Is it time to wave goodbye to the Royals? The jury’s out

So that's Mountbatten Windsor slightly dealt with for the moment but it's certainly not the last we will hear of him. Let's look instead at the wider implications for the monarchy and ask: would we be better off without the institution?

Estimates of what the royals cost the UK vary between £500 million a year and, if you believe the far from neutral Republic organisation, £1.1 billion. The smaller figure is broken down into the annual Sovereign Grant, currently £132m, up almost four-fold from £38m in just 10 years; state buildings used by the family £98m; security £150m and costs to local councils £32m. Ah yes, say their supporters, but think of the money they bring in from tourism. Everyone who comes to England comes because of the royals.

In a word, much favoured by Princess Anne: bollocks. Hands up anybody who knows a tourist who saw any of the family while in the UK (excluding of course the late Mr Epstein and Ms Giuffre). People come to the UK because of its hugely varied scenery, traditions, culture and accessibility.  Not having a royal family wouldn't stop them coming, the palaces and castles and cathedrals would still be here. So would the theatres, concert halls, great restaurants and village pubs, and Olde Tea Shoppes. We would still have the great music of Handel, Purcell, Elgar and Walton written for royal occasions. 

We are seventh on the list of list of most visited countries in the world, after France, Spain, the US, Turkey, Italy and Mexico, none of which has a monarchy (however hard Trump is trying). And yes, I know about Spain's system of a parliamentary monarchy but that is very different from ours. Ours is a feudal system with the monarch at the top, then his extended family, trickling down through the aristocracy to the rest of us. I cannot believe that not having a monarchy would diminish our tourist income, currently £65 billion, by one penny.

And then there is the flip side of the cost of the monarchy: how much they make out of it. Hang on to your hats children: last year the King 'earned' £27m from the Duchy of Lancaster (established 1337) and Prince William £24m from the Duchy of Cornwall. This is private income in both cases and tax is paid voluntarily though, surprise, the rate is not disclosed. It is in addition to the Sovereign Grant and is for the monarch and heir to fund their private lives. It's no wonder Charles, poor fellow, can't afford to pay his gardeners more than the living wage. 

Thanks to an investigation by the Sunday Times and Chanel 4's Dispatches programme last year, we now know how those incomes are made up. Both vast estates, stretching to 180,000 acres, own land, rivers, lakes and even seashores. They charge rent from, among others, the Army, Navy, schools, the NHS and charities. In the case of Dartmoor prison, closed and unused since last year because of radon gas leaks, rat infestation and dilapidation, the Ministry of Justice still pays Prince William £1.5m a year. And if the jail is ever to reopen it's the taxpayers who will have to pay for repairs. Some of the charities which pay rent, have royal patrons. 

The Andrew problem is just the shitty tip of the slurry heap which is the monarchical system. Its support comes only from the people — its so-called subjects — and when that goes it is finished. The fact that people are now questioning the how and the why of it should be shaking the House of Windsor because without widespread reform, its days will be numbered. 

I am neither a royalist nor a republican, mostly because I cannot think who might make a decent president. Other than Princess Anne who would be my choice any day.

There have been some grim choices for the White House, none worse than the current tasteless imbecile, but Ireland has been rather more fortunate. Its last four heads of state have been Dr Patrick Hillery, a Protestant medic in a Catholic country, Mary Robinson, a distinguished diplomat and academic, married to a Protestant, Mary McAleese, a wee Belfast girl who taught law at Queen's, Belfast, and Trinity, Dublin and currently little Michael D Higgins, a poet who measures just 5ft 2 but has been regarded as a giant in office. All four have been respected and lauded the world over and have brought relations between Ireland and its former tormentor Britain to where they are now, firm friends. 

It's time for Charles, and more particularly William, to start very real reform of the system that has put them there. Without it, Mr Mountbatten Windsor might not be the only member of the family looking for a role.

*****

Dick Dismore's splendid piece yesterday had the problems at the Daily Mail exactly right. I have written here before that under its current editor Ted Verity it has only one voice, an angry and depressing one. Gone are humorists like the brilliant Craig Brown and, about to retire, Tom Uttley (fotp). Only the delightful Jan Moir is left to entertain us with her amusing phrase-making. 

Every newspaper needs, in the words of my very first editor in Belfast, light and shade. The brilliant David English, editor when I was at the Mail in the 1970s, knew it and Larry Lamb and Nick Lloyd, for all their faults, knew it too. As it happens, I have seen a few current Mail hacks in recent weeks and they confirm that all is not well in Derry Street. It's a shame because as Dismore says, The Times is and the Mail was, under Dacre and Geordie Greig, the last true newspapers. 

Paul Dacre is still there as editor-in-chief of the group. He of all people will know what is wrong. It's time to earn your £2.5 million a year Paul.

 

*****

To Covent Garden for a jolly five-hour lunch with great friends. Remarkably just two bottles of vino were consumed between the six of us (how times have changed) because we were all too busy catching up, remembering the great times we had and generally talking bollix. The cast list was very starry; Wislon (for it is he), Caroline Boucher, former Hickey gal and Observer writer, the CoS who organised it, Geoffrey Levy who despite his sad bereavement did what Stephanie would have told him to: enjoy the company (he did), and Henry Fitzherbert, ex-Hickey and our former film critic and currently hugely successful film script writer. His Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy Wars reached No 3 on Netflix' s world rankings.  

We spoke of the late Jilly Cooper and Henry revealed that it was she who got him into journalism. Here's the story: As a 15-year-old at Ampleforth he wrote to Jilly and asked for an interview (as you do when taught by the monks). She instantly responded and asked him to Gloucestershire in his holidays where he spent a joyous day with her husband Leo cooking them lunch. The interview was a great success and was printed in the school mag.

They kept in touch and six years later when he came down from Oxford Jilly wrote introducing him to Rory Knight Bruce who was running Londoner's Diary at the Standard. And that's how Henry got his first job. It's almost worth a film. 

AND FINALLY

I see Rob Jobson (fotp) is saying we should leave poor Fergie alone because she's suffered enough disgrace. Methinks he's angling to write her tell-all book which will surely follow soon to boost her dwindling piggy bank. As Andrew Lownie said: "Well, she won't be choosing either of us!"

ALAN FRAME

6 November 2025