I think I’ve mentioned on here once or twice the affection and respect I had for the late Queen. I am, of course, a firm believer in democracy, and hold that political and social authority should always be granted by a community. The notion of monarchy, where authority is inherited, obviously contradicts that. Yet it seems to me that the late Queen Elisabeth wasn’t so much a monarch as a maternal figure: she had always been there in the background, having become queen before either of my parents were born. She was benign and unobtrusive: she didn’t get involved in the day-to-day politics of the country, but we could always count on her to appear at major state occasions, or at Christmas to do her speech. A bit like David Attenborough or James Bond, she was one of those nice, inoffensive constants who had just always seemed to be there.

However, the same cannot be said of the rest of the Royal Family. Unlike the late Queen, Charles and his sons seem to appear regularly in the daily press: they more or less perform a royal national soap opera which was started by princess Dianna and has been going on ever since. To her great credit, the Queen always seemed to be above the farce, but now that she is gone all that we are left with is the daily trivia of an over-privileged, self-important family too used to airing their infantile bickering in the daily press. The way they are now giving interviews and counter-interviews against one another, and expecting them to appear on the evening news as if their petty family politics is of national importance, really is getting too much.

The question now is, do we really still want to put up with this bollocks? As a modern, educated democracy, is there really still a place for this anachronism? If we are a country of equals, why do we have to revere this family so much, paying so much attention to who says what about whom? Of course, the case has been made that the royal family acts as a type of limiting body for parliament: should a government ever go too far and become too extreme, the theory goes that the royal family, alongside the House of Lords, would hold it in check. Yet there are plenty of other, more democratic ways to do that, not least an elected second chamber.

I’m thus starting to think that it’s time to give the monarchy a serious reevaluation. To be honest, I had been thinking about this for quite some time: the Queen was cool, but once she went I knew my stance would change. I don’t think I’m alone in this: the great Ian Hislop articulated similar ideas recently, although I can’t seem to find the right video. Now we no longer have the great maternal constant which had been in our cultural background for seventy years, more and more people will start seeing the monarchy for what it is: a family of spoiled, arrogant snobs too used to being allowed to get away with anything they want, which we could easily do without. While I would be cautious about calling myself a Republican, especially not in the American sense, I suspect we’ll soon see a resurgence of republicanism in the UK.