With the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the accession of King Charles, Britain has entered a new era — and questions about the future of the monarchy have become more pressing. Does it have a long-term role to play in modern Britain, or is it an anachronism whose days are numbered?
In this episode, George Miller talks to Laura Clancy, lecturer in media at Lancaster University and author of the new book What is the Monarchy For?, about the questions she think we should be asking about the monarchy in 21st-century Britain. Their conversation explores the monarchy’s part in perpetuating inequality, its use of soft power, the influence it exerts over media narratives, and whether the institution can keep re-inventing itself while essentially remaining the same.
‘The monarchy is doing important work ideologically,’ Laura argues, ‘upholding systems of inequality – even if it’s not authoritarian, even if it seems passive. It’s part of a structure that still shapes who has power and who doesn’t in Britain.’
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Scroll down for shownotes and transcript.
Laura Clancy is a lecturer in media in the sociology department, Lancaster University. Her research focuses on issues of inequality, particularly ‘the elites’ and the monarchy.
What Is the Monarchy For? by Laura Clancy is available on Bristol University Press for £8.99 here.
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SHOWNOTES
Timestamps:
02:11 – What sort of attitude did your family have towards the royals?
05:49 – What approach did you take to the question of what is the monarchy for, and why?
14:10 – Do you think other countries are better for not having a monarchy?
16:16 – Did the death of Queen Elizabeth II change the book?
23:11 – What are the main motivators for becoming a republic?
32:57 – What eye-opening discoveries came from interviewing royal correspondents?
39:47 – What do you think about the countervailing force of British exceptionalism?
Transcript:
(Please note this transcript is autogenerated and may have minor inaccuracies.)
George Miller: Hello and welcome to the Transforming Society podcast from Bristol University Press.
My name is George Miller and I’m the editor of a series from BUP that launched recently: over the next few years What is it for? will explore the purpose of a range of institutions, beliefs, ideologies and other key elements of the contemporary world: from war to philanthropy; nuclear weapons to free speech; conspiracy theories to veganism.
The latest addition to the series is What is the monarchy for? by Laura Clancy. Laura is a lecturer in media at Lancaster University whose research focuses on issues of inequality, in particular the elites and monarchy.
She’s the author previously of Running the Family Firm: How the Monarchy Manages Its Image and Our Money, which was published by Manchester University Press in 2021. She’s also a frequent media commentator on the royals.
As Laura remarks at the start of her book, everyone has a pretty good idea of what the monarchy is; it’s there on every stamp or coin in nearly every newspaper; it permeates national life and shapes the nation’s idea of itself in ways that seems inevitable and unchanging.
It’s much harder to say what it is actually for. Laura writes:
This is not such a straightforward question, and there has never been a more pertinent time to ask it. … the monarchy has adapted itself in some ways to the modern age. It has – at least in part – embraced developing media cultures and social media, for example. But it remains at odds with much of contemporary society.
In Laura’s book, and in this conversation, she explores some of those ways in which the monarchy is at odds with modern Britain and the implications of this for the future.
When I spoke to her recently, I started by asking what sort of family she grew up in in terms of their attitude to the royals. What sort of message did she pick up back then?
Laura Clancy: I mean, I don’t remember really growing up with any messages, if I’m honest, but that – I think that’s what’s most interesting to me. My family weren’t overly pro-, but they definitely weren’t anti-monarchy. I think it was just they were there, they existed. I remember one of my earliest memories is when Diana died and my mum and my auntie sat crying watching it. So there was that – like many other families, I’m sure – that kind of acknowledgement. But I don’t remember ever talking about them.
It was really my own interest. When I went to university, I got really interested in issues around gender and feminism, and it happened to be around about the time when Kate Middleton married Prince William. There was a lot of talk about her as kind of this new, very perfect, very conservative, very traditional version of femininity. That kind of piqued my interest and that’s really where I started. And then it snowballed into thinking about the whole institution.
I’ve always been interested in questions of class, I think, and social class. You know, I grew up in quite a working-class household and then went to university – I was first generation – and that was all a bit of a shock.
So all of those things have kind of always got me interested. I suppose it was maybe the combination of, in particular, Kate – that really interesting combination of gender and class – that got me noticing it. And then the more I looked, it’s kind of like pulling a thread, isn’t it? It just keeps going.
GM: I mean, as you described your mother and your auntie crying at the funeral of Diana, it’s impossible to live in this country and avoid the royal family, isn’t it? You know, if you turn on the radio, you pick up a newspaper, you go on social media – you’d really have to make quite an effort in order not to have them in some way permeate your consciousness and your life.
LC: Yeah, I think so. And like I’m saying, I don’t remember it, but I must have been aware of it. I’m sure weddings and stuff, even if my parents weren’t avidly watching, they would have it on in the background or whatever. It’s unavoidable. It’s completely unavoidable.
Even through school – actually, now I’m speaking, I remember one of the jubilees, doing something for it at school. So even if you don’t grow up in a household that’s really interested in it, you’re kind of getting it seeping into your imagination elsewhere, aren’t you?
And it’s unavoidable, I guess, but there’s also a very strong inclination to believe that it’s inevitable too.
GM: No, it’s just, as I said at the start, we’re sort of pickled in that brine. And that entrenches this view that, well, they’re there because they’ve always been there and they always should be there. And it’s good that they’re there. And why question it? Because it’s just like the weather or all sorts of other things which go back to the Middle Ages or earlier – it’s just part of what we are.
LC: Yeah. And I think that’s why I was so interested when you first approached me about this book – the title of the series, What is it for? I think that’s what got me interested because I kind of say in the beginning of the book, like, we all know what the monarchy is, right? We can all name a royal or recognise the palace or whatever else.
But this question about what is it for is completely separate and something we never look at.
It’s amazing how something that’s so hyper-visible in so many ways – you don’t even notice it – can be so invisible in other ways. And I think that’s what’s really fascinating about it as a subject.
GM: I was thinking before we started recording today that most of the books in the series – whether it’s prisons or museums or whatever – the agenda is to look at a phenomenon and think about how it might be reformed. To think about the good things it does, the potential harms it does, but to think through: how do we get from where we are today to a better place?
So I guess one possible approach to the question what is the monarchy for is to look at it and say, well, you know, there are some things that are not going quite right. There are some ways in which this institution doesn’t represent 21st-century Britain. But perhaps if we did this or encouraged that or stopped doing this, maybe we’d have – in inverted commas – a monarchy fit for the 21st century.
As I think you’ve probably already indicated, that’s not the approach you’ve taken. So maybe you can tell me why that approach doesn’t seem to have any merit to you – and therefore what you’re sort of pursuing instead.
LC: Yeah, so there’s lots of commentators who talk about like a slimmed-down monarchy, for example. So less of the, in quotation marks, working royals, which will mean less money out of the public purse or getting rid of some of their property or, you know, going more towards, I guess, a version of some of the European monarchies who are much smaller. There is some support for that and supposedly King Charles has said that he’d support that as well, although that’s obviously not confirmed.
I just can’t get past, I don’t see how an institution where there are so many layers. So my book goes to, you know, issues of gender inequality, connections to colonialism, which are not historical, which are still very much present, issues around abuse of power, issues around land ownership. I don’t see how an institution with all of that can simply be reformed. It feels like the sheer power of the institution.
And I suppose like even just like the symbolism of it and what it means in the UK, what it means globally, what it means historically in terms of class, gender, race, all of those things. I don’t see a way for that to just be simply reformed.
I think that if we’re seriously asking the questions about what is it for and we get the answers, to me, the only response is it shouldn’t be there anymore. Just because of what it shows up, what it reproduces within this country, I think.
GM: Because I guess another way of coming at the question is to say, well, it doesn’t really matter a great deal because in the whole field of structural inequalities and injustices that we have in the modern world and also the challenges that we face, maybe one family which costs, if you look at it one way, it seems to cost a lot of money.
But if you look at it as a part of the whole budget of the United Kingdom, you could say, actually, if we save that money, I don’t know, it might pay for one hospital or something like that, but it’s actually not such a lot of money.
And if we want to tackle structural inequality, maybe there are other targets that we could look at that would yield greater benefits than this institution which maybe some people think of simply as anachronistic or like a sideshow, but of no real consequence to people’s everyday lives. What do you make of that argument?
LC: Yeah, and I have had that a lot. And when I say I’m doing this, particularly because I work in like in sociology and I’m interested in issues of inequality and I get why you’re looking at the monarchy then. I have had that less actually since the Queen died. So we can maybe come back to that because that’s interesting.
But my answer would be it’s not a sideshow. It’s, you know, yes, the fact that we take it for granted because it’s there all the time. And yes, it’s not authoritarian. It’s not doing that kind of work. But it doesn’t, that doesn’t matter. It’s doing a lot of really important work.
As I already said, like symbolically, I think of all the other systems that it kind of upholds as well. So I think the existence of the monarchy is very much attached, not necessarily in law, but I think ideologically with like the House of Lords or with a system of an aristocracy or with systems around land ownership and inheritance and all of those.
I think all of that system, which has historically been really, really important to the shaping of this country and is now assumed to not be relevant because we’ve got all the new money coming in from the world globally, but actually still is really relevant.
You know, the amount of country houses that are still owned by the original families. The Duke of Westminster is one of the richest people in the country, in the world, I think. Yes, it’s not, you know, he’s not going, Charles isn’t going around beheading people. It’s not that kind of thing, but it’s still really important in terms of shaping who, what Britain is and what it isn’t and what we think we are and what we think we’re not and all of those things.
That has a knock on effect, I think.
So I think if we can’t, in this country, you can’t have a serious conversation about inequality without recognising that the monarchy is part of that and is upholding all of that.
GM: So I imagine if you were a pro-royalist, when you saw Keir Starmer sitting in the White House a few weeks ago with Donald Trump and Starmer reaches inside his jacket and he pulls out this envelope, a little bit like, you know, the golden ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and he hands this to Trump and I can’t remember which one of them reads it, but the letter is from King Charles inviting Trump on a state visit and you can see how delighted Trump is.
I guess someone who’s pro-royal would say, well, wasn’t that a great coup? Wasn’t that the kind of thing which Macron couldn’t do, which has really given us an edge and really shows that, you know, aside from the arguments about tourism, which I guess are also a sideshow about, you know, whether the Royal family boosts tourism.
But look, there’s an example of amazing soft power – that Starmer’s got this Trump card, if you pardon the pun, which makes the president go weak at the knees.
And that’s an example, perhaps an extreme one, but there are probably plenty of other monarchs or world leaders who would equally be chuffed to bits and that’s an intangible benefit.
You maybe can’t say exactly one-to-one correspondence for what that brings Britain, but to have that in our back pocket is well worth £124 million a year or whatever it is that the royal family costs. What would you say to someone who put that to you?
LC: I mean, that might be true, but I guess I would go back to, okay, great, yes, but is that the version of Britain that you want the world to think of us as? You know, do you want them to think of us all sat in gold carriages? And like, yeah, is that, you know, is that what you want the outward-facing thing that you want people to have, I suppose?
GM: I mean, I guess there would be maybe a minority, but there would be a sizeable chunk of the population who might say resoundingly yes.
LC: Yeah, oh yeah, I’m sure there would be. That’s exactly what we want to project the world, that sort of heritage and tradition and, you know, whatever. But you can get that elsewhere.
I mean, you mentioned France and I know this isn’t quite the same for this argument, but, you know, they’ve got a history that’s got a lot of – a big history of monarchy – and that’s known, right? Their kings and queens are known and people still talk about them.
I would also say like, yes, that soft power thing might be true, but again, at what costs? And I don’t just mean economic cost. I mean all the other costs – ideological, you know, all of that that comes with monarchy. Is it worth that trade-off? And my answer to that would always be no.
GM: So would you say there’s something, there’s something damaging, there’s something kind of sclerotic in a country that is so wedded to keeping alive sort of ancient structures and traditions and hierarchies?
Because I was thinking before the call, I was thinking, is Germany a better country for not having a monarchy? Better in inverted commas, because obviously it’d be very difficult to say exactly what. But I thought if the monarchy is damaging in this sort of ideological way and also structural way, well, if we look at somewhere like Germany, can we see that the absence of that is actually having a benefit?
And of course, you know, of course then you’d have to go into political systems and views of values and all that sort of thing. But in crude terms, do you think it’s – maybe it’s not sufficient to be a sort of modern forward-thinking nation to get rid of your monarchy, but do you think it’s a necessity in order to get to this position where you can then sort of thrash out, you know, how you conduct yourselves democratically and what your values are and how you address inequality and those sort of things?
LC: Yeah, I think that’s a really nice way of putting it. You know, I’m not saying if we get rid of it, then everything will be perfect because obviously it’s not going to be. And I’m not saying that every other country that doesn’t have a monarchy is great because obviously that’s not true either.
My concern is more, you know, there’s lots of movements in this country, like left-wing movements that are talking about how we can move towards a more equitable system, right? And how we can get away from the neoliberal, like capitalist, whatever on earth we’re in at the moment.
And to me, that can’t be achieved without getting rid of the monarchy. I think that’s the thing. I think that you can’t, you know, those two things can never come together.
And if we’re serious about making life better for everybody, you can’t do that whilst running this monarchical system that enshrines inequality in every single pound note that you hand over to a shopkeeper. You know, how can you build something when that still exists?
GM: And it was probably quite difficult, comparatively difficult, to make that argument while Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne. She, for most of people who are now alive, embodied the monarchy, was the only monarch they had known.
And I think it was probably felt by republicans it was quite difficult because of the regard in which she was held by quite a sizeable number of people in the country and outside – that probably the republican case might have to wait or that it would change, it would change the nature of the republican case once the monarchy was no longer sort of indivisibly linked to Queen Elizabeth.
So you were writing this book at a really interesting time because I think you began planning it while the Queen was still alive and you were writing it over the period when she died, her funeral took place, and Charles has come to the throne.
So I wondered, well first, do you think it’s true that the case for a republic is now easier to make? And then maybe you could reflect a bit about this whole transitional period that you’ve been writing through and how it’s played into the argument of the book.
LC: Yeah, it’s definitely easier for sure. I mean, I think, you know, you mentioned at the beginning my other book was only out in 2021, which actually isn’t very long ago, it was only three and a half years ago. But it feels completely different, I think. And I do quite a lot of quite a bit of media work and I felt the shift.
So when she died and there was all the coverage of her death and funeral, obviously the mood was very sombre and you couldn’t really say a lot. But even then there was starting to be – I was getting quite a lot of requests from like the USA, for example, to talk about what land Charles will inherit. Well, that was totally new. And then when it came around to the coronation, most of the requests I was getting were kind of more critical look at the monarchy. Whereas when the Queen was alive, I kind of had to be quite careful what I said. You’d notice it was only certain news outlets who were interested.
It certainly opened up the conversation and I think people are more willing to listen. I’ve had a lot less of the thing we said earlier about, oh, what’s the point of looking at that? I don’t really get that anymore. I think people see now what the point is.
So I think it’s certainly – I’m not saying we’re in some sort of utopia where things are going to change overnight. I don’t think that’s true. But I do think we’re closer than we’ve ever been. Just in that people are less – it almost drew attention to them and to it and to the monarchy in a way that I think was quite interesting.
In that, like you’ve said previously, when the Queen was here, it kind of just existed and no one – it was just, oh yeah, there’s the Queen. Do you know what I mean? It was just part of everyday life where it was all of a sudden, even having Charles on a stamp and all of a sudden you would notice the stamp when you put it on your letter, like, oh, that shook things up. And then you have him doing the Christmas speech and all of these things become used to, it all adds up.
So I think it is an interesting time and it definitely shaped – I don’t know if it shaped my argument in the book because I feel the same as I did. My opinion hasn’t changed.
But I kind of felt a bit freer to say it. Like I don’t know if I would have been quite as bold previously, you know. In the end – spoiler, sorry to everybody – but at the end of the book, I basically say there’s nothing good about the monarchy. And I don’t know if I would have dared say that. So it’s made me feel a bit, a little bit more able to engage with that side of it, I think, even if the facts of the argument haven’t necessarily changed.
GM: What did you make of the public protests around Charles’s accession and the way in which they were clamped down on, which struck me as pretty harsh? Were you surprised both by the visibility and the authorities’ reaction to them?
LC: I don’t think I was surprised by the reaction. It’s disappointing, I maybe would say. I think the scale of the protests – I think really, I think people who weren’t there don’t know either. Like I went to the coronation and tried to stand with the Republic group. And I mean, there was a point where we were walking down the road in London, it was as far as you could see, just this sea of that bright yellow of their brand.
It was huge. And you never saw that on the news. And I think people don’t realise, and even, you know, the Republic events since have had decent, decent attendance.
So the police responded obviously by – I mean, they arrested loads of people, mostly before they’d even started protesting. Someone was arrested for holding up a blank sheet of paper because it might have been seen as a protest, which was, I mean, that’s quite shocking, isn’t it?
But then I don’t know – I don’t know if I’m surprised by that because I think they’re always – I see it right in very small, I get a little microcosm of it when I go and do media stuff, of how quickly they are to shoot you down or how you’re, you know, you’re given less time or all of these little things that happen. You see that they’re scared, I think.
And I think we saw, you know, we saw the scaredness when Jeremy Corbyn was so outwardly anti-monarchy and the press reaction was so – it just blew up. It was so instant and extreme, their reaction to it, you know, as basically the enemy of Britain because he dared to say he didn’t support the monarchy.
So I think the script for those protests, the reactions to the protests, has always been there.
And of course, they don’t – I really do think they don’t want it to get out of hand because I think questioning one institution that’s taken so taken for granted opens the door to questioning many other institutions that are part of the British establishment because they’re all connected.
GM: I mean, it seems to me the time is gone where you had to be male and you had to be white and you had to be Christian to be Prime Minister of this country. But it’s still probably difficult to be Prime Minister of this country and be a Republican, I think.
LC: Yeah, I can’t imagine it. Still, I really can’t imagine. I don’t know how – I don’t know how the – if the press would ever allow it to happen. Like, I don’t know if they would just take them down before we even got that far. But I also think that, I still think a lot of the public would be really uncomfortable with that and would have things to say about that.
I think a lot of people – and I do think most, the majority of people – are pretty ambivalent and just think the monarchy exists and that’s the end of that. Like you said at the beginning, right? Well, what’s the point of even worrying about it? Like there’s bigger problems.
I do think that’s true. But I think even then there’s a lot of people that are still quite uncomfortable with even having the conversation. And how it’s connected to anti-Britishness, I think, is really interesting.
GM: So when you go to a protest or when you talk to people who think like you, what are the main motivations for them in thinking we should be a republic? Because your book sets out lots of different arguments which sort of coalesce into one bigger argument. But I guess, you know, each individual has their own thoughts and motivations. Is it the money? Is it the anti-democratic? Is it non-representational? Is it sort of personalised to behaviour? I mean, what sort of things do you think – if someone is motivated enough to go and protest – what do you think the main motivators are?
LC: So I mean, this is anecdotal because I haven’t done any kind of long research with this.
Although I did try and speak to people actually at Charles’s coronation and ask them why they were there. And what was interesting about that, actually – so this is a slight digression, but it was interesting – lots of, for lots of them, it was the first time they’d been to an anti-monarchy protest, which I thought was interesting that that moment was the moment they chose.
I don’t know if anti-democratic comes up a little bit. It’s often the money. That’s the main one. And with media work and stuff, when journalists come to me, that’s what they’re interested in.
I really think that Andrew – the stuff around Andrew – has done a lot of damage. And a lot of people kind of see him as symptomatic of a bigger problem within an institution, which is quite interesting because they’ve often tried to paint him as this black sheep, I think.
And I think that hasn’t worked.
And the stuff around Meghan Markle – and I know she’s still really not very well liked – but I think the stuff around the racism has hit home and you get that.
I think the combination of the Harry and Meghan stuff and the Andrew stuff – although obviously they’re completely different cases – but in combination, I think what they’ve done is draw attention to institutional inequality in a way that nothing else really can.
Because it’s so kind of easily digestible, I think, and because it touches on so many concerns.
So the Andrew stuff obviously came at the same time as #MeToo. Harry and Meghan stuff came at the same time as the concern around kind of Black Lives Matter and broader conversations about race. So I think that kind of touched on something that was quite powerful in a way that maybe, you know, talking about anti-democratic stuff doesn’t really land for a lot of people – mainly partly because it’s so complicated.
And it’s really hard to kind of, how do you explain that in a five-minute conversation?
And also just, I guess, in terms of what’s in the broader discourse in society and what people are interested in, I think those are the things – particularly for younger people, I think. I think if you ask younger people – the odd ones I have spoken to – it’s always Andrew and Harry and Meghan.
GM: Which I guess you could summarise by saying these people don’t represent us or don’t represent values that we identify with. And we therefore don’t want – you know, we don’t identify with them and don’t want them to be people who are going off abroad and, you know, smiling and shaking hands and pretending to stand for us. Is that – a lot of things perhaps coalesce under that heading?
LC:
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I think, to be honest, I think people saw through – so, you know, when Meghan first married Harry, there was a lot of talk about her modernising the institution and I think people saw through it. I think, you know, there was a lot of that peddled for quite a while, but I don’t know if it landed with the majority of people.
I write about this in my previous book, but her presence kind of drew attention to the fact that it’s historically so white and so unequal. So she kind of did the opposite. And I don’t – I’m not saying that to point – I don’t want this to be taken to be pointing fingers at Meghan. I can imagine how people will hear that, but I don’t mean that. I mean her image, right, and the way she was represented and the way that monarchy attempted to use her for that.
I really think it just didn’t – that didn’t help, I don’t think.
GM: So beyond the immediate sort of financial beneficiaries in the royal household and their circle, who do you think benefits? Because that was one of the motivating questions behind setting this series up – if something’s not working as it should be, not in a sort of conspiratorial way, but, you know, there are probably people who are benefiting from it working in a particular way.
They fashioned it or helped fashion it in a particular way that suits them or plays to what they want. So who do you – I mean, because you talk at the start of each chapter about various myths about the royal family – so who is, who is, do you think, responsible for creating and maintaining the myths, and who benefits from those myths beyond the obvious immediate beneficiaries?
LC: I mean, it’s very – it’s a very vague thing to say, but I think the whole British establishment relies upon the monarchy. And by that, I mean, in the book I describe the way that our government is – well, it’s literally benefiting in terms of it gives the government more powers than it would otherwise.
But also, I guess, in terms of – I mean, you could even boil it – when you were talking, I immediately thought of something like Eton and those kinds of systems, right, that are reproducing very similar kinds of ideological standpoint, I suppose. Or I already mentioned the aristocracy, the upper classes more generally.
I think that because this country is so wedded to this form of inequality, that makes us kind of more broadly susceptible to things like, you know, when you have these billionaires from other countries coming in and we more broadly accept that kind of thing – and issues of wealth inequality, I think – which means there’s more room for that kind of extreme wealth to come in.
It’s really hard to give material evidence for these things, right? And I think that’s what’s hard. But there’s a symbolic and an ideological understanding, I think, that the monarchy embodies, which is then taken on and used by all of these different people – whether that’s through the language, whether that’s through particular kinds of behaviours, whether that’s through our understanding of what we see to be elite, I suppose.
And that’s maybe why I was thinking of Eton, right? Because, you know, our understanding of elite schooling is incredibly upper class, male, white – all of those things. So I think all of those different systems that rely upon similar ideologies are all drawing on, even if only implicitly, systems of monarchy.
GM: And I guess there are networks of connections, which obviously exist in all societies, but the monarchy shapes or plays its part in shaping the networks which matter in this country. And there are questions of access, aren’t there?
You write in the book about the ‘Black Spider’ memos, which then Prince Charles wrote to government ministers. And I guess one view you could take of them was, well, he was just exercising his hobby horses. He was writing about homeopathy and organic farming and architecture. And it’s just a slightly cranky, you know, aristocratic man, just trying to stick his oar in, but actually doesn’t make any difference. And I guess a lot of people might just find it, you know, sort of slightly ridiculous.
But would you link that sort of thing to these wider issues that we’re talking about – about power and access and networks and elites? Would you see even Charles writing about, you know, organic gardens as part of that wider phenomenon?
LC: Yeah, because that’s the question of who are they listening to, isn’t it? I might have really good points on organic – I don’t, I’m a terrible gardener – but I might have really good points on organic gardening. They’re not going to be interested in what I think, are they? So it’s about who, yeah, whose opinion gets heard, whose voice gets heard.
And we know in this country, we’ve got a huge problem with, you know, millions of people being entirely voiceless – working classes, disabled people, you know, all of these cuts to benefits and stuff that hit them. They’re totally voiceless in that. If that was hitting Charles, you know, he’d be saying something and they’d be listening.
So it’s around who gets heard, who has the power to influence legislation and all these things that matter. And that demonstrates that there’s a relationship there as well. I do think – I mean, I didn’t mention the media in that list of people I thought benefited. And actually, I think they do. They’re starting to do a bit more, I will say that – over the last few years there’s some really interesting reporting on the monarchy, it’s not all awful.
But a lot of them, they repeat the press releases from the palace as though it’s gospel.
There’s no attempt even at critique or a kind of critical engagement with it. Partly because they know the royals wouldn’t let them, I think. But also partly because they’re not that interested – because it’s a good money spinner, isn’t it? People keep wanting to read about it.
So I think there’s a lack of willingness to engage critically from these bigger institutions.
And I partly mean the BBC, but there’s plenty of others as well – because it works for them. So why would they? Why would they need to have any kind of critical engagement with it?
GM: You’ve interviewed some royal correspondents, haven’t you. Is that eye-opening about that whole relationship and their motivation? Because just as it’s very difficult for me to imagine what it’s like to be a member of the royal family, it’s also very difficult for me to imagine if my job were covering the royal family – if I had to get those stories and maintain that access. What kind of things did you discover from them that were eye-opening?
LC: Yeah, it was really interesting. It kind of confirmed what I’d assumed, but until you hear it – and I will say as well, not all royal correspondents are terrible, right? I’m really not saying that. A lot of them do attempt, within the boundaries that they have, to do critical commentary. I’m not saying that.
But what they were saying to me was that one of them essentially said – this isn’t a direct quote, I apologise, but it’s the thrust of the argument – if we dare publish something critical, we know next time the palace will just shut the door in our face and we won’t get access to any stories. So why would we do that? Because we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, because that could be a few thousand views. And that’s quite a lot of money.
That suggests that there’s – threat is maybe too strong a word – but there’s certainly a level of power and influence that the monarchy has over what gets reported about them.
And another one of them said to me, you know, if you wanted to find out what’s going on in Westminster, there’s millions of civil servants, right? You can just go and try and talk to other politicians or whoever else it might be. There’s so many people and you’d find someone who was willing to talk to you.
But when it comes to the royals, all of the staff sign such tight non-disclosures and none of the royals are going to speak to you. And when you try and speak to the communications office, they just say, no comment, no comment, no comment. So you get to a point where you’re like – you can’t write the story because you can’t just make it up. Because you know, the next time, the royals will not – they’ll be really cross – and you won’t get anywhere near them. But you also can’t get it confirmed. So you just don’t write about it.
So there’s a way of closing stories down. I think that was – I found that really fascinating.
And the fact that there was a trade-off of information, right? Where the royals would kind of give as much as they wanted and take it back. A much closer relationship than I’d imagined, I think, between them. That is, again, when you think about it, given that this isn’t an institution of state – given the amount of power and influence it has – that’s really problematic that they have that power over, you know, independent media.
GM: And of course the rationing of information just sharpens public curiosity, doesn’t it?
I mean, we saw that with the sort of hysterical curiosity when Kate disappeared from the public eye earlier last year.
And I guess that was maybe an instance where the story kind of got away from the royal family and they had to take sort of emergency action to bring it back.
But it just shows, I guess, the sort of power of the interest that has been invested in them.
The fact that, you know, it was on – you know, in serious American newspapers and, you know, all across the world – there was just this wave upon wave of speculation.
LC: Yeah, that was a really interesting case. I mean, one thing I would say is, you know, there’s a lot of interest in certain things about them, and that is often the personal thing. There’s a lot of interest in Harry and William’s relationship. There was a lot of interest in what was going on with Kate. There’s less interest in – I don’t remember that amount of attention on, like, the Spider Memos or when the stuff around the Paradise Papers came out and the Duchy of Lancaster was in there. There was coverage, but not to the same level.
So there’s an interesting kind of personal story dynamic that of course reflects celebrity cultures and all of that. But the Kate one was interesting because I think that was so symptomatic of a social media age. And they really, like really underestimated that – comically. It demonstrated they really just didn’t understand how that was going to play out and how they tried, they kept trying to pull it back, but kept making it worse.
It was really fascinating in terms of maybe the ways they used to play it – you know, 10, even probably five years ago – aren’t going to work anymore because of the way our media systems have changed.
GM: They’ve shown great ability in being resilient, haven’t they? You know, in this book and in your previous book, you cite evidence of just how they’ve learned new languages and new modes – you know, they’ve been very adaptive. They’ve changed all the time while essentially kind of remaining the same.
But I wondered – you mentioned Andrew and you mentioned Kate and you mentioned Meghan – do you think there’s a sort of cumulative effect of all these different… I guess they’re all undermining factors, aren’t they? Undermining the institution, undermining the values they seek to project, undermining their claims to be exceptional.
They’re being revealed bit by bit to be no better and perhaps worse than the average of us. Do you think that it’s not going to be one thing that sinks this institution?
It’s probably going to be an accumulation of factors, just a gradual parting of the ways perhaps between the British public’s sympathy and what this family represents.
LC: I think so. Yeah. I think everything that happens is just another erosion. And I feel like the next thing might be discussions around colonialism. They’re so far – they’ve shown a lack of interest in offering any apology or any accountability for it. They’ve acknowledged it. I don’t think that was enough.
And I think as conversation is growing around that – as it is in this country, but also in various countries around the world – and of course as other countries that are looking towards republicanism, which I think will have a knock-on effect as well, I wonder if that’s going to be the next thing that just slightly erodes it a little bit further.
I think the issue is – I’m going to put this in quote marks – the “problems” they’re having are problems that are reflecting wider social conversations. And I think that’s why they’re so damaging. I don’t think the stuff around Andrew would have had quite the same impact if it wasn’t for Me Too.
And I don’t think the stuff around Meghan would have had quite the same impact if it wasn’t for the conversations about Black Lives Matter and so on. I think it’s the fact that it – when it happened – that’s crucial. And I think as more and more places are looking towards – you know, there’s all these country houses that are looking towards their colonial past – that’s going to reach the monarchy at some point. And I think that might be the next one along. That’s kind of the problem for them at the moment. They’re kind of hitting these conversation points in wider society.
GM: And yet – and maybe we can finish on this, Laura – there’s quite a strong countervailing force of British exceptionalism, it seems to me. We think, or a lot of us like to think of Britain as distinct from the continent of Europe. You know, the plucky country, which single-handedly won the Second World War. You know, witness Brexit – it’s kind of an expression of British exceptionalism, not wanting to be part of the continent of Europe, looking more to America. And the royal family seems to me to be quite an important part of that – asserting our difference, maintaining our difference.
So even if we become more intolerant of them, even if they seem more and more flawed, for people who think like that, taking them away – taking them away at the top of the pyramid – might lead to deeper anxiety about the whole pyramid collapsing.
You and I might see that as a very good thing indeed. But I wonder if, even if that family largely loses credibility, there’ll just be a sense of – well, it’s one of those things that we want to cling on to, as we said earlier, for the thousands of years of tradition and British exceptionalism.
LC: Yeah, I think that’s a good point. And to be honest, I think that’s the only thing keeping them there now. I think that’s the main argument – that it makes us feel special, essentially. And I agree – I think that’s not the thing we want to be special for. But I see that that argument is what’s – I think that’s going to be the crux of it.
I think that argument has less power since the Queen’s gone, actually. You mentioned the Second World War and our obsession still in this country with the Second World War. But the Queen was so tied to that – part of that same story of British history. And I do think losing her has knocked a serious hole in that whole argument.
People just don’t seem attached to Charles in quite the same way, I don’t think. And he doesn’t seem to represent the same things. I can’t see William being able to do that either – or any of them, really.
What the Queen did was she made the institution personal. She gave it a face, she gave it a feeling, and she gave it emotion that people had attached to her – she was the grandmother figure or whatever else. When you lose that, and it’s just an institution, that’s much harder to hold on to and much harder to make that argument about.
So I agree that I do think the argument is still there. And I don’t see that going anywhere anytime soon. But I don’t think it’s anywhere near as powerful. And I don’t think it has the same resonance with people as it maybe did.
When the Queen was here, even Republic, the campaign group, said, we’re not campaigning for the end of monarchy – when the Queen goes, we say that’s the end.
Even they kind of knew that it just wasn’t worth trying to have the conversation.
And I agree – it wasn’t.
Now I think that’s easier. Because that emotion and that attachment have gone, and people have – and immediately after she died, that wouldn’t have been the time – but people have started to move on, and the conversation has moved on. And I think the further we get away from her, the more that will happen.
So I agree with you. I do think that is still true. But I think it has a lot less power.
And I think the emotion attached to that is starting to go. And I think that’s a powerful thing.
GM: So maybe not in my lifetime, but perhaps in yours.
LC: Hopefully.
GM: Laura, thank you very much for speaking to us today on Transforming Society.
LC: Thank you so much.