The trouble with the monarchy is not that it is too powerful but that it is utterly useless, a worthless vacuum shrouded in ceremony
“Not My King,” say the yellow T-shirts of the anti-monarchists TV cameras may swerve around in the coronation crowds. But he is our king, willy-nilly, like it or not, as he and his family are our dependants. The Guardian’s deep dive into the royal family’s finances shows our monarchy costs a fortune, more than anyone else’s in Europe.
The Bourbons of Spain cost a mere £7.4m, while we pay our Windsors a very pricey £86m. And that’s before we add in the roughly £40m a year in revenues from their Duchy estates. That’s not much really, monarchists may claim. Out of £1tn in annual government spending, the royals’ consumption of taxpayers money is a mere bagatelle, a fleabite.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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