Seamlessly and amid grand constitutional and ceremonial traditions and rituals, Britain transitioned from the reign of Queen Elizabeth II to the reign of King Charles III this week.
Britain has not seen the inauguration of a new king for seven decades with all the pomp and ceremony it entails, many dating back almost a thousand years. However, there is a general sense of unease in the air.
After the shock of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, questions have begun about the future of the monarchy and the country. The late Queen leaves Britain in a different world to the 1950s when she took the throne.
Today, Great Britain faces the rise of nationalist tendencies in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which could lead to the dissolution of the union in the coming years. Britain also faces a shrinking number of Commonwealth countries willing to remain under the British crown. A challenging economic situation threatens the country’s international position.
The United Kingdom will face all these challenges without Queen Elizabeth, and this raises concerns for many.
A vital role of the monarchy is to provide a guardrail beyond the upheavals and tumults of change. During her reign, Queen Elizabeth saw 15 British prime ministers, some of whom fought costly wars abroad. Some of them also applied economic policies that led to industrial decline. The number of Commonwealth countries that retained the British crown as head of state was reduced from about 30 to 15.
But these transformations in Britain and the changes in its political and geographical influence passed without arousing much popular concern, for the Queen was a constant and stable presence.
The soft, feminine face of Queen Elizabeth in her youth and the warm smiling face of her later decades provided reassurance and a perception that all was well in the UK. In a sense, she was not just a person, but an expression of an era and a time that offered security in a changing world.
Now the mantle passes to King Charles III, and just as the late queen was to be a symbol of resilience and comfort for a nation adjusting to the loss of the empire, Charles will be expected to provide the same reassurance and keep a country that feels more a little. joined together.
He has a difficult task ahead.
In order to succeed, King Charles must first reach the younger generations in Britain. The 73-year-old king is not the most popular among Britons. Opinion polls have consistently shown the late Queen to be the most popular, followed by the young Prince of Wales, Prince William, the heir apparent, and his wife, the young Princess of Wales, and then King Charles himself.
The royal establishment itself is also less popular among young people than among older age groups.
Last year, a British YouGov poll found that only 31 percent of people aged 18 to 24 agreed that the monarchy should continue, compared to 81 percent of over-65s.
Overall, the monarchy is still a widely supported institution in Britain, with a slim majority of 62 percent in favor, according to a recent poll. But the expression of support for the institution is closely related to admiration for the late queen. His popularity will be tested in the coming months and years, because most young people in Britain today do not have a strong connection with the royal family due to social and cultural changes.
The gap between the royal establishment and young people is deepest among Britain’s ethnic minorities, some of whom believe the Royal Family has not done enough to tackle racism in Britain. These criticisms have taken on added weight in recent days following the shooting and killing of a young black British man in his car in south London.
The killing prompted thousands of people to demonstrate amid condemnations from London Mayor Sadiq Khan and civil rights organisations.
A study by the British Institute of Race Relations said this week that British Muslims have seen their citizenship reduced to “second class” status as a result of recently extended powers to strip people of their nationality.
Another study also published this week in the journal Sociology found that income was not enough to break down British class barriers and that people from affluent backgrounds were more likely to move and end up in wealthier areas than those with working-class parents.
With the current economic stagnation expected to hit minorities harder, the new king will need to help minorities in the UK voice their grievances against an unjust social order without interfering with government policy-making.
Another step King Charles III could take is to talk about the impact of the British Empire and racism on inequality within Britain and the Commonwealth.
This is a complex and sensitive subject that provokes conflicting feelings within Britain. English nationalists and the political right refuse to deal with this kind of issue. But not speaking out about the Empire’s destructive influence on the colonies would lead to more countries continuing to break away from the British crown.
Just two days after the Queen’s death, the Prime Minister of Antigua announced that he would go ahead with a referendum to become a republic.
Barbados was the last country to gain independence from the British crown, replacing the queen with a president.
Before that, Mauritius did the same in 1992. Trinidad and Tobago did so in 1976, and Guyana in 1970. Jamaica is expected to soon follow suit, having announced this a few months ago, as well as Belize.
In addition to dealing with the legacy of the empire, King Charles will have to follow through on his promise to shrink the Royal Family, currently one of the largest in Europe in terms of size and spending.
In a country like Britain, where per capita incomes have been falling since the 1980s, the continued high spending on the royal family seems in stark contrast to the plight of ordinary Britons facing higher energy bills this winter.
Another challenge is whether King Charles can keep his thoughts to himself.
Unlike the late queen who maintained a reputation for impartiality, the new king has taken positions on issues as wide-ranging as climate change, architecture, organic farming, China and immigration.
He will have to face a number of challenges, not least a country suffering from a steady decline in its economic strength, a growing number of young people and minorities with no ties to the royal family, and the potential disintegration of UK. , the unraveling of the Commonwealth and an account of the uncomfortable parts of the Royal Family’s colonial past and legacy.
Ultimately, the new king’s job is to ensure that the institution remains fit for purpose at a time when the monarchy looks increasingly anachronistic.
But metamorphoses are nothing new for the British royal family. In April 1947, when Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, gave a radio address from Cape Town in South Africa on her 21st birthday as heir to the throne, she was “daughter of the Emperor of India”.
This title was removed by her father King George VI in August of the same year when India and Pakistan declared their independence from Britain.
As the British newspaper The Guardian noted in an editorial published after the queen’s death, “she was born when Britain ruled a global empire of some 600 million people… She died when Britain was a middle-sized northern European country with a future uncertain.”
*A version of this article appears in print in the September 15, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram weekly.
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