We all love the Queen, but she’s not the monarchy – it’s time to imagine a future without her

Has the time come when we can talk about the future of the most central feature of the British constitution – the monarchy? Almost every effort to open this discussion hits the brick wall of the extraordinary affection the nation has for the Queen. I can testify, as a minister for eight years at the Foreign Office, to the respect, indeed the love or veneration, that the Queen enjoys worldwide. But the monarch is not the monarchy. The question of the future of the monarchy can not be put off much longer.

The Queen’s accelerating frailty since the death of her husband, Prince Philip, is clear for all to see. She was unable to attend the Cenotaph ceremony. She no longer rides. She needs a stick. Public appearances are off until well into 2022. She accepted the new Swiss ambassador’s credentials over Zoom. She looks drawn and tired in rare photographs. At some stage, her frailty will become a public question. She has two big questions to consider.

The first is whether she steps down, as so many other European monarchs have when they became old and weak. Or take Pope Benedict. The papacy has been around for a millennium longer than the English crown. For centuries, popes have always died in harness, as it were. But Benedict made a wise decision – he had achieved everything for his church he could hope for and it was right to allow a more vigorous pope to take over.

There is no verb in the constitutional lexicon for what the Queen has to decide. It is not abdication, nor retirement, nor naming a regent, as she has all her mental faculties. The court wordsmiths can find the right term but the nation would only wish Elizabeth some peaceful final years, not going on to the end reading red boxes of stuffy state papers and knighting bigwigs.

The second, bigger problem is the succession. She is the last surviving woman who wore the uniform of the British army in the Second World War. There is a sense of service about her, quite different from the self-evident sense of entitlement of her progeny.

One son cannot go to America, or maybe even leave Britain, following allegations of underage sex with an American teenager, which of course he denies. One of her grandsons, like the Queen’s uncle, King Edward VIII, has married a divorced American woman and, like the Duke of Windsor, has chosen to live far away from these shores. Both Prince Andrew and Prince  Harry are entitled to wear medals earned as brave officers serving in conflicts. The palace establishment has decided to unperson and deny them the right to wear military uniform, however.

Charles has the record everyone knows. His relationship with Diana is a global soap opera, once again drawing in crowds in the new movie Spencer. He single-handedly destroyed modernist British architecture. For me, his apparent penchant for Arab “royals” whose governments treat women, gays, Christians, and journalists badly ill-becomes a potential head of state of a liberal democracy. Yes, he likes countryside pursuits and chats to Sir David Attenborough, but perhaps no one has spent so much public money on private jets and petrolhead cars. Unless he is carefully made up for public or TV appearances, he looks tired and worn out.

There are other problems. In his new memoir, Based on a True Story: A Writer’s Life, the journalist Anthony Holden – who has written two full biographies of Charles and updated them in his book The Tarnished Crown – makes extraordinary suggestions about the burglary of “all my files about Charles, plus floppy disks, VHS tapes with his name on and suchlike”. He adds: “Nothing else was touched in the burglary, valuables were left in place. When the police arrived they declared ‘this was out of their league’. In other words, as indeed they spelt out in so many words, it looked to them like the expert work of intelligence operatives.”

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From what I have seen, Charles’s adult life has been one of self-indulgence, as opposed to the unremitting exemplary public service of his mother. It may be unfair, but do we need another monarch drifting towards his 80s and a wife who, as a divorcee, strictly speaking cannot be crowned Queen under the rules of the Church of England? Indeed, it is not clear if a divorced king can be head of the Anglican Church.

There will be plenty of professors and courtiers to find answers. The nation is looking for a fresh start as the post-war baby boom generation fades away. The rising generations have to grapple with Brexit, and find a new place and role in the world for the rest of the 21st century.

Many would welcome some self-sacrifice by Charles to allow his son William, with what seems an exemplary marriage and a wife everyone can relate to, to be our 21st-century royal family. Others might go further and say the unmodernised, centralised nation, with so much power in the hands of a London elite who are permanently on their knees to royalty, needs a full constitutional makeover with a different approach to who is head of state.

These questions are difficult and sensitive, but cannot be ignored for much longer.

Denis MacShane was a Labour MP for 18 years and minister of state at the FCO