Republicanism and the royal wedding

While the constitutional monarchists took the high ground and only campaigned on constitutional issues, eschewing reliance on the standing and respect The Queen justifiably enjoys, the republican movement devised a mantra, often intoned by leading ARM speakers, which was that “A No vote is a vote for King Charles and Queen Camilla!”

They used this, to their shame, with an extremely unflattering caricature of Charles and Camilla, robed and wearing crowns.

These tactics didn’t work then. And they won’t work now.

The 2005 variation of the odious 1999 campaign depends on two elements. First the denigration of the Prince, particularly by sections of the British media which excel at this.

The Prince and indeed, members of the Royal Family generally, now live in a defamation-free zone. The media say things about him they would not dare say about anyone else. Any rumour, untruth, or downright and disgusting lie is published provided it damages the Prince.

The Prince’s real story is different from the one many in the media prefer. After his distinguished service in the Navy, the Prince is approaching an age when many are contemplating retirement. But he has thrown himself into his interests and his work, and in the very last year raised one quarter of a billion dollars for charities, mainly for disadvantaged youth in the UK and poorer Commonwealth countries.

If he were someone else, someone with whom the media elites could identify, and raised a fraction of this, or made some gesture of mourning, or said something nice about the poor, he would risk the sort of secular canonisation which the media gave, for example, to Sir William Deane when they believed he was criticising the Howard Government - which if he had, would have been unconstitutional.

But this news about the Prince is kept very quiet indeed. It just does not fit with the image of the “dysfunctional” - their mot du jour - family and the “grumpy” old man they are trying to portray.

In the same vein as the reprehensible 1999 mantra, the second element of the 2005 campaign is based on the entirely false proposition, announced with almost breathless glee by the republican movement, that Camilla Parker Bowles will at some time in the future become Queen of Australia.

Of course none of us knows the future, and the Queen gives every indication that she is as healthy as her late, and greatly loved, mother was.

And once people see more of Camilla as she emerges from the shadows as Charles’ wife, they will come to appreciate her qualities. She is, on all reliable information, a dignified, down-to-earth, unaffected, good humoured and reserved lady, who would never think of running off to the press with stories. And while she will be received warmly here, she will never become Queen of Australia.

This is for the elementary constitutional fact that just as Prince Philip is not King, the wife of a King does not become the Sovereign, the Queen Regnant. Only a reigning Queen can be that.