Queen Margrethe II’s seventieth birthday in April 2010 brought another wave of polling. She herself had little to worry about: her personal approval rating was well above eighty per cent, with Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary a few points behind. Support for the Queen’s unpopular consort, Prince Henrik, slumped to just 24.8 per cent, however – down from 41.8 per cent in 2004. Danish voters also appeared to back constitutional changes that would reduce the Queen to a figurehead like her Swedish counterpart: a majority wanted the prime minister to be appointed by the speaker of parliament rather than the Queen, and more feel that the Queen should not have to continue to give her assent to legislation than those who support the current system.2
Royalists appear to have more cause for concern in Sweden – or at least so it seemed in the months leading up to the wedding in June 2010 of Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling. A poll on the King’s sixty-fourth birthday that April showed just fifty-eight per cent support for the monarchy, down from eighty-five per cent in 2000. Support for a republic, meanwhile, climbed to twenty-eight per cent, up from twelve per cent ten years earlier.
The decline was not an entirely steady one: the royal cause suffered as a result of some remarks made by the King during a visit to Brunei, generally regarded as a gaffe, but support picked up again as a result of his response to the 2004 Christmas tsunami, which claimed the lives of five hundred and fifty Swedish holidaymakers in Thailand. Perversely, though, it began to fall again as the royal wedding approached.
Dashing the hopes of republicans, the wedding itself, however, appears to have produced a boost for the monarchist cause. An opinion poll carried out immediately after the ceremony showed seventy-four per cent in favour of the monarchy; in another in November, they received a sixty-nine per cent positive rating.
Republican views are nevertheless held by a surprisingly large number of members of parliament – and are not confined to the Social Democrats, the Left party and the Greens. There are also some republicans among parliamentarians from the centre-right parties too. Yet the Social Democrats do not look any more likely to try to translate the commitment to republicanism in their party programme into action now than they did during the decades in which they dominated politics.
Indeed, the Social Democrats in particular appear to see republicanism as unpopular with their key supporters, and during occasional parliamentary votes on abolishing the monarchy they support the status quo. Hillevi Larsson, a Social Democrat member of parliament who used to be the head of the Republican movement, recalls one such vote. Told by her party whips to vote to keep the monarchy, she protested that this would sit awkwardly with her work for the republican movement. She was eventually allowed to vote according to her conscience, but only after appealing to a higher body within her party.3
Support for the monarchy in post-war Britain has also had its ups and downs, but when there has been criticism it has generally been of individuals and of their behaviour rather than of the institution itself. The furore that surrounded Lord Altrincham’s remarks on Queen Elizabeth II’s style in 1957 was dwarfed by the controversy over the private lives of first the Queen’s younger sister Margaret, and then later by the collapse of the Queen’s children’s marriages. Criticism of the cost of monarchy – and the extent to which taxpayers are getting “value for money” – has also surfaced from time to time. All this came together in the Queen’s annus horribilis of 1992; in the years that followed, the battle between Prince Charles and Diana provided further fuel for republicans.
Or rather it would have done if there had been sufficient republican-minded people in political life to exploit it. One of the few exception was Willie Hamilton, who in the years after becoming a Labour member of parliament in 1950 branded the Queen “a clockwork doll”, labelled Princess Margaret “a floozie”, called Prince Charles “a twerp” and described Princess Anne as “plain”. It was no coincidence that Hamilton came from Scotland – which, much like Spain’s Basque or Catalan regions, has long been more republican than the rest of the country. Yet Hamilton remained something of a curiosity, and after his retirement from parliament in 1987 no one stepped forward to succeed him.
Tony Blair proved just as staunch a monarchist as his Conservative predecessors, skilfully saving the royal family from the public-relations disaster it brought on itself through its mishandling of the death of Princess Diana a few months after he came to power. Not so his wife Cherie, who reportedly refused to curtsy to the Queen when they met in private, although she did so reluctantly in public. Nor were all of his political allies as supportive as him of the monarchy. But when Mo Mowlam, the cabinet minister, caused an outcry in 2000 by suggesting the royals should move out of Buckingham Palace and calling for a nationwide debate on whether Britain should be a monarchy or a republic, Downing Street responded by declaring the prime minister was “one hundred per cent a supporter of the monarchy”.
However embarrassing the headlines for individual members of the royal family in the 1990s, it would be difficult to argue that the monarchy as an institution was ever seriously at risk, even during the week immediately after Diana’s death, when hysteria appeared to seize hold of the country and a poll commissioned by the American TV network ABC, which featured extensively in the film The Queen, showed nearly one in four in Britain thought the country would be better off without the monarchy. Within a few weeks, however, it had recovered again quickly – just as was the case, albeit to a lesser extent, after events such as “Sophiegate” or during the run-up to Prince Charles’s marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles. In the same way, the boost provided by Prince William’s marriage in April 2011 looks likely to have been only a temporary one. Indeed, polls by Ipsos MORI showed support for the monarchy running at a remarkably constant sixty-nine to seventy-two per cent between 1993 and 2006 (dipping only briefly to sixty-five per cent in April 2005), while backing for a republic varied between fifteen and twenty-two per cent.4
This is despite what sometimes seems almost like disdain for the monarchy among Britain’s largely London-based liberal intelligentsia, who see it as old-fashioned and in need of modernization, and who feel affronted – and even embarrassed – by the continued popular support that the royal family enjoys in the country as a whole. A case in point was the Golden Jubilee of 2002, which many on the left were keen to write off in advance as a likely non-event – but which turned out to be a mass outpouring of enthusiasm. “We need to face up to the facts,” admitted a leader in the Guardian. “The Queen’s Jubilee celebrations of 2002 have been in every respect more successful than either the organizers had feared or the critics had hoped.” That being said, the newspaper still insisted that the enthusiasm witnessed on the streets had been for a “good person” and not for “a lousy system”.5
Equally telling had been the furore that ensued three months earlier when the BBC newscaster Peter Sissons wore a burgundy rather than black tie as he reported the death of the Queen Mother at the age of 101 – apparently after being told by his editor “not to go overboard. She’s a very old woman who had to go sometime”.6 The scale of the turnout for her funeral was another surprise for those same members of the metropolitan intelligentsia.
The Dutch monarchy has also experienced similar swings in its popularity – though again within a fairly narrow range: the reign of Queen Beatrix’s mother Juliana was marked by the crisis of 1956 brought about by her relationship with the pacifist faith healer Greet Hofmans and, two decades later, by the accusations that her husband, Prince Bernhard, had taken a $1 million bribe from the Lockheed aircraft corporation. And then, as has been seen, there were the unfortunate marriages: of Juliana’s daughters in the 1960s and, more recently, of her grandsons Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Prince Friso.
While monarchists elsewhere in Europe are a largely unorganized force, the Dutch monarchy enjoys the support of a network of grass-roots organizations known as Oranjeverenigingen (Orange Unions). Some four hundred of them
are brought together under the group known as De Bond van Oranjeverenigingen (Association of Orange Unions). Yet these are no mere royal lackeys. The federation’s chairman, Michiel Zonnevylle, a former civil servant and now mayor of the town of Leiderdorp in the west of the Netherlands, speaks out when he feels members of the royal family are not behaving according to the high standards expected of them – as he did in October 2009 when there was an outcry over Crown Prince Willem-Alexander’s decision to buy a villa in Mozambique.
The property had been promoted as a development project that would benefit the local community, but rumours of corruption persisted. Such a purchase also seemed inappropriate at a time when the economic crisis meant many ordinary Dutch were having to tighten their belts. In an interview with de Volkskrant, one of the country’s leading newspapers, Zonnevylle weighed into the row. “It is very unfortunate to choose such a poor country as Mozambique, particularly if you do it out of considerations of privacy,” he said. “I think prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende and Queen Beatrix should talk about this. And I would really value the project being abandoned.”7
A parliamentary debate on royal finances a few days later in October 2009 provided fuel for the royal-bashers. Mozambique, inevitably, was on the agenda. But so too were the allowances. The discussion even widened to take in calls for the Dutch monarchy to have its role reduced to a purely ceremonial one, as in Sweden. Jan Peter Balkenende, the prime minister, rejected this proposal outright, however, saying “it would be detrimental to the monarchy”. He did, however, agree to calls by the Labour and Socialist parties to curb expenses for private flights by the royal family, which in 2008 had reached €600,000. In future, it was announced, only the Queen, her successor and his wife would be allowed to make claim. That was as far as he would go. In any case, Willem-Alexander had got the message: shortly afterwards he announced he was pulling out of the Mozambique project. In January 2012 the government announced that the Prince had finally sold the villa for a symbolic sum, after failing to find a private buyer.
Despite such occasional hiccups, the Dutch monarchy remains extremely popular: a poll conducted for a live television debate in October 2011 found seventy-five per cent of the people still support the monarchy, with more than fifty per cent of them satisfied with the institution in its current form. A substantial minority – twenty-six per cent – however, wanted the House of Orange reduced to a purely ceremonial institution. This followed criticism not just from the left and the centre, but also from Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), which has been especially critical of the considerable influence given to the Dutch monarch by the country’s constitution in choosing a prime minister.
Barring war or revolution – neither of which look likely in today’s Europe – it is difficult to conceive of circumstances that would lead to the removal of any of the continent’s monarchies any time soon – with one proviso: the British monarch’s continued position as head of state of fifteen Commonwealth countries outside the United Kingdom including Australia, New Zealand and Canada looks less secure. For Britons, the monarchy is a symbol of national unity – for many in these countries, known as the Commonwealth Realms, the Queen is a vestige of historic subordination to the “mother country”, which no longer seems appropriate in the twenty-first century.
In 1993 Australia’s Labour premier, Paul Keating, who had shocked the British tabloid press the previous year by daring to put his arm around the Queen, committed his party to a referendum on the monarchy by the end of the century. In November 1999 the vote finally took place: voters were asked whether they wanted to replace the Queen as head of state with a president.
Opinion polls in the years before the vote had suggested a majority in favour of a republic. Yet when it came to the referendum, only 45.13 per cent voted “yes”, compared with 54.87 who wanted to leave things unchanged. So what changed?
A crucial role was undoubtedly played by the proposed method for selecting the new president. Rather than have a directly elected head of state as in, say, France, which inevitably would have led to a fundamental change in the functioning of the country’s Westminster-style political system, it was proposed that the new president be appointed by parliament – leaving the “yes” camp open to accusations that the change was undemocratic and would turn Australia into a “politicians’ republic”. For this reason, even some of the more radical republicans voted “no” – better stick to the status quo with the chance of another vote further down the line than move to a flawed model, they argued. Moderate republicans were outraged.
A decade later, Australians are still waiting for another vote. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it would have been far fairer to have asked voters simply if they were in favour of a republic, and only if they had voted yes then decide, perhaps through another referendum, on how to elect the president.
In New Zealand, by contrast, there is little agitation for ending the role of the monarchy, although even here support is far from overwhelming: John Key, leader of the centre-right National Party, who became prime minister in November 2008, has said he is not convinced a republic will be a big issue in the short term – although he does believe it is “inevitable” in the end. Politicians were given a chance to have their say on the issue in April 2010 after a private member’s bill proposed by Keith Locke, a member of the Green party and an ardent republican, was put to the vote. It was defeated at its first reading by sixty-eight votes to fifty-three. The monarchist cause appeared to have been given a boost by a visit to New Zealand that January by Prince William, who, delivering his first major speech, officially opened the country’s Supreme Court building dressed in a traditional Maori cloak.
At the time of writing, there is no sign of a rerun of the Australian vote or of referendums in any of the other countries where the Queen still reigns. That may change when she dies. There seems little doubt that support for the institution of monarchy in these countries has been bolstered considerably by support for the Queen herself, and the dedication she has shown to her job for almost six decades. Charles will not automatically enjoy such popularity, at least initially, providing Australian republicans and those elsewhere with a golden opportunity to push for change. Quite how they – or those in the other Commonwealth Realms – would succeed in jumping over all the constitutional hurdles that would stand in the way of turning their country into a republic remains to be seen.
In Canada, meanwhile, monarchists and republicans have been locked in debate over the institution of monarchy since before the country’s confederation in 1867. Opinion polls have showed support for the monarchy has varied over the years, although – not surprisingly – republican feeling is stronger in French-speaking Quebec than it is in the English-speaking provinces. As in Australia and New Zealand, however, Prince Charles appears to enjoy considerably less support than his mother, suggesting his succession may provide opponents of monarchy with the opportunity for which they have long been waiting. Here, too, a visit by Prince William in July 2011 – this time accompanied by his new wife – was of great help to the monarchist cause.
Chapter 16
A Reign without End
The year is 2052, and with his seventieth birthday approaching on 21st June, King William V of the United Kingdom of England and Wales is coming under increasing pressure to abdicate. Formal retirement dates have long since been abolished as ageist, but seventy is still the age at which most people choose to end their working life; so why should kings, even ones as popular as William, be any different?
Blame his father, Charles, who did not become king until he was almost seventy because of his own mother’s conviction that it was God’s will that she should remain on the throne until she died. When that moment came, plunging the country into a period of mourning not seen since the death of Princess Diana, there was speculation that Charles might step aside in favour of his son, to spare him the frustration of such a long apprenticeship. It was not to be. After spending his entire adul
t life as Prince of Wales, Charles was determined to have a crack at the top job.
Charles’s reign was not a success, however. It got off to the worst possible start when both Australia and New Zealand chose his accession to hold referendums on transforming themselves into republics: despite a passionate and highly organized campaign by the monarchists, the republicans won. While both countries mourned the passing of Queen Elizabeth, there was little enthusiasm for a third King Charles.
Charles never managed to recover from this initial blow to his prestige. True, his subjects were surprisingly amenable to the idea of a Queen Camilla – which had not seemed likely when he had married her back in 2005. Charles’s problem was a more fundamental one: after a lifetime in which he had never been shy about expressing his opinions, he found it difficult to adapt to the strictly apolitical role that his mother had carried off so well.
Responsibility lay in great part with Charles’s advisors, who encouraged him to adopt a more interventionist role – the British people would warm to a monarch who made his views known, they argued. For Charles it was also a matter of conscience: he continued to feel strongly about certain issues and did not see his elevation from prince of Wales to king should prevent him from speaking out about them.
And so the letters written in his characteristic spidery hand continued to land on the desks of the great and the good – usually achieving the desired effect. Then he went too far: it emerged that he had been lobbying behind the scenes to try to block a massive wind-farm project – one of his principal bêtes noires. The newly elected Labour government, which had a surprisingly large number of avowed republicans among its leading members, cried foul. With a constitutional crisis looming, Charles decided it best to abdicate “for reasons of health” in favour of William.
William, who was forty-five when he came to the throne, with Queen Catherine at his side, did much to restore confidence in the monarchy. He had spent most of his working life in the RAF and, although expressing the requisite interest in the environment and the developing world, did not share his father’s passions. He also won respect for the dignity with which he accepted both the loss of Northern Ireland – which was peacefully united in a federation with the Republic in the south – and the secession of Scotland. Now, though, it was time for him to step aside.
The Great Survivors Page 39