In the 1992 novel The Queen and I, Sue Townsend imagines a future where the monarchy is abolished and the royals are forced to move out of Buckingham Palace and live on a council estate. They are shocked, having to learn basic tasks like dressing themselves and using zips and buttons. But towards the end, the Queen has embraced her new life and announces she would not want to return to her royal duties should the monarchy return. The book concludes with the Queen waking up in her Buckingham Palace bedroom: it was all a dream.
Similarly, in Netflix drama The Crown, Elizabeth II has a nightmare in which then Prime Minister Tony Blair is crowned in her place. The Queen watches on in horror as King Tony is coronated, and the Westminster Abbey choir sings a classical cover of ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by D:Ream, New Labour’s 1997 election song.
These dreams are just that: fantasies of an imaginary, post-monarchical future, from the perspective of the people who stand to lose their social status should republicanism come to fruition. But these dreams do little to show us, the people, what a republican future could actually look like for us.
Since Elizabeth II’s death in 2022, the anti-monarchy campaign group Republic has seen a surge of support, demonstrating there is a greater appetite for potential alternatives. What could that alternative look like, and how could we get there?
‘Slimming down’ the monarchy
Some commentators suggest that ‘slimming down’ the monarchy is the answer. That is, streamline the number of ‘working royals’, purportedly to reduce the monarchy’s operational costs. This is a solution that has, supposedly, been championed by King Charles himself, as a way to make the monarchy more modernised and futureproof.
This idea gestures towards vague ideas of ‘tightening the purse strings’, without any solid evidence of how this would bring about structural change. Nor, indeed, is there any tangible evidence of this happening yet. News outlets loved to report that the King’s coronation would be ‘slimmed down’ because it was shorter and a bit smaller, but otherwise it followed exactly the same pomp and ceremony as others throughout history.
And in January 2025, it was reported that the Sovereign Grant – the main part (but, importantly, not the only part) of the monarchy’s annual funding – would increase by 53 per cent this year to over £132 million. To put this in perspective, the Dutch royal family received extensive criticism in 2023 because it received an 11 per cent increase, but this put its total cost at €55 million (approximately £46 million), much less than half of its British counterpart.
To me, ‘slimming down’ the monarchy is an ambiguous phrase, meant to appease the monarchy’s critics while not disrupting the status quo.
The case for abolishing the monarchy
The most common retort to the suggestion of abolishing the monarchy is ‘we don’t want President Nigel Farage/Tony Blair/insert another problematic politician here’. Like the Queen’s fever dream in The Crown, such ideas play on fears about political power, dismissing the conversation outright by assuming that any non-monarchical system would be like that of the USA, where the president wields extraordinary executive power, as we are unfortunately now witnessing.
But the more likely scenario for the UK, and the model proposed by the campaign group Republic, is a parliamentary constitution. This is not hugely different to what we have now, and would be similar to that of our closest neighbour, Ireland.
In its current form, the crown reduces parliament’s power. It gives the government power to make decisions without parliamentary consent, and the monarchy’s existence means we do not have an independent head of state acting in a ‘checks-and-balances’ role to ensure fairness. We saw the results of this system in 2019, when the Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to prorogue parliament so he could force his Brexit deal through.
If we had a parliamentary constitution, the monarchy would be abolished, and we’d have a written constitution that clearly delineates the role of each actor within the political system. There could be an elected upper house (as opposed to the currently unelected and antiquated House of Lords) and an elected, independent head of state.
The money spent on the monarchy’s upkeep could be redirected to public services. A president would be much cheaper: the cost of running the Irish president’s office was €4.8 million in 2021 (approximately £4 million).
How would it happen?
We’ve seen very recently one way this could play out. Barbados became a republic in 2021, after the Barbados Labour Party acquired a more-than-two-thirds parliamentary majority, which gave it the power to change the political system without a referendum. Its model for transition drew on the 1996–98 Constitution Review Commission, with Barbados becoming a parliamentary republic, and a head of state appointed as president.
Other Caribbean countries have announced their intention to decolonise, following a similar model for reform. In December 2024, Jamaica presented a bill in parliament to abolish the monarchy.
In the UK, this might play out differently. Should Scotland become independent, it could pursue a referendum on abolishing the monarchy. It’s not totally out of the question – Scotland has long had lower monarchy approval ratings. Over in Ireland, Sinn Féin is gaining popularity in the Republic due to its more left-wing policies. If Sinn Féin pursued the reunification of Ireland, the restructuring of Great Britain could foster similar debates about the British state and the constitution.
On paper, it might seem like we are a way off abolishing the monarchy, but factors like all of these could change the conversation overnight. Elizabeth II’s long, steady reign left little room or desire for radical debate. But Charles III’s reign will undoubtably be shorter – he is already 76 years old – and the monarchy has been subjected to widespread criticism in recent years, from the allegations of sexual assault against Prince Andrew, to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s ‘exit’ which drew attention to institutional racism.
Now is as good a time as any to start thinking about alternative futures.
Laura Clancy, lecturer in media at Lancaster University.
What Is the Monarchy For? by Laura Clancy is available on Bristol University Press for £8.99 here.
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