What is the future of the monarchy?
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 9 June 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What is the future of the Monarchy? A pageant, a star-studded concert, street fairs and picnics; it was a joyful four-day tribute to the Queen and millions revelled in her Platinum Jubilee. Seventy years of service, celebrated in true British style. But now the bunting is down and the carnival is over, how committed are we, as a nation, to the monarchy? A recent poll suggests that about 62% are in favour of retaining it, down from three quarters a decade ago. About 22% would prefer an elected head of state. It's all much closer among young people, with only a tiny majority of 18-24 year olds saying they want to stick with the monarchy. Many people love the Royal family and how the Queen has helped the UK to stand out in the world, providing long term stability, untainted by politics. Others despair at the behaviour of younger Royals, whose lives can more resemble a soap opera than the bedrock of the nation's sovereignty. But what is the moral case for the monarchy? For some, the very idea of an unelected figure with huge inherited wealth, enjoying the top position in the land, is simply intolerable. It legitimises, they say, the worst aspects of our age-old class system and should be abolished.
As the tributes from around the world attest, there is deep and wide respect for Queen Elizabeth. But how might public opinion on the monarchy change in the future? Might a new system, with a democratically elected head of state be more morally defensible and serve the country better? With Tracy Borman, Martha Gill, Sean O'Grady and Richard Murphy.
Producers: Jonathan Hallewell and Peter Everett Presenter: Michael Buerk
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.3 | Good evening. The one absolute certainty after the weekend's moving, entertaining, poignant platinum jubilee celebrations is that none of us will see the like again. |
| 0:15.2 | The Queen's 70-year reign and the obvious respect and affection in which she's personally held may have all but still the |
| 0:21.5 | perennial debate about the moral relevance of monarchy in a 21st century state. But the inevitable |
| 0:27.1 | succession will see the arguments revived in a context so different from that of her accession |
| 0:32.5 | nearly three generations ago. The monarch reigns over us in an age when equality is the overriding political |
| 0:39.6 | demand at a time when privilege, especially inherited privilege, is regarded as a moral injustice |
| 0:45.2 | and embodies pride in a past of which some say we should be more ashamed than proud. For others, |
| 0:52.0 | that very continuity with our history and its traditions is central to the |
| 0:55.4 | sense of ourselves as a nation. They see in the state's supreme figure being essentially, |
| 1:00.5 | arguably, politically powerless as a work of genius and an insurance against tyranny. Of course, |
| 1:06.8 | there's no obvious moral logic in selection by genetic lottery. No guarantee the Queen's |
| 1:11.3 | successors will have her personal qualities. And the more questionable activities of some more |
| 1:16.5 | junior members of the royal family in our all-seeing, unforgiving, celebrity-obsessed world |
| 1:21.7 | has shown how fragile the public's respect can be. So is the monarchy still right for us? And if not, what will be better? |
| 1:29.2 | Moromais is tonight. The panel, the libertarian, Marxist and editor at the Navarra media group, |
| 1:33.9 | Ash Sarka, the historian Tim Stanley, the feminist author Ella Weillan, and the priest and |
| 1:39.0 | polemicist, now vicar of Q. Congratulations on your installation at St. Dan's Giles. Giles Fraser. Giles, actually, |
| 1:45.6 | the monarch's your boss, isn't she? Supreme temporal head of the church. Quite right too. |
| 1:51.8 | And yes, I'm a monarchist. And the interesting thing about connection between monarchy and religion, |
| 1:57.2 | and I don't know if we're getting to that tonight, but the key thing at the coronation is not |
| 2:01.6 | the crown going on, but it's the anointing, it's a religious business. It's a fundamentally |
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