Thread by @Robin_C_Douglas

If you are a republican, like me, why would you care about the Coronation?

If you are not religious, or not a Christian, why would you care about a church ceremony?

This is my attempt to answer these questions.

#Coronation #Coronation2023

I'm not sure that I've quite convinced myself, but maybe others will be convinced.

(If any journalists want me to write or talk about this, DM me. I wrote a dissertation on this stuff a long time ago.)

I'm going to be making 3 points in this thread.

1. The cozza is based on the premise that the king's authority is backed by God.

This is, on its face, highly offensive to modern liberal values. It fundamentally contradicts the national consensus in favour of popular sovereignty which we have slowly and painfully arrived at.

It is also meaningless if you don't believe in God - or, more specifically, Christian ideas about God - isn't it?

(These aren't new objections, by the way. I've recently been reading old newspaper articles about previous cozzas, and at least as far back as 1937 most Brits didn't seem to see any real supernatural significance in the ceremony.)

I respond: the coronation ceremony is a symbolic assertion that *the source of political power in this country lies beyond politicians*.

You can believe in de facto popular sovereignty while appreciating a ceremony in which professional politicians have only minor walk-on parts.

It's a big "f*ck you" to the political class.

At the moment when ideological legitimacy is bestowed on the head of state, from whom all other public power in Britain flows, they are sitting quietly in their seats and keeping their mouths shut.

You don't need to believe in the Christian God to appreciate the significance of *that*.

And it doesn't imperil popular sovereignty in reality. We're not going to stop holding elections because of this stuff.

2. It is a living expression of extraordinary political continuity.

The British constitution has evolved from its feudal origins to a modern liberal democratic polity - sometimes peacefully, sometimes with violence and disorder and in the teeth of resistance from the ruling class - but always retaining its fundamental institutional continuity.

If you believe that stability is valuable in and of itself when dealing with the perilous business of politics and governance, you will appreciate the coronation as a massive, crushing monument to political stability.

The coronation physically and visually enacts stability and continuity in a way that puts the matter utterly beyond argument.

The modern coronation ceremony is still recognisable from its mediaeval Catholic origins.* There are very few state institutions, in Britain or elsewhere, which have this continuity of history. Most old stuff was invented in Victorian times.

[* = This year's liturgy hasn't been published yet, but I'm assuming it's not going to be radically different from the others.]

3. The final reason is more difficult to formulate, and perhaps you have to have grown up in Britain to appreciate it.

The absurdity is the point.

The cozza *is* absurd. Two blokes solemnly presenting the king with a 17th century set of gold spurs which he is never going to use to ride a horse. An aristocrat (in this case, the highly respected Sikh public servant Lord Singh) ceremonially handing him a glove.

Charles was famously a fan of the Goon Show and probably gets this.

There is a knowing irony about it all. It isn't a joke, but there is an elusive element of "we're all playing along here".

Like the Last Night of the Proms, it is the eccentric form of Britishness, which undermines and marginalises the toxic form.

We have seen a lot of the ugly face of British nationalism and imperialist revanchism in the last few years.

But this is British identity in its camp, self-ironic form.

I'd rather see Britain represented by people like the ones on the left than the ones on the right.

/Ends