Deference: I hope I never meet any King or Queen, Duchess or Duke, Prince or Princess. I won’t want to curtsey.
In fact, I absolutely will not curtsey. I happily do a strange awkward sometimes jokey bow with colleagues but that’s based on wanting to express my thanks for their expertise, not any desire to acknowledge a pecking order.
I look at the Queen and feel great sympathy for a very old woman who is trapped in the public eye, whose children and grandchildren fill the papers with scandal, whose husband died this year and who is still working. I acknowledge with gratitude the way she has filled the role of monarch. But while she, the woman, does deserve one of my awkwardly grateful bows, the monarchy as an institution does not.
Our Queen has not worked harder than a single mother juggling jobs and fighting for benefits to keep her children alive.
I suspect, as the Queen is a devout Christian, that she doesn’t seek or want any of the sycophancy she receives. Her descendants however are not following in her shoes in that respect.
I’m aware of the arguments for retaining the monarchy; I used to make them. My position has changed in recent years and Prince Andrew’s behaviour is the cause.
He, according to friends who have met him, is an arrogant, contemptuous person who believes he is better, more important, and who demands and receives deference from those around him.
‘Randy Andy’ the press nicknamed him for getting frisky with the actress Koo Stark and others. I might once have managed empathy for him based on the fact he is famously a bit thick and continues a centuries-long line of royals who could act corruptly, exploitatively and immorally and remain entirely above the law. He must think it’s very unfair what’s happening to him now.
And it is unfair. But only in the literal sense that he has been caught out while thousands of well-to-do men must be quaking in their boots waiting for their own name to be called. They must be terrified every time they get a brown envelope that it will contain a photo like the one which, in my eyes, so utterly explodes the Prince’s claims of innocence. The middle-aged podgy self-important Prince has his arm round a girl who looks fresh and young and is his daughters’ age. The now convicted Ghislaine Maxwell looks on smiling. The young woman says she was coerced into sex. The fact Prince Andrew doesn’t remember ever meeting her, despite the photographic evidence, is even more damning in a way. ‘Of course he doesn’t remember her,’ I want to shout. ‘The young girls who were thrown his way were just useful objects in his eyes – not people. Why on earth would he remember?’
The media are having a love in for Prince William and his wife Catherine. She is 40 this week. ‘They’re so normal’ the columnists gush, ‘Look – she wore a dress twice!’ I would be happy for them never to become King and Queen. I see no use for them. Where once the history of this country was enough to preserve my support for royalty, these days, as we face planet-altering climate change, social collapse and economic chaos, I think their only use is providing a distraction from the horrors of PM Boris Johnson’s government’s calamitous decisions.
Local councillors stand when the chair of Full Council parades in at the start of meetings. We are also required to stand during the meeting when we speak to the chair as a mark of respect for the monarchy. Should this tradition continue? Must say I’m tempted to revolt.