… because nothing will save the United Kingdom!

May I join with countless others and offer my deep and heartfelt condolences to the people of the United Kingdom on the passing – in the stopping of a heartbeat – of their national anthem from God Save the Queen to God Save the King.

Should those good 67 million people in the UK stick with their monarchy – and they do seem to love it so – that’s the wretchedly uninspiring national shitty they’ll be belting out in full throatery now for at least a century, given that Prince George, now second in line to the throne, is but nine years old and will probably live to 110 seeing his stools are whisked away daily for forensic examination to ensure that if they do contain any blood, then it’s of the deepest royal blue.

It’s all very sad, isn’t it? I’ve never been a great fan of Advance Australia Fair but it at least sings the praises of a girted nation and its no longer young but free people.

Imagine that possibly for an entire century from now, at the very least, if the voices of the people of the United Kingdom – or Littler Britain as it might be called if Scotland pulls the pin – are raised, it will not be in praise of their amazing country, its achievements and its multicultural society.

Rather, it will have no other real purpose than to call on one particular magical sky daddy among hundreds – one that I’m guessing a majority of Brits no longer believe in – to save a succession of Windsor knobs starting with King Charles the Third. Does King Charles at 73 look like he can be sent anywhere, let alone victoriously?

And, yet, we can bet London to a brick that he will be lauded by cheering crowds for the next quarter of a century, simply because, like his dear mummy before him, of the hole he popped out of.

Oops, there it is. I’ve given myself away as an Australian who has no real understanding of, or time for, the whole concept of royalty, British or otherwise. Seeing we Australians love to be deluded into thinking we have an egalitarian, classless society, the mother country’s infatuation with royalty is anathema to many, hopefully, most Australians.

I’ve never liked the idea that Queen Elizabeth was not only the Queen of Australia but also our Head of State, just as King Charles the Third now is. It’s an absurdity that either of these two monarchs would put the interests of Australia first over their own peoples should push come to shove.

But I get that Britons like this sort of thing. Maybe royalty is a real bonus for their nation’s bottom line with the tourists drawn to the UK by the pomp and ceremony that the Brits do so well seeing they invented it.

And not just the Brits are monarchy mad, of course. There are plenty of monarchists Down Under too, if the on-drolling coverage over recent days of our public and commercial media is any indication. Tasmania could have disappeared between the waves two days ago with tens of thousands of people drowned and we wouldn’t have been told of that just yet as we slavishly follow British protocols as to what we must do in the days that follow London Bridge falling down.

And I also accept that for reasons beyond logical comprehension, there are millions of girls all around the world who still think being a British royal princess would be something to Di for. Right now, they are probably twirling in their pretty little princess outfits all around the globe, forcing themselves to vomit and throwing themselves down steps to get noticed.

And before my lovely wife’s amazing, beautiful family in Northern Ireland declare I’m no longer invited there, can I just qualify my remarks by saving I thought Queen Elizabeth was an amazing woman who performed her duties remarkably well, for the dysfunctional Windsor fishbowl she probably, in the most candid and private of moments, regretted having been plopped into in the first place.

She was lovely and she might have even been as kind, as humorous, and so lacking in a sense of entitlement as the sanitised version we’ve seen her for just short of a century has suggested. So we now have her son who has promised to stay on the throne until he dies. Surely the royal doctors have a potion to fix that?

So Charles talks to plants. There’s nothing wrong with that. And as a young man, he had no other great ambition, despite his exalted station in life, than to be a tampon. And there’s nothing wrong with that!

But his problem is that his mummy, his mamma, Lilibet, was lilly-white clean.
Over the decades, there has been a lot of scuttlebutt about Charles being a rather obnoxious, spoilt and entitled individual who expects his peasants to bow and scrap before him and pander to his every whim. If he is anything like that and we are allowed to see it, then there is something wrong with that. And Chuck does have a problem.

Who knows. Those old stories of the way Charles expected the lordly owners of county houses to behave if they were lucky enough to have him as a weekend guest are probably being expunged, sanitised, from the public record right now. Charles might do okay, even though he’s got a dreadfully hard act to follow and he is after all, just a bloke who didn’t always think with his larger head.

In one sense, I want him to fail from this long distance, to disappoint royalists Down Under if that’s at all possible, so that Australia can become the republic it deserves and needs to be.

Another part of me wishes him well, because Britons seem to like this sort of monarchical malarkey.

I certainly don’t want to see royal heads on pikes over there at the centre of empire, but for goodness sake, you Brits. Get rid of that dreadful anthem!

Land of Hope and Glory. Jerusalem. A medley of Vera Lynn’s wartime hits. Something Lennon and McCartney penned.

Any fucking thing but God Save the King. You’re never going to win another World
Cup of football singing that rubbish.

Don Gordon-Brown