Royal Baby Blues – how should Republicans react to the birth of the future Monarch?

Few things are more despicable than denying a young person a real choice over his or her future. Watch, just watch, as the cute little Royal baby is photographed, speculated about and obsessed over through no fault of its own. It will be a grotesque spectacle. It demeans everyone involved. It’s delusional to think that it is fair for a child to be born into the world in this way.

The child will live a life of privilege that the masses will never enjoy – public school, amazing private health care, exotic holidays, a guaranteed job for life and a form (I suppose) of final salary pension. This is good deal even if the job for life involves waiting for relatives to die (and it will be waiting – while the death penalty remains popular regicide is out of fashion).

‘Should we not worry about a nation that is willing to watch the dissection of every moment of a small child’s life?’ mutter cowering republicans. After all, coverage of the royal baby will get disturbingly weird. There are well worn arguments about replacing the monarchy with a republic and I subscribe to most of them (although I’m not on for beheading members of the Royal Family of course).

However, the Queen herself is an amazing public servant who has carried out her role with unbelievable grace and dignity. Britain is genuinely a better place for her. But we can’t mix up the diligent and eminently shrewd older lady with the institution itself.

Monarchy as a concept in the modern world is completely and utterly bankrupt. Just as there are no rational arguments against marriage equality there are no rational arguments to sustain the monarchy.

The monarchy creates many unusual situation: human relationships under microscopes, promotion based on the death of a loved one rather than merit, a nation that aims to be dynamic likely to be represented for the foreseeable future by very very old people (what age will Charles and William be when their turns arrive? I don’t have a problem with older people in high positions, I encourage it, I just want a choice of who that person is) and the disgrace of having a hereditary monarchy in a country with a social mobility crisis.

But the problem for republicans is two-fold: the Queen is great at her job and politicians are appalling.

This gets to the nub of the matter. How can support for republicanism be strong when the alternative to the Queen is an elected politician as head of state? Given that the political class is widey despised monarchism is a rational position for a public that would prefer not to have another politician to hate.

I’m sure there are many in the Labour party who would agree that the spectacle is bizarre. They will probably, out of necessity, keep their mouths shut. By the same token I suspect most party members are fully in favour of the current constitutional arrangements.

As much as the royal spectacle annoys me I don’t want anything done about it.

Why not? There’s more important work to get on with. No political energy should be spent on anything that doesn’t get Labour into power, doesn’t get the economy going and doesn’t make the country fairer. I’m sure the Queen wouldn’t want it any other way.

John Clarke blogs here and tweets here.