NO OLD MONARCHY FOR NEW LABOUR

Tony Blair may be monarchist, but Blairism is not.

Derek Draper explains THE FABIANS are not used to rebellions, but that is what happened last Friday. Deep in the Oxfordshire countryside the annual Young Fabian weekend school began with a plea for a change to the pub- lished agenda. 'It isn't good enough to stop for the service itself,' insisted one delegate. `Events must begin only after lunch.' So much is unsurprising; these young Blairites were simply reacting like the majority of the population. What was revolutionary was the chat in the bar later that night.

The very same people who earlier had insisted on cancelling the next morning's sessions were scathing about the behaviour of the House of Windsor and not one of them expected the monarchy to survive the death of the Queen. More interestingly, they couldn't see how the monarchy fitted in with the 'New Labour' vision they had come together to spend 48 hours dis- cussing.

The Young Fabians have long been the mod- • ernisers' cutting edge. Past officers are now young MPs, advisers to ministers such as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Darling serve on the executive, and the discussions at their yearly country retreats would make David Owen blush. This year Dr Madsen Pirie from the Adam Smith Institute is a guest and one session is titled, 'How and what Labour should privatise'. 'These people are the ghost of New Labour future,' moaned one Old Labour MP recently.

Abolishing the monarchy is not top of their political agenda, but that is for practi- cal reasons — and a sense of inertia — not because of any royalist sympathies. They know that abolition would consume the government's energies, taking up huge swathes of parliamentary time. After all, a republic would require the very fabric of our lives to be rewoven, from stamps to law courts. A written constitution would be required and the lingering power of the monarch (the Royal Prerogative, assenting to Bills etc.) would have to be passed to others such as the Speaker of the House of Commons, or an elected president.

It is not only Blair's young shock troops who feel ambivalent about the monarchy. John Prescott admits that he is 'certainly not a monarchist and so that makes me a republican in the democratic sense'. He confesses to compromising in practice. For example, he swears the oath of allegiance at the start of every parliament but, 'when I swear, I affirm but . I don't say it, I mum- ble it. That's one of my little compromises.' He respects the Queen, though, and tells the tale of a visit she made to Hull in 1977. Prescott decided his compromise on that occasion would be not bowing but, as he recounts, 'She came along the line. She gets to me. I just shook her hand and looked straight up. And she started speak- ing to me and I couldn't hear what she was saying, she's not tall. I automatically bent down as she's not tall then realised I had appeared to bow.' He concludes, 'She's a shrewd woman.'

The present Home Secretary, when in opposition, called for a scaled-down monarchy, but his remarks had an air of the last chance saloon about them. The royal family, he said, were 'deeply decadent and detached'. There has been no sign yet of whether Home Secretary Straw is ready to go into battle with the House of Wind- sor with his spending axe, though he might have a useful ally in the Chancellor of the Exchequer. For Gordon Brown too has spoken of the need to reform the monar- chy, with only the Queen and the Queen Mother receiving payments from the civil list.

Dennis Skinner, Paul Flynn, Nick Ainger, Llew Smith, Nick Raynsford, Tony Banks, Peter Hain, the list goes on — and ministers not just back- benchers feature on it. Ron Davies is the most outspoken. The then shadow Welsh Sec- retary earned a rebuke from Blair before the election when he said the Prince of Wales 'was a sadist [because of his thirst for blood sports], adul- terer and deceiver and there- fore not fit to be king'. In case that wasn't clear enough he added that the heir to the throne was 'an absolute pil- lock'. This may have earned him a dressing-down from Blair but he received a lot of back-slapping and drinks in Westminster's bars.

We do not know the current state of gov- ernment back-bench opinion because Labour MPs are now instructed not to par- ticipate in polls, but a 1995 survey showed 41 per cent of Labour MPs expressing republican sympathies. Taking self- imposed pre-election discipline into account, we can guess that the real figure is higher, almost certainly a majority. In 1996 a survey showed that two thirds wanted the future of the monarchy 'put up for discus- sion'. The new, younger intake is likely to be even less royalist.

Paul Flynn MP has been told that a Bill to hold a referendum would be 'acceptable and in order'. The plan is to unveil it when the current Queen dies. The test of such a move would be whether it was able to win support from beyond the Campaign group left-wing 'fringe' of the parliamentary Labour party. That is why shrewder Labour backbenchers are talking of setting up a Parliamentary Republican Group. This, they hope, would be all-party, but it's hard to see where the Tory contingent would come from. George Walden drew only gasps of horror when he broke Tory ranks at the end of 1994, asking the Commons, `Do you think that we can hope to recon- cile the encouragement of indiscriminate deference towards well-born nonentities with our policy of encouraging the promo- tion of social talent in this country?' The Labour benches cheered. Despite all this ferment, our politicians' minds are on many other things and it will take a lot for the cause of republicanism to become mainstream political news. But there are three reasons to believe that it will happen in this generation. First, as the mourning fades we will begin to see what an intolerable burden we have put onto the shoulders of Prince William. However brave he and Harry were last weekend, he now must carry the entire weight of making the monarchy relevant in the long term. He is also the sole bit of glamour the tarnished 'firm' have left. In America when children are pushed into beauty pageants, made to grow up prema- turely and act like idealised, stylised adults we are filled with revulsion. And we are scathing about their families' defence, `Why, ask little Joleen, she wants to do it.' The injustice of elevating one person, by fluke of birth, above all others has long been the core criticism of the hereditary principle. But there is another side to the inheritance coin. How, in an advanced and civilised country, can we justify condemn- ing a child to live a particular life, especial- ly one so complex and, as we have seen, potentially tragic? Tony Blair, who loves his children deeply, would not dream of forcing Euan, Nicky or Kathryn to enter politics, training them from an early age to follow in his footsteps. He would find such parenting grotesque. Making William perform his duty (and it is for 'us', let's not forget, not him) is like a national form of bonded slav- ery. He can never be truly free of his birth and the world's spotlight will always be on him, but we can lighten the load and we can break the chain that will condemn his children to similar servitude.

That is if the chain is not broken before. For the second factor that will impel a reappraisal of the monarchy will be the Queen's death. Of course this could be some time off and even republicans wish her long to live (if not to reign over us). She seems intent on staying on the throne until William could take over. Whenever she dies, though, there is bound to be a great national debate. Already the majority of her subjects believe Britain would be better off without her. A Guardian/ICM poll last month showed support for the royal family dipping below 50 per cent (to 48 per cent) for the first time. Maybe more significantly, outright hostility is at an all- time high of 30 per cent. Only a third of under-25-year-olds supports the monarchy. It would be a lucky institution to survive such hostility and pessimism.

The third time bomb under the House of Windsor is, unwittingly, the Prime Minister himself. Since Diana's death his actions have been flawless. He had grown close to the princess, both since the election and before it. After first dining privately with her, he told a friend she was 'enchanting'. His grief at her death was deep and gen- uine. Yet his politics are, above all, about modernity and meritocracy. Personally he sees no contradiction between his desire to build a 'young country' and that country's having a royal family. He is, according to one of his closest aides, 'as royalist as any Tory, though he accepts they must change'.

But, as the Young Fabians indicate, some of his followers are less sure. When Blair stood for Labour's leadership he railed against 'out-of-date institutions and attitudes'. 'We are', he complained, 'the only democracy in western Europe to oper- ate a hereditary principle. I support Lab- our's commitment to reform the House of Lords.' But why stop there? New Labour has mocked peers, with Jack Straw citing the case of the Duke of Buccleuch, who owed his title to the fact that 'one of his ancestors was the bastard son of Charles II'. But once the hereditary can of worms is opened up it is hard to see how its applica- tion to our method of choosing our head of state can be defended. Can we really live in a new, modern Britain if we continue to be subjects rather than citizens?

In the past Labour's republicanism came from the hard Left of the party. Since Keir Hardie had been admitted to royal garden parties (initially Edward VII had banned him), Labour's centre-Right establishment have fawned in front of their betters. When Labour's conference got round to debating the monarchy (for 15 minutes in 1923) the platform crushed the republican movers by four million votes to 400,000. Yet Blair has upset the old divide in Labour between the establishment-inclined old Right and the class-based old Left.

Blair talks of his 'third way', between Left and Right, and from that third way springs a new form of republicanism from a new breed of the Left. It is not based on class hatred or hostility to glamour or wealth; it comes from an understanding of the modern media and a deep belief in democracy, citizenship and meritocracy. For the life of them, they cannot under- stand how the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas and their heirs in perpetuity should hold any kind of power in their society at all. They have taken Mr Blair's rhetoric and fol- lowed it to its logical conclusion.

When the great national debate over the monarchy comes (and it surely will) this genie which Blair has let out of the bottle will collude with Labour's more traditional Roundheads to legitimise republican senti- ment. Once the establishment (and that is what New Labour will be then) is split, the media will declare open season. The ensu- ing debate, sensational and personal as it will be, will not simply 'let daylight in on magic', it will take a blowtorch to it.

Already, according to another recent poll, 61 per cent of people don't expect the monarchy to survive after Elizabeth II. Despite the wrapping of Diana's body in the royal colours it is by no means certain that her myth will be harnessed to the royal cause. As her brother said in Westminster Abbey, 'she needed no royal title to gener- ate her particular brand of magic'. Before Tony Blair leaves Downing Street, and despite his best efforts, we may well see the end of the monarchy. Despite his strength and theirs, the people's party and the peo- ple's princess combined could lower the Buckingham Palace flag for good.

The author was chief political adviser to Peter Mandelson for four years. His book Blair's Hundred Days (Faber, £7.99) is pub- lished on 15 September.

`I can't get the lid off this, will you have a go darling.'