The Queen is dead. Long live the King

…And save me from President Tony

A few weeks ago, I was in the South of France, dining in the magical garden of an old house that had been owned by one family for centuries. Before dessert, an Italian guest sweetly enquired after the health of the Queen, almost as if I regularly saw Her Majesty for a spot of tea. I replied that she was very frail and the nation would feel a deep sense of loss when she’d gone. A Scandinavian chap by my side listened politely. Then announced there was no place for a hereditary monarchy in modern life.

I disagree. Not because I blindly revere the Royal Family or think they’re better than you and me. Patently, they’re not. It’s just I happen to think as a system for running a country, it’s scarily easy to do a hell of a lot worse – consider all the presidents who are right royally cocking up the world.

Many people have pointed out to me that giving someone the top job just because they were born into it is not only utterly absurd but profoundly wrong. I can see the tree they're barking up. After all, the Queen didn’t get to be Queen because she burnished her CV, filled out an application form and went through a rigorous interview process. Nor did she go all-out to canvass for votes, hold hustings and appear on TV in a head-to-head with rivals, ready to bet the farm she’d gain enough votes to win the crown.

But for me, that’s the whole point. I’d be mighty cautious about someone who actually wants - and actively pursues - the role of head of state. Someone who covets that much power. Someone who is happy to live a weird, goldfish bowl life for a few years before the scratch and scramble to be top dog ensues all over again. Perhaps it’s better that someone has the job thrust upon them, whether they like it or not. And if they feel suitably dutiful and honour-bound to give it a go, they just get on with it.

‘We still have that vote-them-in-chuck-em-out option’

Again, anti-monarchists would say the fact presidents can be kicked out and replaced is what makes such a system of governing thoroughly democratic and modern-minded. But we still have that vote-them-in-chuck-em-out option with our prime ministers. After all, the Queen lived to see 15 of them. Every week, they had to hack up to Buck House after being heckled in the Commons to sit quietly by a corgi and tell her Maj what they’d been up to and why. Strange as it may sound, I think that probably focused political minds.

A British sovereign is the symbolic head and yes, much of the time, while the MPs are thrashing out the business of the day, the monarch is opening a precinct in Pontypridd or listening to ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ at a care home in West Wittering. But that symbolism holds a particular kind of gravitas. Sure, it might involve men in black tights and a straggly wig who would agree to walk like a funky chicken if tradition dictated, but baggy tights notwithstanding, give me that in preference to a leader in a mid-grey suit asking us to call him Tone.

Look, every system has its philosophical holes. I mean if US presidents are such a shining example of the ultimate democracy, why, for a start, do they have a First Lady who didn’t get any votes at all? Democrats, we know, are very keen on absolute equality and earning your stripes, none more so than the Duchess of Sussex. So why has she retained a title that’s hers purely because she married a bloke who, through dint of birth, is a prince but no longer even works as a royal?

Frankly, holes and all, I’m proud of the UK’s ability to orchestrate something as stunning and stirring as a state funeral for a Queen who worked right up until the very last days of her long life: the crisp lines of soldiers; the clockwork precision of the coffin-bearers that shoulder the country’s weight of expectation; the sound of horses’ hooves; the soaring choral music - an historic occasion where emotions won’t necessarily be worn on braided sleeves. But that won’t detract from the genuine feelings of grief experienced by countless mourners. In fact, in some ways, the stiff upper lippyness of it all will serve to intensify the emotion.

Queen Elizabeth II was a constant in so many of our lives. And in a fast moving, and now bewildering, world that gets more bloody bewildering by the day, if King Charles III is up for grasping the baton and taking it forward, I say good luck to him and Godspeed.