Republicans should be careful what they wish for

King Charles III delivers a speech while attending a Parliamentary reception hosted by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
King Charles III delivers a speech while attending a Parliamentary reception hosted by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese - Lukas Coch

The visit of the King and Queen to Australia has predictably aroused contrasting enthusiasms. On the one hand the “G’day Your Majesties” banners express genuine affection for the monarchs.

On the other hand, the aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe chose to shout out a raucous denunciation of the Crown and Great Britain during a grand reception in Canberra, before being bundled out of the hall. Even diehard republicans appear to have been taken aback by her foul language and insulting behaviour. Will Charles III be not just the first but the last British King to visit Australia, at least as monarch?

If you take away the first letter of “monarch”, the remaining letters produce the anagram “anchor”. That is a good way to describe constitutional monarchy. In the United Kingdom, with an unwritten constitution, the King is more than a figurehead. He represents a line of succession going back almost continuously to 1066; similar claims can be made for the Danish monarchy.

Standing above politics, he listens and advises but must not meddle in political decisions. He opens Parliament with speeches written by a government with which privately he may agree or disagree, but his own opinion will never be revealed. As head of state, consecrated to serve his realms (in the plural), he expresses his role through acts grand and small, from the Coronation to the patronage of charities, not to mention the special role of the Crown in our judicial system, the Church of England and the armed forces.

Nor can the role of the King as Head of the Commonwealth be ignored. To decapitate the monarch from the Commonwealth would be to deny the deep historic connection that exists between Great Britain and nearly all the Commonwealth countries. That link is something advocates of “decolonisation” are determined to denounce, but not before they have cashed the cheque for three trillion pounds they insist they are owed in reparations.

It hardly needs to be said that presidents of republics are a very different kettle of fish. Some are rather like old-style monarchs. The President of the United States has enormous prerogative powers ultimately derived from those that existed in the days of King George III.

Napoleonically, the French President treats his Prime Minister as his executive agent. But what republicans in Australia, Canada and New Zealand seem to want is a president on a more common and more boring model, probably a retired politician who, inevitably, has a partisan background, even if he or she does not interfere directly in day-to-day affairs.

That is what the Italians and the Germans, among others, have set in place, and I would challenge any reader to name them. At grand public events they are the little men and women who (one thinks) seem somehow to be important, but are overshadowed by the small figures of Meloni and Scholz.

I tried to find a list of European heads of state online, but, tellingly, Google kept offering me the names of the various presidents of the European Union, or lists of European prime ministers. Being elected president ensures that one becomes a nonentity, swallowed up by the elegant décor of the presidential palace. There is quite simply no mystique.

Monarchy is not theatre, even if it is often treated that way. It may not be a democratic institution, but it serves as the best guarantor of democracy. Monarchy and democracy are a tightly-bound package that Great Britain bequeathed to Australia. The Union Flag in the corner of Australia’s own flag no longer signifies dependence, but this powerful common heritage.