Unsurprisingly, I’m not a huge fan of her nibs. The glorification of wealth, hereditary privilege and power attained through her ancestors being better at committing and organising violence than their competitors sticks in my craw just a touch.

Having said that the constitutional monarchy is a neat legal fiction which enables the apparatus of the state such as the police, prisons and armed forces to be separated from the government of the day. Which is quite handy. Uprooting it all would be a hassle, there isn’t really a great consensus on what to replace it with and, gosh darn it, a lot of people think she’s doing a good job opening things and waving (which is all she should be able to do, lacking any democratic legitimacy as she does).

So, couple of options I’ve been thinking about for the inevitable day she no longer reigns over us:

1) Pick the next monarch by lottery. The current royal family are there because they won a lottery of birth. If we’re going to pick sovereigns by chance can we at least have a competition that’s open to everyone? Year of mourning, an NI number is picked out a hat and voila! Yer King/Queen. No passing it on to your kids, reduced civil list, couple of houses, set for life.

2) Keep the monarchy, lose the monarch. The Prime Minister would pick up what limited aspects of being Head of State that doesn’t currently reside in that office and is useful. But Charles isn’t King. Nothing changes politically as the monarch has no power that she can exercise – she neither warns nor advises the government of the day, if she refused assent to a Bill we’d have a full blown constitutional crisis. She doesn’t actually do anything. It’s a non-job. If we can’t just pick anyone to do it, and there are problems with option 1, let’s not have anyone do it.

It’ll be cheaper and doesn’t involve celebrating massive iniquity.