Beneath the splendour of monarchy, the squalor

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From Polly Toynbee tonight:

The cost of the monarchy, though a hundred times the price of the modestly likeable Irish presidency, is counted not in palaces and royal trains, but in the fantasy of imperial power the crown bestows on British politics. Punching above our weight, we have just ordered a new Trident to cling to an undeserved UN security council seat from which to hector the world about a democratic idea so weakly applied at home.

Meanwhile, defrauding ourselves and the world's treasuries, the sun never sets on the Queen's dominion over more tax havens than any other country, an archipelago of shame from the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos, Gibraltar, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands — and the City itself. Beneath the splendour, the squalor.

Quite so. And spot on.

But for the sake of full disclosure I guess I should say we did discuss it, yesterday.

 


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