Can monarchy outlive queen?

Commentary

ABy John Lloyd

heavy cold and a nation shivers. The cold is that attributed, this week, to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II (her formal titles would take much of the rest of this column). The shivers are those of the political establishment.

Everything of moment in the United Kingdom depends, formally, on the 90-year-old Queen. She legitimizes all laws. She appoints all ministers. Parliamentarians must swear an oath of fealty to her. Ambassadors negotiate in her name, generals fight in it. She is the monarch in more than a dozen former imperial possessions, largely uncontroversially. When, in 1999, on the prompting of a Labour Prime Minister, the Australians tried to usurp her, the move failed, in spite of polls showing only minority support for her. Now, contrary to belief, the polls have risen, to show her popularity at around 60 percent.

Public approval has only grown as she has aged. Shown slowly walking through official ceremonies, even grumpy republicans (of whom I am one, so beware of bias) have to admit to her stoicism and guts. She is by some way the most popular figure in the UK, and the second most popular in the world — after of course, Angelina Jolie (Hollywood royalty still has the edge; it has, after all, a bigger PR budget).

The queen’s formal power is a kind of confidence trick in which almost everyone acquiesces. She does what she is told by the prime minister who comes to her once a week, bows or curtsies, and tells her what the government wants to do — policies on which she can make at most an oblique comment and which she cannot change. A little storm blew up this week as to whether or not she favored Brexit: the BBC political editor said she’d been told she had, but lacking a second source, didn’t broadcast it on her employer’s channels. Denials and no comments have been thick on the ground since; the Queen does not comment, whether she did or not. Brexit steams, or stumbles, ahead.

Her real job is keeping Britain together. Every age group thinks she’s great — the older more than the younger, to be sure — and that the monarchy should carry on into the future — preferably with her at its head. Since that is, however, impossible, the “heavy cold” has alarmed her country’s real, much less popular, rulers.

Quite soon, a decision must be made — it may have been made already — as to whom the succession will go. It is on paper simple: to her eldest son, Charles, Prince of Wales, 68 last month. But here’s the rub. Though less unpopular than he was during the divorce from Princess Diana in 1996, and after her death in 1997, his approval ratings remain mediocre, and even admirers think he should abjure the throne for his elder son, Prince William.

Queen Elizabeth II