| Republican Fodder
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December 2002
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When it Reigns, it Pours
Shortly after her Golden Jubilee, the popularity of Queen Elizabeth II and the British monarchy is at a fifteen-year low. Just over half of her subjects believe the country would be worse off without a monarch. This is what comes of placing a rather awful middle-class German family on the throne.
The Paul Burrell scandal and the palace rape investigation that so quickly followed are just two in a long line of blunders the Saxe-Coburgs have stumbled into. The fact is that the British royals are not up to their roles, and either need their responsibilities lessened or perhaps need to find other employment.
The great political commentator of the 19th century, Walter Bagehot, defended the monarchy as an institution but cautioned that it could not bear very close scrutiny or it would lose its magic. Well, the sparkle has long gone (somewhere around the abdication of Edward VIII one would think), and if they want to keep their jobs (if that doesn't stretch the definition of "job" too far), they might want to look abroad for examples.
Europe does have other royal families, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway. They are less visible and less expensive, a good place for the Brits to start. Meanwhile, they don't have the class and style of Spain's King Juan Carlos, who ordered the army back to barracks during the 1981 coup declaring that Spain was a parliamentary democracy. Of course, one expects more of a descendant of Louis XIV rather than those of an elector of Hesse.