Queen of the South

If the neoconservative nightmare of vast neoliberal "republican" federations across Europe, North America and Australasia were ever to become a reality, then expect the same person to remain Head of the former United Kingdom or whatever entities it was divided up into (each with the Union Flag still somewhere on its own), Head of each of the former Australian states and of New Zealand (all retaining their Blue Ensigns, the monarch's status in each Australian state being entirely distinct from that at federal level), and Head of at least some former Canadian provinces (several of which also retain the Union Flag somewhere on their own, and the Crown in right of each of them being, again, entirely distinct from the Crown in right of Canada). The Australasian one might very well include other parts of the Pacific likewise still so headed and so flagged.

"Not until the present Queen dies" is not only an utterly unprincipled position, yet tellingly now the only one ever articulated anywhere where she is the monarch. It is also, as those expressing it must surely know, founded on a fallacy: the succession happens in an instant. In any case, Prince Charles has never been as unpopular as those who regard him as a generational traitor, and who were attached to the rather silly figure of his late ex-wife, would have us believe.

The monarchy was hugely unpopular, not least in Australia, in the middle of the Victorian Period, with that Queen branded "a hausfrau" in Antipodean newspapers. The monarchy was hugely popular, not least in Australia, by the time of the Diamond Jubilee. Next year, there will be another Diamond Jubilee.