The Elizabethan Paradox

Why modern, multi-ethnic Britain, irreverent about other institutions, loves its royals

- Sunder Katwala

Britain has entered an official period of national mourning for its longest serving monarch, Elizabeth. Many Britons will be reflecting on what it means to lose such a source of constancy in a society of rapid change. But the question many outside the country will, again, ask is whether a hereditary constitutional monarchy in a liberal democracy presents an apparent paradox.

The answer is that the paradox can be resolved only by broad and sustained public consent for the institution. One of Elizabeth’s achievements as a stateswoman is to leave the institution of the monarchy in just as strong a position as she inherited in the 1950s from her father.

Much else has changed in that time. Today’s Britain is considerably less deferential towards most of its institutions, certainly towards parliament and the police. Intense media scrutiny seemed likely to dent the monarchy in the 1980s and 90s, with the very public fragmentation of the marriage of Charles and Diana.

Yet the republican minority who would leave the monarchy behind remained unchanged, at one-fifth of the population, decade after decade – since the first modern opinion poll on the subject recorded 19% for a republic back in 1969. There has been no more stable measure in British public opinion.

Elizabeth herself was more popular, with 86% public approval to 7% disapproval, as she marked seven decades on the throne this spring. Her sense of public duty secured the respect of even most of those for whom the principle of monarchy is untenable.