On September 8th, 2022, Queen Elizabeth II of England died at the age of 96. She held the crown for 70 years, making her the longest reigning monarch in the history of Britain. Her son, now King Charles III, will likely be coronated in mid-2023.

Yes, the monarchy needs changing (or for some, abolishing), but the whole structure is in desperate need of reform. The status of the monarchy, the power and structure of the executive, the powers of legislation and scrutiny of parliament, the methods of election and appointment, justice and accountability – all these and no doubt other matters need to be examined publicly and forensically in citizens’ assemblies. Then “we” can choose, and it is to be hoped that our political establishment will listen and put through parliament the bulk of our wishes, regardless of the vested interests against them. We are told that, without the magical spell of monarchy, we will fall to a greater evil: a troll, or a Farage, as if no elected head of state has ever been fit for the task but a Mountbatten Windsor. It’s another element of the fairy tale we have chosen to substitute for a healthy national life, which we might see under a republic: one that is fair and vigorous; forward-looking and vital; filled with hope.

Polly Toynbee says that bringing up children with the idea that they are ruled by a monarch is "very damaging and makes democracy harder to embed." Since today is the Muslim festival of Eid, let me begin by quoting from a lecture delivered thirty years ago at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies: “Islam is part of our past and present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.” My mother wears a hijab, doesn’t speak much English, and was very fond of the Queen. She’s unimpeachably British in a way that is impossible in any comparable European republic. In France, her clothing would be against the values of the republic. In Germany, she most likely would not have a German passport, which is harder for those without German blood. But in the United Kingdom, no such authoritarian demands are made of her – except a pledge of allegiance to the King (and even that is not really insisted upon). The removal of the crown from the constitution and an elected second house are minimum requirements for a modern and mature democracy. Without a larger argument, it does not follow that economic benefits are sufficient to outweigh moral concerns. This would be like arguing that we should legalize vote-selling due to its economic benefits – it seems to miss the moral reason why we structure public institutions the ways that we do.

Robert Hardman is a writer and broadcaster specialising in the monarchy. His most recent book is “Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II” (Macmillan)If you accept the monarchy, you must accept the moral compromise that comes with it, from its erosion of the principle of equality to the secret interference in our laws. But the good news is that we don't have to accept it. True democracy is within our reach.

He doesn’t understand class, of course. I had a brief fantasy that he would give up his dukedom and become a tree surgeon but, as I have written, having projected on to him for a lifetime, I can’t stop now. I see him as a whistle-blower, and the story he tells is of a family fractured by monarchy and what it demands of royal people. When people tell you the truth of their lives you should believe them. He was not looked after. He was not happy. His brother and his friends chased him with guns: when his father told him Diana was dead, Charles patted his son’s knee and left him. My presence in this chamber would have been as unlikely to my mother as anything else she hoped I might achieve as we padded around our living room. I am the child of, among other things, aspiration. For me the most interesting comparison,” Guillén says, “was democratic monarchies and democratic republics.” Looking at the mechanisms he described, the only one that was significantly different there was the length of political tenure, but he found that nonetheless, monarchies performed better. “The mechanism is that when politicians perpetuate themselves in power, property rights suffer,” he said. “Having a head of state who’s the monarch, above politics, not elected, essentially helps put the politicians in their place. The thing that doesn’t change is the monarch, while the politicians come and go.” But the unseriousness goes beyond superficialities. Smith believes that monarchy’s failings are so self-evident that it is unnecessary to treat it seriously as a system of government. One could be forgiven, after reading this book, for thinking that no greater intellects than Alan Titchmarsh and Stephen Fry have turned their minds to the subject. There is no reference to Thomas Hobbes or Edmund Burke, let alone other, less famous, theorists of monarchy. There is no engagement with the writings of the German historian Ernst Kantorowicz, who exposed the sophistication of monarchical conceptions of the state. To this day, many of these ideas underlie the operations of the British monarchy – too often called ‘constitutional’, notwithstanding the absence of anything resembling a constitution. For a long time, it was possible to argue that the monarchy should be retained because abolition would involve major constitutional upheaval. But leaving the EU has already opened the door to “root and branch” reform of how Britain governs itself. Even Scottish independence and Irish unification are now realistic prospects—foreshadowing, perhaps, the breakup of the British state. In this context, abolishing the monarchy alongside other constitutional reforms can be seen to make a great deal of sense, especially if the UK is to fragment into two or more entities.I was startled awake with the familiar story of the forced evacuation of the Chagos Islands not requiring any reference for an overview from Parliament and how the process is available to be repeated. And possibly has been because these need not be reported.

The monarchy is supported financially by UK taxpayers via the Sovereign Grant, which covers central staffing costs and expenses for the monarch’s official households, maintenance of the royal palaces in England, and travel and royal engagements and visits. The problem with the monarchy is not that it establishes a hierarchy of esteem, but rather that it establishes a mandatory, unearned hierarchy between otherwise equal citizens. The monarchist newspapers – on their knees with bared fangs – called Kate Middleton “Waity Katie”, as if it is pitiable to love someone. Now, post child bed, she is a saint of course. Her mother, a former air stewardess and self-made woman is called “Doors to Manual”. I believe that sacred monarchy infantilises us, as if Gandalf and Frodo were characters in our national life. I believe in the truism that the larger your dreamworld – and monarchy is a dreamworld – the smaller, sadder and more brittle is your real world. I think this is reflected in our politics, which are not imaginative, or functional, or even particularly reactive. Charles Moore says there isn't massive rage against the monarchy in the Commonwealth but that could change.But Charles Moore disagrees. He says the feeling about the monarchy is repeated in different generations: "Because there is something that is archetypal about monarchy, it's something children really get. You can't explain to a four-year-old what an economist or a business is, but you can explain what a king or queen is." It is easier to count the victims of monarchy than to count those made happy by it. I’ll paraphrase Oscar Wilde now: one unhappy royal is an accident, two is carelessness. We have, generation to generation, a tapestry of ruined lives. Those who insist the role of our monarchy is merely symbolic miss the point. It symbolises something extremely corrosive that persists in the present. It enshrines the hereditary principle in a system that increasingly enriches the privileged and privileges the rich; a system that favours not democracy but deference; where the poor know their place and the rich have their power. We should abolish the monarchy now because all of those trends are getting worse now. See also: Prince Harry’s war on the Windsors] Tanjil Rashid: “For those of us who are here as the flotsam of empire, the monarchy offers us an anchor of familiarity, safety and trust”