The Guardian view on the coronation of Charles III: a dated pageant that should be rethought
As the day nears, ask yourself a question. What is this weekend’s coronation for? It will not make Charles III the king. He is that already. He became king when his mother died last year, and after a smoothly performed and sensibly low-key accession process. The line of succession is also firmly set.
Nor will the coronation make any difference to the king’s ability to carry out his constitutional role as Britain’s head of state. It will confer no new power on him. He already gives his assent to laws.
The coronation no longer provides a platform to parade an imperial reach, as that of Elizabeth II, attended by more than 50 senior representatives of Britain’s possessions and Commonwealth nations, emphatically still sought to. It will not be a celebration of Britain’s global military and naval clout, which earlier coronations also were. Those days have gone, and good riddance.
The coronation is certainly not taking place because of public demand or enthusiasm for the monarchy or the new king. A mere 9% of British adults say that they care “a great deal” about this weekend’s events. Only 7% describe themselves as committed royalists, willing to give uncritical support to the monarchy. It seems gratuitous to be paying £250m for a coronation during a cost of living crisis.
Nor can it be seen as a symbolic new chapter for the nation. The 1953 coronation of the then 27-year-old Elizabeth was widely depicted as an event designed to bring colour and hope to postwar Britain – perhaps even as the start of a new age. Charles, by contrast, is the oldest monarch to take the British throne. His life story, his family problems and his ways are familiar. Britain will not change this weekend.
The overwhelming truth is that the coronation is taking place for anachronistic religious and constitutional reasons. This weekend’s events are centred on a religious service in which Charles vows to uphold the Protestant religion, is anointed with holy oil and swears an oath which, in words that the archbishop of Canterbury will intone in Westminster Abbey on Saturday, commits to making Britain “a holy nation” under “a royal priesthood”.
The divine right to rule
Yet modern Britain is not a holy nation. Nor is it even a largely Protestant one. Britain instead is increasingly secular, even though it remains deeply imprinted, in ways it sometimes does not grasp, by its long Christian history. England and Wales have become minority Christian countries. Yet England, although not Scotland, Wales or either part of Ireland, has an established state church. Whether this can or should continue ought to be a subject of serious public debate. But it never is.
No other constitutional monarchy in Europe has a religious coronation like this country’s. No other country pretends that its head of state is chosen or invited to rule by a divinity. This does not mean that there should be no ceremony, no tradition, or no celebration to mark the transition to a new head of state. It does mean, however, that this ritual should have been changed and should not be continued in its old form.
The widely felt impact of the transition from the long reign of Elizabeth II ought to have been matched by a more serious civic response. It should have led Britain to ask itself more thoroughly and more openly whether – and, if so, in what form – Saturday’s event is needed at all. That, though, would have required a proper public discussion, not merely about the coronation but about the established church – and ultimately about the monarchy itself.
Britain and its governments have always been bad at doing that. The issues are consistently treated as taboos when they should not be. Parliament is never consulted. The failures, though, are ours too. Civic Britain has been far too docile, with monarchy habituating the feeling that we are subjects, not citizens. The royal role in colonialism and slavery may change that.
True, some effort has gone into making Charles III’s coronation more inclusive. Some other faith leaders, besides the archbishop, will play a part.
The nations of the United Kingdom will be more explicitly invoked. The peerage will have a reduced role. Music will be multicultural. The lesson will be read by a Hindu prime minister.
These changes, though, have not sprung from civil society or our representative institutions. Instead they have largely been crafted behind closed doors by the king and his advisers. It shows. They have tinkered, not rethought. They have not gone far enough. They have avoided truly challenging questions. And by including a voluntary pledge of allegiance to the king, they have misread the spirit of the country, albeit perhaps with inclusive intentions.
Missing a national debate
It is not the British people who should pledge allegiance to the king. It is the king who should pledge allegiance to the British people. There is all the difference between the two. One is feudal and deferential. The other is constitutional and democratic. The king has opted for the former. It is a telling choice.
It is not a choice that should be followed. Charles has done some good things since coming to the throne. Some of his instincts are progressive, even modern. But he does not and cannot embody the nation, its laws, its religion or its institutions in this mystical way. The invitation to give allegiance to a person, not to a system or a people, is demeaning and preposterous.
This newspaper has consistently advocated a more rational adult debate about the monarchy and the various alternatives. A generation ago, we helped make the republican case part of that discussion again. Many opinion polls in the run-up to the coronation confirm that the public holds a range of views. Generations differ. Opinion is not divided in some Manichean way between fanatical monarchists and rabid republicans.
The public is well ahead of the political system on this. The Guardian’s cost of the crown series has shown how the Windsors’ fortune seems to have been amassed from public funds. Yet too many parliamentarians are stuck in the past, afraid of discussing even such issues as the royal family’s size, wealth, land and assets.
That needs to change, in part because it is beginning to happen anyway. Most people support the monarchy, but the majorities are not as overwhelming as in the past. Many are open to ideas about how a better system might operate. Republicanism may not be storming the palace walls, but it is moving forward as part of this change. All these things will move further and faster if those who make the decisions about constitutional monarchy continue to hog the decisions and lock the people out, as they have done over the coronation.