Keir Starmer has been urged by a leading republican campaigner and former shadow cabinet minister to pledge to reduce the size and cost of the royal family, as a symbol of his vision for a “renewed Britain”.
With King Charles’s coronation less than a month away, the Labour leader was challenged by Clive Lewis to “make a stand” and embrace the change symbolised by the crowning of a new monarch.
In an effort to paint the party as more patriotic, Starmer has been strongly supportive of the king and was even invited last month to Charles’s first “dine and sleep” – a dinner party and overnight stay at Windsor Castle.
Lewis said Starmer had “made clear he will uphold the institution of monarchy”. Writing in the Guardian, the Norwich South MP and former shadow defence secretary said: “Labour would do well to take this opportunity to define the kind of reforming government it would be. After all, a constant of Starmer’s leadership has been the absence of a strong idea of what he and the party he leads stands for, what they call in the US ‘the vision thing’.
“With a general election looming, time is running out. What better way to define himself than to propose reform of this archaic institution?”
Lewis said a reformed monarchy “scaled down in size and cost, less opaque, more open and fit for purpose” and grounded in service rather than servitude “could symbolise the renewed Britain the party needs to create”.
He pointed to the “vast wealth” amassed by the royal family, uncovered by the Guardian’s Cost of the crown series. “The consequent optics for the incoming head of state are poor,” said Lewis. “His family’s vast accumulation of wealth is all the more glaring when juxtaposed with soaring levels of poverty and hardship among his subjects, including as many as 3 million children.”
Lewis said he did not believe the royal family would reform itself, as it remained “too firmly entrenched in old notions of class, deference, wealth and international aristocracy”.
Refusing to countenance legislating for reform would make it look as if “Labour has little to say about Britain’s post-Brexit role in the world and our post-imperial reality”, he said.
“Britain needs a vision of what 21st-century Britain will look and feel like under a Starmer-led Labour government. One based on an honest understanding of our past, dealing with historical traumas that have been suppressed for too long.”
Starmer is unlikely to heed the suggestion, as Labour aides have been keen to make the party appear more patriotic after questions about the republican inclinations of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.
