They also require an attitude of mind, a belief that every citizen has the right to a hearing, a sense that no doors are closed to talent and energy. As Matthew Parris, a former Conservative MP, has put it, British royalty “asks us .. to show deference for which there is no honest basis .. deference to qualities other than merit”. The whole paraphernalia of the Royal Court, with its Silver Sticks in Waiting, its Women of the Bedchamber, its hereditary carvers; the closed, incestuous nature of the royal circle, drawn from an extraordinarily narrow social stratum; the elaborate rules about how to address royalty; the orders of chivalry – all this nonsense merely confirms the British in what Aneurin Bevan called the poverty of their aspirations. Royalty is of its nature exclusive; we cannot all hope to become intimates of the Queen, and she can hardly be blamed if she prefers to surround herself with old family friends, people of similar background and education who know the rules. The Crown’s survival re- inforces the impression that British society is shaped like a pyramid and that, at its apex, birth counts for more than merit.

This is the greatest anomaly of the British monarchy: every post-war government has professed a commitment to meritocracy and equal opportunity, yet here is an institution that declaims, shamelessly, that, at the heart of the Establishment, nothing has changed.THE defenders of monarchy fall back on the argument that, if nothing else, it is a tourist attraction. So it is, but it is hard to believe that tourists would cease their pilgrimages to Buckingham Palace, the Mall, the Tower or Windsor Castle, simply because a monarch no longer rules. People are not deterred from visiting Stratford-upon-Avon because Shakespeare is dead. Indeed, the removal of the monarchy might actually improve them as tourist attractions, allowing greater access to the palaces, to say nothing of the royal art collection.The stronger argument is that the monarchy connects us to our history, that it gives us pride in our past, faith in our ability to achieve peaceful change and, therefore, confidence in the future. We should keep the monarchy, the argument runs, because it reminds us of how we got here, rather as the electoral college that chooses a president reminds Americans of how their nation began.

Yet it has become almost a commonplace of post-war political debate that Britain is too weighed down by history, that, in becoming a truly modern nation, we might have been better off with a revolution or even a catastrophic defeat in war. And nations can re-invent themselves successfully: both Germany and Japan were forced, in effect, to jettison their histories and to start again. They, by general consent, are the success stories of the post-war world. In any case, British history should not be about the glories of its kings and queens; rather, it should be about how the people wrested and defended their liberties from the Crown – liberties, it should be noted, that have often been threatened by the executive’s recent abuses of the royal prerogative. Would it not connect us to a different, but better, strain in our history if we were to abolish the monarchy and proclaim the final triumph of the people?THE British tradition is evolution, not revolution.