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Abdication would reduce Britain's monarchy to a cheap popularity contest

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Few will have spotted the small item of royal news amid all the world headlines about the imminent abdication of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

But at the very moment the Dutch monarch was preparing her stirring and dignified valedictory speech to her nation on Monday afternoon, a modest little royal announcement was being released in London.

On Tuesday, June 4, it stated, the Queen, Prince Philip and other members of the Royal Family will be gathering en masse at Westminster Abbey. This occasion, however, will not be a wedding or a funeral. It will be a ‘service of celebration’ in honour of the 60th anniversary of one of the great moments in post-war British history — the Coronation.

Devotion: The Queen crowns Prince Charles during his investiture as the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle in 1969

If proof were still needed that our Queen has not the faintest inclination to follow her Dutch cousin, then here it is. After the year she has just had, no one could possibly begrudge Elizabeth II a very long and happy retirement. She has travelled to every corner of her kingdom marking only the second Diamond Jubilee in British history.

She has been feted through her capital by millions, and endeared herself to the world with her spoof Olympic appearance alongside James Bond.

She has deftly steered the monarchy through a period of unprecedented change and, with an imminent heir to the heir to the Heir to the Throne, she will soon be able to look three future monarchs in  the eye.

She is the most famous woman on the planet, the most respected figure in national public life, and has met all the people and visited all the places one could ever dream of. She is in robust health at 86 and, while her 91-year-old consort has had two health scares in the past year or so, he remains as sprightly as she.

Might they not both now want to slow down? State duties don’t get any shorter. Investitures still require one to remain on one’s feet for more than an hour at a time. The red boxes keep on coming.

Surely, there must come a time when one just wants to hand it all on to the next generation? We might as well wait for Elvis Presley to turn up at Royal Ascot on Shergar.

And it’s not just because naughty Uncle David — Edward VIII — brought the monarchy to its knees when he abdicated in 1936 in order to marry a divorcee.

Very simply, it is because the Queen took a lifetime oath before God in June 1953 to govern all her peoples. It followed her 21st-birthday pledge to the Commonwealth: ‘I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.’

For life: Queen Elizabeth will not follow Queen Beatrix and abdicate in favour of her son Prince Charles, but stick to the oath she swore on the day of her coronation in June 1953, to govern all her life

And just in case anyone had forgotten either of those, she issued a statement on February 6 last year, the anniversary of her accession, which stated: ‘I dedicate myself anew to your service.’

The Queen could not make her position any clearer if she walked around her realms sporting a badge saying: ‘One’s staying put.’ Like the word ‘abdication’, the word ‘retirement’ is not in the British royal vocabulary. Being royal is an existence; being Sovereign is a calling.

That is the British royal way of doing things and it suits us fine. Holland has a different tradition — which works very well for the Dutch — whereby the monarch hands over when the time is right.

Queen Beatrix is no Edward VIII. He abdicated to suit himself, whereas she will do so in the best interests of her people and her son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. Besides, Dutch monarchs do not go in for coronations.

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They are installed at a secular investiture with the crown and sceptre laid out on a table. It’s a small but important distinction.

It is, perhaps, easier to relinquish a crown that was never worn in the first place.

But none of this will stop the meddlers and modernisers from using this week’s news from the Huis ten Bosch Palace to push for further reform of the monarchy. It was already under way in the online pages of the Guardian yesterday.

Tampering with the monarchy is, once more, all the rage. Indeed, as Queen Beatrix was speaking to the Dutch nation on Monday, the House of Commons was enjoying another debate on the Succession to the Crown Bill, which aims primarily to allow female heirs to inherit the crown ahead of younger brothers.

A few days before that, we even had a Labour MP demanding legislation to permit royal civil partnerships and surrogate heirs to the Throne.

Critics of the House of Windsor used to hold up the Dutch royal family as the model of a low-budget ‘bicycling monarchy’, based on pictures of the late Queen Juliana pedalling through Amsterdam. (As heir to a Royal Dutch Shell fortune, it must be said, she was not without four-wheeled transport, too.)

Stand by for the same shrill demands for an ‘abdicating monarchy’ here.

So it is worth reminding ourselves why the British monarchy works the way it does. We have a famously rumbustious and combative political system governing an increasingly fractious union through turbulent times.

But we also have a powerful force for continuity and stability underpinning our nation state. We take it for granted, of course.

When the world economy is in meltdown or when the political establishment is paralysed by crisis — as happened in 2008 and 2009 — we froth and rage, but we don’t expect anarchy. When Britain was left without a government for five days after the 2010 election result, there was no run on the markets, no sterling crisis or civil unrest.

We may despair of the people in control, but at least we still have a dependable figure in charge.

Throughout the Sixties, Canada experienced noisy anti-monarchy protests and calls for a republic on U.S. lines. That all faded in the early Seventies. It wasn’t because the Queen had waved some magic wand. It was, in part, because Canadians looked across the border at the Watergate scandal engulfing American politics and acknowledged that, for all its faults, Canada’s constitutional position had  some advantages.

New rule: This weekend Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands announced that she will abdicate in favour of her 45-year-old son Crown Prince Willem Alexander

One of a monarch’s greatest powers is the simple act of obstruction. As long as the Queen or the King is the head of the Armed Forces or the judiciary or the honours system, then no one else can grab them.

It is also harder to fiddle with them (though politicians will always have a go). The monarchy is not infallible or blessed with infinite wisdom, but it is a brake on those politicians, and it comes with copper-bottomed certainty.

Introduce the idea of regular abdication, and all that certainty starts to erode. If one monarch decides to abdicate for another, then what happens when the new one falls out of fashion, or a rival starts jostling? Pile on enough pressure and another abdication could ensue. Over time, you end up with a popularity contest.

But we already have those. They’re known variously as general elections — or Celebrity Big Brother.

The whole point of the monarchy is that you can’t meddle with it, and it plays the long game.

We sometimes hear the tired old refrain that the monarchy should somehow ‘skip’ a generation and go straight from Elizabeth II to  William V, on the basis that monarchs should be either old and wise, or young and glamorous.

That not only neglects the fact that Prince Charles has given more thought to his future subjects — and is better-trained — than any predecessor in history.

It also neglects the fact Prince William has absolutely no wish to leapfrog his father and will, himself, be middle-aged one day. Besides, it introduces that same notion of cherry-picking the Sovereign.

But it’s all academic, since neither the Queen nor the Prince of Wales nor his sons have the faintest inclination to change a thing.

None of this is to suggest Britain’s monarchy is better than the Dutch one. It just does a different job in different circumstances with a very different history and 16 thrones to consider — from Australia to Jamaica. Monarchy is not a competitive sport, even if it used to be.

Holland is as possessive and proud of its monarchy as Britain is of its own. But surely that doesn’t mean Europe’s monarchs should all be bound by some ghastly EU directive on reigning?

The Queen will not abdicate, and that is that. If you think otherwise, then turn up at Westminster Abbey on June 4 and see for yourself.



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