on her?

So Liz, what do you do?

And what do you really represent?

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‘She is the head of state, she brings our nation together’ goes the refrain.  Sure, but what about those of us who are after a republic?  What about those of us who understand the difference between respect and deference?  What about those of us who perhaps have an issue with the idea of national identity, the kind the Royal Family simply reinforces, because it engenders otherness, opposition, and not togetherness or unity? 

After a republic?

Yes.  After all a president is elected, i.e. chosen by the electorate, and not by God (who may or may not exist).  So is a prime-minister, granted.  But still above him remains the Royal Family - reinforcing the absurd idea of the untouchables, a part, yet apart.  In ideological terms I think this undermines Britain’s constitutional democracy.

Britain’s compromised democracy might be more apt. 

Meanwhile, a president can not only perform the role of ambassador, but can execute further and hopefully lasting initiatives towards a fairer more equitable society, which asserts the value of every individual as equal, and not in any way subordinate.  A president in charge of a republic can cultivate respect for one another as equals, not endorse by his or her presence outmoded vertical hierarchy.  And if a president fails we can elect a new one; not wait around for him or her to expire.

It is interesting that my experience of Europeans of a certain age I associate with is that they are politically clued up and far more eloquent on the subject of making a more just society for all.  It’s because political debate is genuinely and exclusively at the heart of their society, they have to be interested, and who knows, one day they might be in charge?  And have their face super-imposed onto a stamp to boot.

Liz, Philip, Charles, Wills, Kate, the Hewitt boy etcetera are probably perfectly decent human beings behind the Royal Façade, but together the institution and social hegemony they represent is not so decent. 

People tell me, ‘oh but they don’t get a salary’, and ‘they have a sense of duty’.  Given.  But they have one free lunch after another, and they are human – one would hope they had a sense of duty.  Thing is how far is their sense of duty again serving only their own purposes?

I can’t remember a time when I have ever felt the Queen has represented me; I have felt represented (thereby acknowledge as an entity in society) by my local MP (yes, really), even our PM.  Why?  Because they are (at least in theory) as elected politicians committed to improve my lot, and my next door neighbours', and my neighbour’s neighbour – which is great.  Moreover, this is a duty that is selfless and to be respected; the same goes for people in all warps of life working to make others feel a bit better from doctors, nurses, shrinks, peace campaigners, aid workers, philosophers, spiritual leaders, teachers, parents and so on.

The expunging of The Queen and her tribe would be mourned in part because she and they embody ‘a tradition’.  Yet I find it odd that this particular tradition involves the ideas of decency and duty: it seems to me that the tradition of the Royal Family smarts of an archaic assertion of forced deference over mutual respect, subjugation over emancipation, collusion over consenting collaboration, and in people’s refusal to acknowledge this too widespread an apathy - the Queen’s in residence, things are OK, keep calm, carry on!!

What? Carry on going nowhere fast?

See, a society that has started to embrace social mobility, seriously entertain the aforementioned ideas of social justice and equity, simply cannot maintain at its heart a tradition that by its very nature does not reflect and embody any of these.

The Royal Family are indeed symbolic. But not necessarily in a positive, or relevant sense, however much they are starting to ape Posh n’Becks and appear in popular magazines.