Right Royal Realisation

Michael Moore (the Lib Dem Secretary of State for Scotland, not the American film-maker) is generally reckoned to be a "republican". Or, at least, he was until last night, when he gave a splendid defence of the monarchy and the Royal Family on Question Time. He has now seen them in action at close quarters, you see. Who has ever done so and remained unconvinced?

As Fraser Nelson hints at in this week's Spectator, it is the New Right that is in full cry against the Duke of York, as it often is against the Prince of Wales. As ever, the real target is the monarchy. The New Right's heroine waged a long war against that institution, since she scorned the Commonwealth, social cohesion, historical continuity and public Christianity, and called the Queen "the sort of person who votes for the SDP", arrogating to herself the properly monarchical and royal role on the national and international stages, and using her most popular supporting newspaper to vilify the Royal Family.

Monarchy embodies the principle of sheer good fortune, of Divine Providence conferring responsibilities upon the more fortunate towards the less fortunate. It therefore provides an excellent basis for social democracy, as has proved the case in the United Kingdom, in the Old Commonwealth, in Scandinavia and in the Benelux countries. Allegiance to a monarchy is allegiance to an institution embodied by a person, rather than to an ethnicity or an ideology as the basis of the State.

As Bernie Grant understood, allegiance to this particular monarchy, with its role in the Commonwealth, is a particular inoculation against racialism. No wonder that the National Party abolished it in South Africa, lowering the voting age to that end. No wonder that the Rhodesian regime followed suit, and removed the Union Flag from that of Rhodesia, something that not even the Boers' revenge republic ever did. And no wonder that the BNP wants to abolish the monarchy here.