King Charles must refashion the monarchy and keep it relevant - or he risks his kingdom splitting: Lewis Goodall

20 September 2022, 21:29 | Updated: 20 September 2022, 21:56

The News Agents: What does the Monarchy really mean to us today?

And after all of that, it is done. Queen Elizabeth II rests, at last, writes LBC's Lewis Goodall.

The last ten days had been long in coming. People in my profession had long rehearsed the broadcast coverage. The newspaper front pages had long been designed. Yet these days have felt no less curious for their living.

So much (digital) ink has already been spent on the Queen’s life and its meaning. So I’ll confine myself to a few observations on what this process has taught us about ourselves and what it might mean for the future of the monarchy- some of the themes we touch in our video film you can watch within this article.

There are so many reasons why The Queen’s death touched so many. It’s obvious she connected us with our past. But what matters is which past it was-the last direct link of any global political figure to the Second World War.

That picture of her, on Buckingham Palace balcony, with her father George VI and Winston Churchill, is one of the most important of the mythos of her reign. It was not just that she lived through the war, but was, even in a modest way, a participant and knew well its players. 1940 and the idea (questionable given the support of the Empire) of Britain “standing alone” is the key year of the modern British sense of self, of its own story. It matters that our remaining cord to it is severed.

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That link also, in part, explains her international prestige. It wasn’t just that she knew every country’s pantheon of leaders, it was often that she knew their wartime ones as well.

It was no surprise that President Macron, in his remarks, spoke of her relationship with Charles de Gaulle. In her, different states had a connection to their own great ghosts and wartime ones in particular. The long 20th century effectively died when she did.

Read more: Charles flies to Scotland to quietly grieve Queen's death as royals enter period of mourning

And so does that great, resplendent vision of monarchy. Charles III already seems to walk a little taller than he did as mere heir, such is the power of great office to enhance. But the Palace will know it will be impossible to replicate her allure.

His task is the institution’s subtle but steady reimagining.

Abroad, to do all he can to augment Britain’s image, perhaps, if he’s lucky to help refashion it into something less grand but perhaps, given our reduced stature by comparison to the era from which the Queen hailed, a little less hollow.

Perhaps too he can confront old international sores his mother did not, and address old imperial histories directly. There may even be the opportunity to make some small amends in a way British political elites, including the monarchy have generally - though with some exceptions like the Queen’s 2011 Ireland visit - been reluctant to do.

And at home to try and show he can reform it, to take the best of his mother and yet be his own man, to make his own institution, to step out, however gingerly, from her long shadow.

If he can do but one thing, mother would doubtless be pleased with son: To keep her kingdom whole, in the face of a UK which has never been less united, in terms of its constituent nations.

Queen and monarchy were and are one of the last truly British institutions, something which binds the last large multinational state of Europe, in a context where much else that did - empire, the church, common political preferences, have vanished.

That common wartime experience, something else which bound the nations of the UK, is I said, also gone. So he must help find a way to keep the monarchy and the Britishness on which it rests relevant, to help refashion it, to articulate it anew.

Read more: Man, 28, 'grabbed flag on Queen's coffin because he wanted to check she was dead'

It won’t be enough on its own but the British monarchy’s remaining in good stead is probably a necessary condition to prevent his kingdoms from separating.

For he will be no by-stander. Sometimes monarchy’s defenders argue that it is powerless, that it is pure ornament, and that is why we should be happy to leave it be.

These last days shatter that cosy illusion - its influence, its power, soft and hard, has been there for all to see, sitting at the heart of our constitution. He must find a way of corralling that power and authority in his task to keep the country as one, and if he can, to try and connect with the millions across Britain, especially many of the young, on which any monarchical future depends, for whom the last days have left cold.

It will be no easy feat. Britain is often so much better at living in an often imagined past than looking and crafting its future. And in that context we can’t know what yesterday represents. Whether it’s more than just the body of a queen we buried - or the last of old Britain as well. Let go of the Queen’s past we have. And imagine a different future, Charles must.