A republican’s tribute to the Queen

I am a republican, always have been, and yet I now feel a great sense of loss. And not only because a 96-year-old mother, grandmother and great-grandmother has died, which is always an occasion for sadness, whether the deceased was a monarch or an ‘ordinary’ member of the public. No, also because Elizabeth II represented something incredibly important. She embodied values that are at risk of extinction. She represented history in an era of anti-historical hysteria, forbearance in a time of narcissism, and public service in an era of self-worship and self-regard.

That was the great irony of Elizabeth II: she was the pinnacle of the establishment and yet she bristled, with every fibre of her being, against the values of the new establishment. She was accidentally countercultural, a traditionalist rebel, and I, for one, loved her for it.

This is the end of an era in so many ways. Most immediately it’s the end of the second Elizabethan age, of the longest reign of a monarch in the history of these isles.