Anthony Barnett: is this a republican moment?
Hi Suzanne,
what’s up with the monarchy and how people feel about it? Pundits are asking "Is this another annus horribilis?”. That’s a phrase the Queen used to describe what happened in 1992 when both Andrew and Anne divorced, Diana’s marriage to Charles broke down in a cascade of tabloid prurience and Windsor Castle caught fire. What happened then politically was that the monarchy recognised it was no longer untouchable and ‘above reproach’ (as Johnson laughably claimed in his TV debate with Corbyn) and had to accept that it could be subject to debate like other institutions. I recall the moment well and took advantage of it to hold a Charter 88 conference on the Monarchy and publish a book about it called Power and the Throne to try and consolidate what was a democratic opening – or at least a chink.
Is the combination of Harry’s marriage to Meghan turning the monarchy into an openly mixed race affair and now Andrew’s interview greeted with wall-to-wall revulsion a similar moment? Personally, I think not. But something is changing perhaps thanks to The Crown. Without doubt it has created support for the royals as people, but it has also diminished the enchantment and sense of magic that is so important for their power (which Tom Nairn wrote about in The Enchanted Glass). Is there also a connection with Brexit? I don’t mean the endless, pathological ‘going on’ about Brexit that gets us nowhere. But what we might call ’the long Brexit’ – the undeniable fact that whatever the outcome the country is changing forever, that ‘Great Britain’ is on the way out, that Scotland is bound to be independent and Ireland united in the coming decades, and therefore that all of us are both clinging to a past that is drowning and trying to escape from it. Do the monarchy now represent this? If so, it is a process that is going on inside us as well as outside us and you are the most brilliant writer about this uncomfortable experience.
