The English love a royal party so why don't Scots?

Tempting as that may sound, there weren’t many takers in my local shop the other day, possibly because this is Scotland, where enthusiasm for royal occasions ranges from tepid to freezing, or possibly because there’s a cost-of-living crisis and who would spend £30 on a piece of cardboard?

But a committed royalist could do worse. A cardboard cut-out is so like the real thing, after all.

The Windsors’ survival technique has always been to try and remain studiedly two-dimensional. The coronation itself will in essence be nothing but a series of grand photo-ops. Prince Harry’s memoir gave us a glimpse of the personalities behind the pomp, but the royal family stayed mute throughout, as they always do in the face of provocation, their alabaster smiles never changing.

READ MORE: No time for power line battle

And it works. We seem to like them best when they merely exist, unchanging and silent in the background of our lives, like Madame Tussaud’s exhibits. Their benighted job is not to be real people, but to project facsimiles of themselves.

So having the “king” smile fixedly while we put him in a Jimmy hat, wrap him in a feather boa and pretend to feed him sherry trifle is all in the spirit of the occasion.

Whether the monarchy can survive in this way for the next century, is another question.

A BBC poll in advance of Charles’s big day has shown support for the monarchy sitting at a decisive but unenthusiastic 58 per cent overall.

Pre-coronation polls like that will be met with some relief by Buckingham Palace, but the small print is less reassuring. Young people aged 18-24 are more disaffected than ever with the royals, with fewer than a third endorsing the monarchy, 38 per cent wanting an elected head of state and the rest undecided. Their views of the royals could soften as they age, of course, but it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.

🔴 Save on a full year of digital access with our lowest EVER offer.

Subscribe for the whole year to The Herald for only £24 for unlimited website access or £30 for our digital pack.

This is only available for a limited time so don't miss out.

👉 Click here to subscribe

Meanwhile, while we try to figure out why a younger generation plagued by rampant inflation and burdened by massive student debt would take issue with the state maintaining the multi-millionaire royals, we shouldn’t ignore the glaring differences in support for the royal family, which are particularly stark between Scotland and England.

We can see it in the preparations for the coronation street parties. As always on big royal occasions, Scots on the whole can’t be bothered.

King Charles on walkabout in England (Image: T&A)

By April 15, Glasgow City Council had received no requests at all to shut roads or issue temporary licenses for entertainment or alcohol in connection with the coronation, according to a Herald survey.

We can safely say that’s not because Glasgow doesn’t like a party.

By that date Edinburgh, always the outlier in these matters, had received 12 applications for official events but was the only council area The Herald contacted with applications in double figures. The New Town will no doubt be awash with bunting.

It was much the same story when William and Kate married, and when Harry and Meghan did. The reaction in England was not matched north of the border.

This muted and patchy enthusiasm reflects wider public opinion in Scotland, which Ipsos Mori describes as “lukewarm” on the monarchy.

Only half of Scots think having a monarchy is better than having an elected head of state, according to a You Gov poll in October, while only 37 per cent think the monarchy is good for Scotland. This is marginally better than another poll in May last year, which put support for the monarchy at only 45 per cent, but is far from comfortable for the royal family.

Young people here, like young people across the UK, are more likely to prefer the idea of a president to a king, but the margin in Scotland is much bigger, with 55 per cent of 16-24s and 40 per cent of 25-49s favouring an alternative to the monarchy.

We’re just not that into it.

So why not? Well, Scots are less attached to the idea of the British state in all its guises.

Independence seems to hold the promise of starting afresh with a bold new state unencumbered by the baggage and anachronisms of the past.

READ MORE: Rebecca McQuillan: Can Humza Yousaf win over business? 

The SNP leadership, in a bid to give independence the broadest possible appeal, have always said they’d keep the monarchy, a position they reasserted after the Queen’s death, but their core supporters are less than enamoured by the idea. Break down the headline figures, and you find SNP voters are more likely to want an alternative head of state by a margin in some polls of nearly two-to-one, while voters for the pro-UK parties tend to want to keep the king.

In time, if the current younger generation of republicans grow into middle-aged republicans, the SNP will have to change tack and announce its preference for an elected head of state in an independent Scotland.

And so it should. This would be much more in keeping with the vision of a separate state the SNP has always peddled, one based on egalitarianism.

The monarchy, perhaps inevitably, is the epitome of British privilege and elitism, and lies at the heart of the aristocracy – yes, we still have one – sharing its habits and assumptions about the rightness of inherited wealth and power. It would be strangely mismatched with an independent Scotland.

But it’s hard to see republican sentiment holding sway south of the border in the next decade or three, if ever. And in a way, that’s sad for the royal family itself. Royalty is a gilded cage. If the formal institution of the monarchy were brought to an end, new horizons would open up for the royals themselves.

We don’t have to get rid of the Windsors, just recycle them. Charles could be repurposed as a UN envoy on the environment, or president of COP. Imagine how much happier he’d be, liberated at last.

Charles, free by ’33? Now there’s a slogan.