Estefanía Escobar/ Reform Agency
Sunday, May 07, 2023 | 06:58
London England.- With an increasingly fragmented UK, a growing republican trend among the Commonwealth realms, a Royal Family flooding headlines with scandals, and rampant inflation emptying the pockets of ordinary citizens, King Charles III’s main challenge will be maintain the unity of the territory and vindicate the meaning of the British Crown.
Although the heir to the late Queen Elizabeth II spent his entire life preparing to take the throne, the challenge ahead seems daunting, analysts say.
Moments after being proclaimed, the King raised criticism after his angry gestures towards his service personnel went viral for not removing the inkwell from a pen while signing documents, a fact that raised doubts about whether he is the leader the Crown needs to recover his popularity and try to “turn the page” on his slave-owning past.
The charisma and closeness that Queen Elizabeth maintained with the people was one of the main pillars of her mandate. Over seven decades she traveled extensively through the nations that were once British colonies and managed to forge a joint identity. Keeping up with that pace could be difficult today for Carlos III, who at 74 is the longest-serving King in history to take the Crown.
“Prince Charles has not been able to generate this connectivity, particularly among young people, but even adults think that he has not been able to generate this connectivity, this sympathy with the British people,” Dámaso Morales, coordinator of the Center for European Studies at UNAM.
The rising revisionist processes about colonialism, slavery and the exploitation of natural resources, among other things, in the 14 countries of the Commonwealth realms (kingdoms of the Commonwealth) where the British Crown continues to rule seem to be reeling the institution, adds the specialist. Most of those nations are found in the American continent, and particularly in the Caribbean.
Hours after the proclamation of Carlos as King, on September 10, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda announced that the Caribbean country will hold a referendum in the next three years to decide whether to keep the Monarch as its Head of State or become in a Republic. Jamaica has also raised those steps.
Days later, protests broke out in Australia by thousands of people who demanded the end of the Monarchy and complained about the abuses and dispossessions committed by the Crown against the indigenous Australians.
“The Crown has blood on its hands. Our people continue to die in this country every day (…) The Crown’s boot is on our neck and we are fed up with it,” said indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe, who has led calls by a “Head of State elected by the people”.
And although in recent visits to Africa, in particular, Carlos has manifested a kind of regret for colonialism, he has not wanted to go any further because without a doubt he would be talking “of a Justice route to repair the damage,” Morales emphasizes.
According to the specialist, meeting these demands would require, among other things, combining efforts for economic development, social development and sustainable exploitation at a time that is not the best for the finances of the United Kingdom after the separation of the European Union and the impact of the Russian war in the Ukraine which have had negative effects on the British economy.
Brexit, likewise, has also revived separatist impulses in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the permanence of the British Crown is not clear either.
Among ordinary Britons, the economic crisis has fueled social demand for stopping supporting a Crown that receives around 100 million dollars a year from taxpayers, when tens of thousands of nurses and teachers have led protests in recent months due to lack of employment.
Hashtags such as #AbolishTheMonarchy (Abolition of the Monarchy) and #NotMyKing (Not my King), have been trending on social networks, while in the streets some people have been arrested for carrying signs with similar messages.
“We want to see the abolition of the Monarchy and the replacement of the Queen by a democratically elected Head of State,” maintains the group La Republica.
Polls indicate that support for the Monarchy is at its lowest point in more than 30 years. The latest edition of the British Survey of Social Attitudes, cited by the BBC, shows that only 55 percent of Britons thought in 2021 that it was “very important” to have a Monarchy, compared to 60 or 70 percent in past decades.
Among young people the difference was abysmal. The same poll showed that just 14 percent of people aged 18-34 considered it “very important” that the UK had a King or Queen, while the proportion among those aged 55 and over was 44 percent.
“Generating with young people these bridges of communication and sympathy and transmission of the importance of the Royal House (…), I think it will be the major challenge of the King, in particular, and of the Monarchy, in general “, says Morales, an academic in European studies.
“Because it’s clearly not a white UK anymore, it’s a multicultural, even multilingual and multi-religious UK, and in which white and non-white youth are increasingly rejecting the Monarchy.”
Among the people’s favorite royals, according to listings in the British press last May, Charles ranked even behind his mother and eldest son and successor, Prince William.
The negative image of Carlos grew decades ago, prior to the death of his wife Lady Diana, with the discovery of the relations he had with the now Queen Consort Camila, explains Morales.
The popularity of the Royal Family for all the British was also shaken by the corruption scandals to finance the charity projects of the then Prince Charles and by the departure of his son, Prince Harry, and his American wife Meghan Markle, who later They revealed the racism that the Duchess of Sussex experienced from the Royal family itself.
The King was crowned yesterday in a ceremony estimated to have cost taxpayers around £100 million ($125 million), in a country still not recovering from Brexit.
Although the Monarch said it would be a reduced event in length and number of attendees due, in part, to the country’s cost-of-living crisis, the cost of the three-day event will be more than double the 1953 coronation of Isabel II, which at that time was the most expensive ceremony of the Monarchy ever held.
Renowned artists such as Elton John, Adele, Spice Girls, among others, have declined their participation in the concert due to the celebrations of the new King, which shows the level of rejection that “this excessive paraphernalia” is generating.
“It would be assumed that the ceremony itself is an act of connectivity, it is an act of partying, but in this environment it becomes an act of apathy,” says Morales.
The permanence of the Crown depends, according to the specialist, on the bridges, sympathy and empathy that Carlos III can establish with the British people and the Commonwealth.
“It has the great challenge of legitimizing the role of the Crown (…) of being part and empathetic with the problems of the British, because that is a very important role that the Crown can have: that of relief, of consolation, of accompaniment,
“That is what King Carlos III would have to do, as well as modify important things in the Royal House, such as greater transparency, less spending, greater presence.”
