 Hello and welcome to downstream Navarra's home for all the flotsam and jetsam of political culture. Apologies for the late start, but I was trying to get my CV into Good Morning Britain. Tonight it is a live show as we do our best to abolish the monarchy talking through the fallout of that Harry and Meghan interview with Oprah Winfrey and thinking about what this might mean for the growth or not of Republican sentiment in the UK. And here with me to chew through all the issues, we've got Moyer, Lothian, McClain of Gall dem fame. Hello, thank you for having me tonight. Just a bit of rhyming for you. I know I was very impressed. That was off the cuff and I haven't had that before. Don't do that for everyone. Don't do that for everyone. I feel really honest. I feel royal. I feel of royal status. Regal. I feel like Marie Antoinette, just as she was led up the stage with Lothian. And speaking of relics from centuries past, we've got James Butler in the building. Navarra's very own. Great. Thanks. How are you doing? I'm very well. I'm coming to you from the Navarra studio, which I suppose is harder to rhyme with my surname. So there we go. Yeah, I'm good. I'm serene. I'm sort of a little surprised at the breaking news about Pearson Morgan. It really genuinely does surprise me, but I'm thrilled to be talking about something that has happened. I was about to say 20th century, 21st century is the century we're in now. So there we go. You there, child. What day is it? It's Christmas Day, so... Yeah, well, I am in a viral media storage. It's true. Yeah, our political correspondent for the 18th century there. So just to sort of kick off with a bit of context, I think by now lots of people have in some way metabolized the top newslines from that Harry and Meghan interview with Oprah, in which Meghan and Harry alleged that their unborn child Archie had been subject to racism with one member of the family raising concerns about how dark the child would be. Meghan also talked about her struggles with mental health issues and feeling suicidal and receiving little to no support from the palace institution. There were also discussions about the nature of the breakaway, the strange and strained relationships between Harry, his father Charles, his father Charles, and his brother Prince William, as well as the kind of barrage of negative briefings which potentially emerged from within the royal household itself, mostly targeted at Meghan. But I do just want to take a step back for a second before we get into the nitty gritty of the interview. James, let's start with you. How did we end up with the monarchy that we've got? Well, I mean, to be fair, it's an enormous question and, you know, we have what's called a constitutional monarchy. The emphasis is, it needs to be on both sides of that equation. So the story of how we get the monarchy that we have now is very much the story about how our modes of governance evolve over time. And especially, you know, so there are various ways of telling the story that you can run back really to Magna Carta, but I'm not going to do that. So we're going to start a little further forward than the 13th century. We're going to talk a little bit about the 17th century, which I think is a hugely important part of this story. So, you know, it's quite, you know, it's very hard to talk about the way that we end up with the kind of monarchy that we have now, without remembering that we had quite a significant and very early civil war in this country, part of which was motivated and it's very difficult to sum up everything that goes into the civil war. You know, even what you call the English Civil War is a matter of kind of political contestation. Is it the War of Three Kingdoms? Is it the rebellion? Is it the English Civil War? We'll leave that to one side. This period is very important because there's this huge conflict between the monarch on the one hand and parliament on the other. There's lots of other things going on as well. There are various things that aggravate them, but mostly it's a question about whether the king rules by consulting parliament, how often he calls parliament and whether he has the right to raise money without parliament's consent, so whether he can enact taxes and levy taxes. And there are various things that feed into effectively what becomes a civil war parliament against the king. And that's partly because parliament, when it is finally summoned to give the king, this is Charles I, some money. It says, well, hang on, here's the problems we have with you. Charles goes, I don't think so. And then it all descends into war. There are various, there are multiple wars that go on in this period. In the background here, there's also this big, big conflict between, you know, to deal with the religion and politics and say whether the king rules because he's put there by God, which is obviously a big part of where Charles believes it, whether it's something that just makes his rule, not a question to get into here. But anyway, it's a big, big, big question. And people on the parliamentary side are also motivated by religious thought as well. It's kind of one of the reasons perhaps that we don't talk about this period so often is that it's quite awkward for us because people do politics in the language of religion. Theologies, political, you think about rule and governance and good governance in the kingdom in terms of religion. So that's all in there as well. Anyway, lots of arguments go on there. Eventually, they chop off Charles I's head, very important moment. Lots of exciting things actually go on at this time. So for instance, the new model army, the parliamentary army has lots of radicals in it, partly because of the experience of being in an army. You get the levelers who emerge from that. There are the Putney debates in which take place in a church, unsurprisingly enough, in Putney, where probably the most significant statement for democracy in the 17th century is made by a colonel in the army. And it's an argument about representation. And it's a guy called Colonel Thomas Rainsbury who says, you know, for really, I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he. And therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a government, ought first by his own consent to put him under that government. So there's lots of fights about representation and what that means going on there. 1688, after the Commonwealth, you get the student monarchy returns with Charles II. Lots of conflicts. Sorry, 1660, the monarchy returns. 1688, big conflict. You get a Catholic monarch, effectively a Catholic monarch on the throne. James II, big conflict with the aristocracy. Effectively drives James out of the country. James II and invites William of Orange and Mary over to rule instead. And that produces, so this called sometimes the Glorious Revolution. It's not really a revolution at all. The real revolution, of course, has happened some decades earlier during the blood and destruction. And it's really, I guess it's really important to emphasize here that that period of civil war very early, one of the earliest conflicts to do with monarchy and how a country is governed. There's lots of innovations there. The people who put King Charles on trial have to figure out how you try a king. This is all new stuff to them. Anyway, so you get 1688, which is kind of a pale limitation really of everything that goes on a bit before. It's a sort of aristocratic coup, really, done by Protestant aristocrats. Against the king who is on the one hand, James II, this is, who is on the one hand, very unpleasantly ruling through direct prerogative power. This is a conflict that goes on throughout the stupid monarchy, but is also arguing in favor of religious toleration. Obviously, kind of motivated reasoning. He's a Catholic. Anyway, so all this happens, you get the Bill of Rights, which limits the prerogatives of the monarchy, active settlement. And then things bumble along for a couple of centuries with the powers of the monarchy getting more gradually restricted and parliamentary supremacy coming to the fore. It's a long and complicated story. We could spend many, many hours on it, which we're not going to do here. Last thing to say is in the mid-19th century, you get a guy called Walter Badger who writes a very, very famous book called The English Constitution. It's a complicated book again, because what it describes is the way that a sort of... So his argument is basically that a kind of republic has grown up inside the vestiges of monarchy. So you've got effectively what is a republic governing inside a monarchy, which has symbolic power only. And he likes this because he thinks, you know, that's great, because it means that really the people... The clan of people who are good at governing can get on with governing. You know, he thinks of... As he puts it, it's the upper 10,000 he wants governing. There's another part of this story as well, of course, which is the gradual rise of democracy. And which is, I think people should remember really about, you know, that's really you trace from 1832 onwards. It's formerly, but really it's a very modern story. Only a few decades old really in this country that you can talk about democracy meaningfully, 1928 really. So that's a very, very rapid fire tool, which is... So just to stress the thing here is about that kind of limitation of power, which arises as a consequence of their having been this enormous, very early, very bloody civil war. It's very hard to convey to people how bloody the conflict is at this point, but it's huge, it affects every family in England. Often it's families against each other. And so the interesting thing that happens, of course, is after the restoration, like there's an impetus to kind of avoid bloodshed wherever possible, which is probably why you get this sort of weird aristocratic coup d'etat, which is also why you get at various points a desire to avoid kind of all out conflicts again, partly because the memory, it injures for quite a long time. I'm just going to put a pin in you right there for a second, because that really was a whirlwind tour of the development of constitutional monarchy. I just want to encourage all of our lovely viewers to share the link, like the video, it's good for the algorithm, and I'd like to apologise profusely to Owen Jones for accidentally going live at the same time as him. But what can I say? I'm a royal correspondent and there's royal business afoot. Moira, I'd like to turn to you because it seems to me one of the really strange elements, we've talked about the kind of constitutional element of the monarchy, but I'd like to talk about some of the personalities involved and this business of having a royal family. Because one of the things that Megan said in the interview, which I found really quite interesting, was that she said that, look, as an American, I just thought of the royal family as like a really famous family, except they're not that. There's obviously the connections to land ownership. They're known as the firm for a reason. They're a family with an entire institution and machine backing them. There's a role in terms of Britain's, you know, non-constitution, the inheritance of the role of being head of state. So could you just tell me a bit about what is the royal family? Oh, you're on mute. Can you hear me now? Okay, fantastic. I don't know if you're actually asking the right person about what is the royal family per se, because for me, they've also been this... It's funny, you learn about them in school as sort of this assumption. It's this assumed knowledge that the royal family are just the family that sits the head of state and automatically has this power and you're not really sure exactly what it is. You're not ever really taught what your restriction they have. It's only later in life that slowly it comes out, you know, the Duchy of Cornwall and the estates that they own and that you can't kill a swan. All these little things that distract us from the fact that at the end of the day, the royal family are a relic. They don't have... I mean, James can talk much more to this, but as any did, but they don't have like the political power per se beyond their role now. I think it's interesting. Obviously, throughout the sort of 20th century, they had a much more active role. We looked to the royal family for, well, I didn't, but history has looked to the royal family for guidance in these matters of like, you know, if you watch The Crown, you watch The Queen Elizabeth having to learn to deal with many crises and as she was almost seen as a head of state without that political power, but slowly even that sort of illusion of the power disappears. And I think that's the thing. We hold onto this idea of the royal family as a family that somehow have a hangover of this, I guess you'd call it that constitutional power, that political power, but really there are nothing more than a ghost of that now. And so I would... This is probably not the answer to the question you're asking, but I don't think the royal family stands for anything but the memory of the royal family themselves anymore. And I don't think they have any real solid power beyond that sort of aristocratic hangover, as I said, that memory of what they once stood for. So when you say what are the royal family, I think they're almost like dust, they're air, they're our history, and they're not our present and they're not our future. And the sort of collective understanding of them in the country hasn't yet caught up with that. I mean, so I really want to sort of push this point about family because what's so strange about what it is we've seen is that internal family dynamics of who's married who and who gets on with who's in-laws, essentially, has turned into a crisis of national identity, who we are, there's a reckoning with the nature of the press, and we've also sort of danced this dance before, of course, with the abdication crisis earlier in the 20th century when Edward the... Which Edward was he? Seven. Eight. Eight. I can't do Roman numerals very well, so don't ask me. I know. I'm like Edward the V. Oh, no, wait. Yes, the Nazi one. The Nazi one. The Nazi one. Edward the Nazi. For those of our viewers who don't know about this, Edward the VIII and Wallace Simpson after the abdication met with Hitler against the advice of the UK government. There were also papers which emerged which some argue show some kind of plot to invade Britain and re-install Edward the VIII as king. It's one of those things which the Royal Family has been very good at hushing up until the crown hit Netflix. But I want to just come back to this point about family. So family is so crucial. And so who you choose to marry, who you choose to have children with becomes a matter of national importance. I saw that with Edward VIII and then of course with Diana. And here you had a heir to the throne who isn't just heir to the throne but will then become the head of the Church of England wanting to get a divorce. And then you've got it again with Prince Harry. So James, if I could invite you to sort of talk about the role of family, the role of what we would think of as fairly, well, you know, not if you're Judith Butler, you wouldn't think of marriage and childbearing as apolitical, but generally you would think of as perhaps being of national importance. So you have a bit of biopolitics here that I'm trying to get at. Yeah, no, no, no, I see where you're going with it. And I agree. I mean, it's curious in some ways that this sort of family is at the central, occupies this place so centrally in our national myth. And it really does. I mean, you know, it's astonishing that the, you know, and this is one of the things that people who are not, who are outside the country are just astonished about how powerful it is to the national conversation. You know, I suppose one of the things that's difficult here is that, you know, I think we have to try and strike a balance. And it's always difficult when criticizing institutions like this is that, you know, one can recognize the way in which even the people who apparently benefit from these institutions, including these people without, you know, really big houses and lovely crowns and whatever, you know, are also damaged by it. And it's true of the class system in general. You know, like it doesn't mean that we don't want to acknowledge class just because we, you know, we can recognize that the ruling class are as damaged, perhaps not as damaged, but their institutions differently damaged than the rest of us are. So, you know, I think that's important. It's a much harder thing to navigate than to say, well, these people are all just, you know, who cares about any of them. At the same time, it's astonishing how persistent the way that we talk about monarchy is. So I was thinking, you know, I was watching this interview and they come out with, oh, you know, but it's not the queen. It's her advisors. This is Richard II. I mean, you know, what is this? You know, it's astonishing that the persistence of this stuff, you know, it's kind of amazing. The other side of this, you know, they're talking about marriage and, you know, bloodlines and descendants. It all gets a bit chronic and, you know, sinister and like one step away from eugenics or even really one step away from eugenics, because that's the other thing I think it's working around this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, it really put me in mind. This whole thing has put me in mind of that. Do you know, do you remember there was this scandal? It wasn't really a scandal, but it was this image or this video circulated of the father-in-law of Dominic Cummings, a guy called Humphrey Wakefield, you know, lives in a castle, is an aristocrat, you know, and came out with this thing and his real faux pas was to say this on record in public, whereas most of the aristocracy know perfectly well that you don't say this stuff in public anymore, but it was all to do with the way in which, you know, he believed that basically blood will out and aristocracy, people who live in big houses are there because they've achieved something and that people are, you know, I can't, he didn't use the expression, you know, people are in service of their genes or something like that, you know, that we are ruled by our genetics and it's really this kind of, you know, deeply sort of, and that is the common sense of the aristocracy. There's all of this stuff is in there and it's really, really quite unpleasant. I'll invite you to come in on that because I could see you doing the facial expression so that's kind of fucked up. It was that, but it was also what I was going to say. I think it's less about the notion of family and more about the notion of dynasty, which I think James nodded to, and I think it speaks, the royal family speak very deeply. They are the pinnacle of sort of the dynasty, the ruling dynasty, which tramples all underfoot and that subjugation that Britain somehow has got in its bloodstream and loves on every level. It prevents, like, it, no, it, what's the word, it's, we like boot, we know we like boot and the royal family have always been a symbol of like that boot and we've been able to project, I think, I say we, it's not like I've done this, but I suppose in some way it's like, I just assume they're always there and the projections that we have for the royal family, it's like, yes, it's that idea of family, but I think it's more about that. I think it's that unpleasantness and that sufferance and that sort of like, there's nothing we can do about it. This dynasty is going to continue and it's just like the same sort of sufferance we've been in our own lives. Britain is a very like, or England, I speak of England very much here, it's very much a country of like doing stuff under sufferance and you know, no matter how unpleasant your family are, you still have to hang out with them. No matter how pleasant the class system is, then you know, you just have to follow the rules. You follow that social strata and the royal family have always been sort of like at the top of that, the pinnacle, the totem and it's like, as you say, it even affects those within it but it's this institution that is so much bigger and if that crumbles, it's almost like we have to question every single thing about the way this country is set up and run and the aristocracy and the inbreeding and whether that's really the, you know, the way to create a balanced society or perhaps whether that is just a way to perpetuate misery through generations and it's that idea again, you talked about eugenics, it's very much filled in eugenics, it's like the royal family has seen and it's amazing, I don't know how this myth of sort of like purity is attached to them given that they, as I say, they've been bred over centuries and centuries between this very small pocket and the royal family, it was interesting about this particular bit of the royal family is that we talked about this before, royal families usually switched over so you had different dynasties coming in and killing each other and then someone else was swapping and someone else would kill each other but then when the killings started being a bit too vulgar and a bit too sort of gruesome then it just stayed with this one and this is why it's so stale I think and this is why they're also petering out to such a not with a bang but with a whimper end because that's not the way it always went even in previous days gone past it was just a new dynasty to take over when they were all powerful but this one is just left to its own devices to rot from the inside out but yeah, I think it's more about dynasty than family and those bonds of sufferance rather than choice I mean I want to chime in on this because I've got so many opinions on posh people misery despite having never been posh but got so many opinions on it because I think one thing is that the royal family is a deeply miserable institution it makes the people inside it miserable and that itself has turned into a kind of inerrant nobility so there is a projection that we put upon the queen as this kind of long-suffering grandmother and that's part of the story of her nobility but that misery is also sort of I think it's part and parcel of the boarding school system I think that sending children away at the age of 11 years old to what is essentially an abuse factory is a kind of suboptimal way to raise your kids and when that happens in the context of working class and very deprived families kids get sent into care we go that's not great for kids but when they get sent to Eaton or Gordiston it's like oh well done those parents I've done the very best they can for a little talk in there but it's a way of kind of valorizing making people miserable and that misery being a condition of their suitability to rule and then I just wanted to kind of briefly talk about the point that James raised about eugenics it's not just close to eugenics the royal family of course have had people born within it who have had disabilities there was the Queen's cousins Catherine and Narissa who were diagnosed having mental disabilities who were hidden away at the Royal Ellswood hospital and they were struck from the big book of aristocratic births there were death dates put in there to make them seem like they died in childhood just so nobody would ask nobody would ask questions but I want to talk about what you were saying about almost this ghostliness the royal family stands in for the memory of previous royal families is that once upon a time the aristocracy was the pinnacle of glamour and I'm thinking here James about the Scriblarians who wrote an awful lot of poetry about these aristocratic women who wore these huge dresses the rape of the lock famously about Belinda with her hair and you also kind of have this sense of a social scene a party scene of these incredibly glamorous stylish people and people thought of that as either trivial or something to aspire to whereas now the British aristocracy I said this on Tuske's hour last night they smell a bit like wet dog they're horsey the houses seem to be in a state of disrepair is this useful branding to conceal how much they still own they still extract or is there an element of truth that they're kind of parochial and provincial these days I don't get invited to shooting parties so I don't know for clarity for our viewers neither do I but you know I knew it would be one of us I mean you know it's difficult isn't it I think one of the things you pointed to the Scriblarians there is actually really interesting because one of the things it tells us is that the public sphere and sort of fascination with these people is much older than just the culture of the image and the culture of the moving image it is not you know and one of the stories of Britain one of the things that makes it so odd to talk about you know is that I think for a lot of us some of us think like the normal progression of a nation is like France right that you have a king then you kill him and then you sort of have series of you have a series of kind of back and forth like well you try to figure out how to set up a republic but basically there are kind of clear breaks when you know one system of government becomes another system of government in the words of Danton you do not negotiate with tyrants the only way in which you can negotiate with a king is through armed force right well exactly I mean you know and plenty of other people as well it's true you know but here in Britain you know you get these kind of successive waves of you know of rising mechanicalist classes joining with and fusing with the old aristocracy right and one of the things that the British aristocracy never really do is they never really lose their land right you know they don't have it all confiscated so you know it's one of the questions maybe we'll talk about this a bit one of the things that aristocrats do today is that they you know farm doesn't actually involve any actual contact with the land but they make profits of you know off owning land so they have lots of tenant farmers various other things they do as well but you know I mean just just on that question of kind of the you know because basically this is one of the problems that you know contemporary royal family faces is the interface with celebrity culture is the interface with you know the culture of the image and you know the culture in particular like look you know I think I'm still pretty you know I'm pretty skeptical about the value of celebrity culture I get kind of very anxious about the impact it has on us as a society and one of the ways that one of the things I wrestle with is the demand for intimacy the desire you know this this kind of you know synthetic desire for intimacy with you know someone who's very distant from us and is actually utterly unlike him and when that demand is placed you know on a monarch who is you know supposed to be in some way sort of neutral or removed from that culture then you get this kind of this this pool in these two directions and look celebrity culture in other ways imposes on us this kind of fantasy of intimacy but also kind of ultimately this sense of of homogeneity and kind of everyone's really the same you can relate to these people however however different they are for you so yeah I mean there's all this stuff going on here and it points to one of the you know because the real question for me is like why could these people not use Meghan Markle in the way that seems obvious and allow her to gradually bring you into contact with the way in which society is changing so it's I don't know it seems very difficult it's difficult to know that difficulty in using her points to something about the institution of monarchy that maybe has finally hit its end point at the same time though I mean again maybe we can come and talk this I'm not sure it's going anywhere so we've almost got two thousand people watching this show so smash that like button share the link to the show and most importantly subscribe to this channel if enough of you subscribe to this channel then we will abolish the monarchy it will just happen automatically as I've written into YouTube's terms and conditions but more I'd love for you to come in on this so what did Meghan Markle represent to the royal family both in terms of what she could have represented and what she ended up representing oh goodness I think what she could have represented was quite obvious because for a while she did she represented the modernization of the royal family and she represented and I don't want to I mean the thing is I think that her being biracial was very important in the end it became of overwhelming importance at this position at the start it was quite important it was seen as this you know wow they really managed to pick someone who fits in all these you know she's biracial but she's very palatable she's so beautiful she's an American actress this is the most sort of like anti-Britain royal family that you can get and she was marrying Harry so she was almost safe she wasn't going to inherit the throne so she you know she wasn't going to mess up that line of succession by being too modern she was she was marrying the spare also the cuckoo in the nest Harry had always been a bit of like apart from the Nazi outfit and his various thing he'd been the sort of like secret fan favourite even among I think the more anti monarchy people I thought you were referring to the James Hewitt I was I was very much I was very much referring to those rumors I meant he was the spare and he was the cuckoo in the nest yes yeah I was I'm just going to say get out the like 23 and meek it and then we can talk so it's yeah so Harry was like the spare it's like he was it was the safe it was the safe option for her to marry in that sense he'd always been you know he's been seen very much as Diana's son he was he didn't like the press very much he'd made his sort of as much as someone within his position and his I would say amount of enlightenment around his own family goes he was quite anti the circus that came with it and even then I think it was a celebrity circus I do I do think and I'll get to submit that the celebrity culture in the royal family fused a lot earlier than perhaps we give it credit for and it was the royal family themselves who were perhaps resistant and misunderstood that that happened which is one of the reasons they're so decrepit but Megan yeah she represented this like modernity she got a whole generation interested I watched that royal wedding with actual interest I was excited to see her dress when Kate walked down the island I didn't care at all I was on but I didn't give a shit um so you know like Pippa Middleton etc I always want to look at how consensus manufactured in this country look at how they imposed this idea that Pippa Middleton has a good bum yeah as far as I her legs but her back and that was the end of the story but it was like Pippa Middleton was thick that was that was the that's consent manufacturing right there and I don't mean thick with the CK I mean thick with the double C so Megan you know Megan was she was beautiful she was elegant she was so charismatic and she was very good at the job that was the funny thing she was excellent at the job immediately she wanted to be part of this machine and she was good at it and that's what she could have represented she could have represented sadly a real continuum like um I think a quelling of anti monarchy sentiment among younger generations because it's easy to go along with things when there is someone you feel more softly towards even if you're like I'm very much like burn it all down and I feel sympathy for them but also sorry you're still very rich um but but like I know other people are like they really saw themselves or they really were able to project on to Megan in a way that they hadn't been able to before and that was very powerful however what she came to represent was it and it was all there in doing she came to represent sort of the most she was Diana part two she's literally Diana part two and that's the thing she's she's and she's the thing is she's still alive and so she represents this out point and she's got this voice so there's a whole new connection she has with this audience that she built you know um organically anyway through social media through her career previously she had a whole life there was so much documented footage of her before that she wasn't you know this very young small virgin plucked out of private school she was a fully grown woman with a whole life before her so we knew the kind of person she was and her values and well at least the values professors to have etc so she she had a voice and she became almost like the way to channel both the frustrations Diana but also channel for the way I think pop feminisms wants to talk about women I think the way Meghan Markle has been talked about and probably the way I'm talking about is very sort of binary it's very like classic like you know she's this she's this really wronged woman who's you know she's a woman of color and she ticks every single box of discourse that we want to discuss right now um and she's almost it's really funny how many people on the left have just taken her to their hearts because of the way she's been wronged by this institution and the way that we think in absolute so she has to be there's a hundred percent good thing even while you know there's this because they're the hundred percent bad thing and that's what I think she represents now she represents she represents every single point of discourse about identity politics and sort of like this like this modernity versus the decrepitness of the royal family and this old institution but at the same time to me personally she also represents like and I think you're talking about this ashen a really interesting way like marketization and commodification of that sort of like like powerful woman girl boss feminism thing and neoliberalism in that sense and the where the power now lies the power lies in you know getting your deals with Netflix and Apple and your interview with Oprah and moving to America and as you said being part of that brand new sort of multiracial aristocracy so that to me is the Meghan Markle story and I think she this is this is just what she's projected on this is what just the public image she has because she seems like a very nice woman at her heart and I feel so terrible about all the things that happened to her but there's no she's not like a left wing burn it all down she still says she'd want to be part of that family it's just that family treated her awfully so she's moved to a new one. I mean does this tell us something about how the ruling class works in Britain versus how the ruling class works in America because there is I mean I use the word aristocracy to kind of speak to that role in taste making at being at you know the top of the tree and very ensconced within money but it's not just about being rich it carries with it all of these norms around the kind of nobility and superiority of who you are obviously it's associated with accomplishment in America Oprah is you know kind of like heartedly known as the queen of America which is queen of American broadcast television I have Beyonce and Jay-Z I've always said Kim K to tacky but we'll see what happens after the divorce from Kanye Ellen DeGeneres George W Bush being rehabilitated into it Jared and Ivanka could have been in there but perhaps tarnished by their proximity to Trump but there's something distinct about the American ruling class which is different you know it's a plutocracy perhaps there's obviously the role of money but there is the sense that you have to at least be able to tell a story of accomplishment whereas I'm not sure if you agree with this James but it seems to me that the British aristocracy is always declaring its own amateurishness there's a lack of professionalism there's a lack of polish which distinguishes the British old boys network yeah I mean I agree and I think that's absolutely true I also know there's something I find pretty culturally repulsive about Britain a lot of the time which is this idea that being over earnest or trying at something or taking something seriously is somehow a mark of ghostiness well I mean it is a mark of leftness in this case but you know that you're somehow kind of like utterly weird for doing it I hate it I hate it but does that come from the idea of spritzatura so spritzatura for those unfamiliar it was the term for sort of courtly effortlessness that you can never be seen to be trying you just glide like a swan yeah I mean you know like but even there that suggests that there's some kind of effortless end product I'm quite quite a fan of the idea of spritzatura anyway but like you know the idea as you say often in Britain like that you know something is crap and that's the thing that makes it you know uniquely ours I mean yeah I think this is true and I think you know that also goes along with like look I banged on a bit about the Civil War at the beginning of the show because I do think it's important because one of the reactions to it has been this sort of myth or the kind of intense propagation of this myth that you know British people are not really that interested in politics and we care about how they're governed you know taking that seriously is just like weird and ideological and it tells us that it certainly wasn't always historically true like people cared enormously cared enormously, cared enough to go out and fight about it, cared enough to die for it I mean I think that's really important and it's you know it connects you know one of the things that really worries me so you know I think it's very easy to get into like these these conversations on the left about you know it would be very easy and we haven't done this and I'm very glad about it it would be very easy for him to go like oh well you know the royal family is bad for this, this, this and this reason you know they need to be abolished you know it's simple and it's clear and in one sense obviously it's true it's a completely risible and laughable thing that we're governed by someone you know nominally governed by someone however effectively you want to talk about it and nominally governed by someone you know who rules us, who rules us as subjects because her great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was the offspring of the corpse of Sophia Electris of Hanover this is, this is ridiculous, you go further back well it's because you know someone was more violent than my ancestors and they pillaged and dispossessed them of land, well I mean what a completely risible idea just an act of basic political hygiene we should regard this as disgusting because everything that goes along with it it says that you know blood is what out it says all this eugenics stuff we've been talking about it's there you know simmering under the question of monarchy and I think this is, it's important because as soon as we get to a position where we just go well you know what British people don't really care about politics there's no way in which you can ever make them care about the fact that they're nominally, symbolically governed by a monarch and you think well maybe that's true probably wouldn't be at the top of my priority list but like I worry, I worry about this because I worry about the, you know I worry especially at the moment, you know look in the middle of the 20th century it was possible to think that the monarchy wouldn't last to the 21st century it's quite possible to think that, right? It's quite easy now to think that it will endure until the 22nd. Why is that? I worry that we're a place that we're encountering this kind of ebbing of democratic sentiments, right? That we're encountering the sense of these kind of basic freedoms these basic things that we value about how we govern ourselves about the fact that my vote should matter as much as Elizabeth Windsor's and not a job more that you know there is something kind of fundamental about this claim you know that is important. I worry that this is going away at the same time because I worry about what it can bring back right and at the same time you know curiously during lockdown I've been reading a lot of Dante and Dante wrote in 13th century well the beginning of the 14th century actually it writes a track called Monarchia right on monarchy and it's not really about monarchy in the sense that we would know it it's about you know it's basically a document for separation of church and state but it comes out of the fact that he has experienced this life that is utterly driven by factional politics and he kind of is fantasizing about what it would be like to live in a community governed by one will where a faction and including the corruption of his own side right it's the thing that makes Dante often very moving is that he's talking about like the recognition after he's lost and is in exile that even his own side was kind of corrupt and did awful things that's the kind of place where Milton ends up as well exactly after the English revolution he's like well gosh you know these guys on my side perhaps not so great either so what I'm saying here is like this desire for like to overcome the reality of politics fantasy about you know about monarchy it's all there bubbling in the background I think we should just remember that democracy is a very fragile thing and so difficult to achieve and it's something that we should value so we have got 769 likes and I would be really gassed if we could get that to at least 1000 so if you're watching the show thank you very much but also it ain't for free smash the like button that's the price of entry babes but boy I want to turn to you with this which is at various points in in our lifetime when there has been a crisis within the royal family and it's been to do with family predominantly people have predicted there's a crisis of legitimacy for the royal family there's no way they could survive Diana there's no way they could survive Megan and then earlier was there's no way they could survive the abdication now of course they did so two questions one do you think that this moment will be a radicalising moment for younger generations with very different social norms with regards to republicanism and if not why not that is a very difficult question because I hate making predictions because I'm always wrong I'm always always wrong and I think also because I exist in a bit of you know a bubble I exist on a social media bubble where yeah my timeline seems very radicalised by this but that doesn't mean that everyone is radicalised this and it also means that lots of people out there are ignoring it because it's just a stream of fatiguing news which I think is also something important to remember I almost didn't watch the interview myself because I was like I'm fed up of hearing about this but I pushed myself to do it because it was important in that sense and I knew that I should but I think we shouldn't over underestimate how fatiguing a constant stream of news about one topic is to people at this point in time so whether that might have an effect is one thing in terms of radicalising I don't know I genuinely just want to say I don't know because as you said it's like we imagine that thing the cruelty of the royal family in this scenario such that you know Megan said she had suicidal ideation and she had no help from that something like that watching her say that was a really just like a very stark humanising moment to such a degree that it seems like Piers Morgan may or may not allegedly have been sacked for denying that she felt those things so you know that cut through but I do worry that there's this fatigue there is a fatigue in general with the idea that things can change or that we can change them or that we can pool our resources to change them and perhaps this is also you know I'm always going about online sort of stymie offline efforts because we get caught up in discourse as opposed to like doing actual things and the pandemic has exacerbated that because we can't get outside but that's something I do wonder you know like that fatigue and that 10 years plus almost 10 years plus now yeah 10 years plus of Tory, Tory governance and sort of the apathy and you know post-Iraq war remembering that the march of what was it quarter of a million people biggest march ever didn't mean anything doesn't change anything that slow realisation that at the moment we're living in an era where your voice does matter but it also doesn't matter in the ways that you think it does I don't know quite how to like articulate that it matters when you know you're coming out and voting for what the politicians want in like on mass falling for the lies of Brexit but it doesn't matter as such when you're trying to like push you know radical or not even a radical a quite moderate agenda of sort of social change that would provide for more people that's when it doesn't matter it's in this sense this is one of those things that republicanism is seen as a left wing thing mostly I think and things that are seen as left wing often quite tarnished at this point in time and I just don't think that you know let's take Keir Starmer as a weather bane I'm sorry if I bring him up but let's take him as the weather bane is Keir Starmer going to call for the end of the royal family anytime soon is he going to make the actual case that you know maybe we should stop funding this family and maybe we should after Queen Elizabeth dies we should really reconsider their position in society and their position as normal heads of state I can't see someone like Keir Starmer doing that if I can't see someone like Keir Starmer doing that I can't see another politician doing that because he's like the most middle road trying to please the public mood right now always gets it wrong but still trying to please the public mood and that's why in terms of like republicanism from my generation if I can't see that quite being made I see people just sort of like letting it fade into the background because there are so many other things that we are distressed about right now that seems so much more pressing and so much closer in a way the royal family is like it's great gossip it's fantastic gossip to us but the actual consideration of the impact they have on our lives goes under the rug it's like I was talking about early you know you don't hear about like the estates they own and the money they've scored away and just how much it cost to keep them and actually do they pay you know are they paying for their way in the sense of like the tourism that they bring in because you see it here all these like things about the tourism that they bring in but I feel like if they would got rid of the tourism would still come in and it would still be looking at like the Tower of London but it would just be looking at their not heads on spikes it would be looking at you know it would be looking at please don't arrest me looking at the relics they'd be looking at Queen Elizabeth's last crown that she ever wore before you know the monarchy was abolished and that would still be going on in that sense because that nostalgia in their retrospective would element would still be there and that's what the monarchy is as we talked about it's that ghost I mean people go to Versailles in fact more visited than British attractions and maybe without the sort of magic of a queen potentially living in it people see Buckingham Palace what it is which is kind of a tired provincial hotel I do think is absolutely hideous but I want to pick up I want to pick up sorry I was so struck by your hot takes isn't practice I'm sitting here I'm like God at me next time I want to talk about republicanism because every Labour leader has had to moderate their position on republicanism Jeremy Corbyn had to so the closest he ever got to saying what he really thought when he was Labour leader was when he was asked in that 2019 debate about Prince Andrew what do you think about the royal family and he went needs a bit of improvement and that he was very strong on the issue of Epstein Prince Andrew be didn't say like look these people are fucking parasites and they've got no place in a modern democracy which I imagine is something akin to what he really thinks if we go for Labour Prime Ministers you've got Harold Wilson who was a Republican and then from being Prime Minister that position softened he ended up being one of the Queen's favourite Prime Ministers to sit down with every week and the only Prime Minister apart from Churchill to be granted a private dinner at Downing Street so that gives you a sense of the way in which he was co-opted right and the way in which he became a very cosy part of the establishment and that was Harold Wilson so you know thinking about I think a lot about how we live in nominal democracies but how the choices in front of us are so constrained and I was thinking about this in the American general election how every single election Americans have been able to vote in they've never had the option of a candidate who supports universal healthcare free at the point of use to what extent can you call that a functioning democracy and in this country to what extent can you call it a functioning democracy when you haven't had a major party leader maintain a stance of republicanism while leading the party putting that forward as a as a policy issue you know James do you think that we'll ever see a party leader brave enough to take their stance and what would it take to make that happen Yeah I mean not in the near future I think it's the answer to that I mean on the one hand something more you were saying earlier it really reminded me of a letter that the regicide John Cook writes from prison to his wife the evening before he's killed and you know he's reflecting so this is the guy who basically prosecuted Charles the first right like he has to invent a way to prosecute a king incredible like a bit of a personal hero actually I'm always available for the job if so so he writes to his wife we fought for the public good we would have enfranchised the whole of the growing creation had the nation not more delighted in servitude than in freedom which you know I think it's a very easy thing for radicals to slip into right is to get this sense that public opinion is intrinsically conservative and unchangeable and I don't think that's true on the other hand I do think that we should basically be thinking like we're living in a one party state probably for another decade frankly I think that's actually all Kirstarmers fault I think there's some serious deeper things things deeper than Kirstarm which is a hell of a lot of things going on there what I would say is one of the reasons that this presents itself as a paradox to us is that the existence of a kind of so if I'm talking about the Constitution I often start by telling this story about a key part of the Constitution which is a pseudonymous letter sent to the Times newspaper in 1950 right and it was signed Senex and it was actually written by Tommy Lattles who viewers of The Crown will know a mustache burn and it's about what happens if there's a hung parliament and then what role the monarch plays in deciding who to appoint as prime minister and then you step back and think isn't it kind of crazy that a nation should be run a key part of how a nation is run is defined by a pseudonymous letter to a newspaper you know this isn't a great work of constitutional theory it's a guy writing to a paper and giving the nod to someone he knows which is a way into realizing that because we've had this kind of hush hush nod nod wink wink settlement for so many centuries Britain has never really developed a native theory of the state it's never really understood even we don't have what an academic would call a kind of native republican tradition in the same way that France does right France has a lot of writing about what it means to have a state what it means to govern a state or there's lots of arguments about this stuff not so much the case in Britain the other side of this is that and one of the consequences of this actually in some ways is that Britain is a very poorly, actually we're talking about democracy Britain isn't a democracy Britain is a very poorly disguised oligarchy which occasionally undertakes exercises in a sort of nominal consent making this is a thing that has worried governments in the past or actually people especially when they're in opposition if I count Haelscham in the 70s this is the period in which Labour looks like it's the natural party of government if I count Haelscham who's a Tory starts to worry about elective dictatorship and the kind of powers that are recorded the story is kind of like he suddenly finds he's not so concerned about it anymore but the kind of huge powers that a government has so all of this stuff it takes us to this paradox which is that yes the monarchy doesn't have anything in the way of absolute power it has enormous connections enormous soft power enormous lobbying power in the British state which is something we don't really talk about enough especially when it comes to the question of land but you know I mean one of the reasons to take it on is that it would be part of a conversation about Britain finally becoming a grown-up nation I mean you know about us finally becoming a community of adults who can think about what the state is for what we use it for how we're governed and you know decisions mean as citizens you know can our decisions only go so far can they not you know must they tremble before a throne forever well preposterous idea so we're coming towards the end of our show and Moe I kind of want to give you the last words no don't give me the last words I will give you the last word here very quickly on Piers Morgan's departure from GMB so far it seems that he's left but I'm sure we will get more information on whether that was whether he was pushed as opposed to I feel like it had a lot to do with ITV's mental health campaign is all I'm going to say that Piers Morgan's departure came so soon afterwards and perhaps and I also think that perhaps his funnily enough him going after so many Tory ministers had alienated a key part of GMB's viewership a little bit so perhaps he was more expendable than we think he was well I've got to say that's probably been the most surprising turn of events in the last few days for me because I kind of thought that what GMB is always very good at is it sucks up and sort of regurgitates its own critiques from within and that's the role that Susanna plays that's the role that Alex Beresford plays and so I kind of thought that there wouldn't be a significant ruption or departure though I do wonder if Piers Morgan might be connected to one of these new news channels which are emerging either GB News or the other Murdoch one which is going to pop up at some point I do doubt it's GB News because I feel like the rivalry with Andrew Neil and the Clash of Eagles might be perhaps too great for Piers to either come crawling to Andrew or for Andrew to let him in but I will say this if Piers Morgan can be sacked from GB News maybe there's hope of republicanism in this country yet I think I think that's a really good note to end on thank you both so much for joining me Moya Lothian McLean and James Butler if you guys liked this video you know that there's more where this came from if you subscribe to our channel you can also get alerts I think if you press the little bell so you'll know whenever we're going live and of course we always appreciate your financial support as well because we don't have duchies to sustain us so if you liked this content and you want to bonus a few quid just go to navaramedia.com forward slash support and I promise if I ever marry you know one of those chinless inbred aristocrats and I'm suddenly rolling in it I'll stop begging you for cash but until that day I will be shaking you upside down for your lunch money so thank you James and Moya for joining us and thank you for watching bye