The maintenance of a high degree of popularity with regard to an institution, however close to the disputed “elites”, will remain as one of the successes of the queen, who died on September 8, at the age of 96 years.
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We are in 1992. A “popular republican party” wins the elections and abolishes the monarchy. Expelled from Buckingham, the royal family is relocated to HLM alongside ordinary English. “M Me Windsor” learns to dress herself and experiences difficult ends while Prince Charles discovers the difficulty of raising a horse in a building. The horny novel the queen and me, by Sue Townsend, published in 1994 (Seuil), describes as a nightmare a republican utopia which is probably not close to seeing the light of day, even after the disappearance of Elizabeth II.
according to a yougov survey published in May in May 2022 , 27 % of British are favorable to the abolition of the monarchy. Maintaining a high degree of popularity – or indifference – with regard to an institution, which is also close to the disputed “elites” will remain as one of the successes of the queen. Even if, after the death of Diana, in 1997, 70 % of His Majesty’s subjects, shocked by her apparent absence of emotion, believed that the sovereign had to “withdraw” to give way to younger than her. “Isn’t it time for the queen to leave?” So titled the Daily Mail.
But the formal demand for the establishment of a Republic, very distinct from criticism of the Queen’s behavior, remains confined to restricted circles. Republic, a group that militates for a referendum on the abolition of the monarchy and the election of a head of state, claims 80,000 sympathizers. Opposing the “power of the people” to the “hereditary privileges” of a multimillionaire caste, the Republicans criticize the “hidden costs” of the monarchy, its opacity – it escapes the law on access to information – and its exemptions Tax.
stock market, land and real estate
The Queen’s domains report hundreds of millions of pounds each year (15 % of which are donated to her) thanks to a huge stock market, land and real estate (including almost all of Regent Street and half of the Ultra district -Chic de St James’s, in London). The Republicans criticize the confusion between the Queen’s private fortune and state property. The recurring lack of maintenance of palaces -including Buckingham -, generator of important additional costs, is also regularly pinned.
In the 1990s, criticism of the monarchy had amplified. Not only for political and financial reasons, but quite simply because opinion wondered why “consider as a heroine a person who is unknown everything and who is content to wave his hand”, according to the expression of the columnist Zoe Williams. In 1991, the leader of the left of Labor Tony Benn had even tabled a bill a bill to transform the United Kingdom into a democratic, federal and secular “community [Commonwealth] of Great Britain”. In vain.
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