Time to abolish the MONARCHY?

For or against, it's an age-old discussion. Royal correspondent Emily Andrews sits down with the head of campaign group Republic, who explains why, in his opinion, going royal-free is the only answer

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Kings and Queens have reigned for centuries, but is the UK monarchy falling out of fashion? For some, the argument for a democratically elected head of state has never been stronger, with former Empire colony Barbados ditching the British monarch. The chief executive of Republic, Graham Smith, saw the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and the accession of her less popular son, as a chance to shift public opinion towards abolition. Can he succeed? Emily Andrews meets Graham to talk about what Republic stands for and why he thinks Harry and Meghan are a 'great asset to Republicanism'.

Emily: What's the aim of Republic?

Graham: We're a 40-year-old campaign group with a single issue; the abolition of the monarchy for a democratic alternative. The strategy is to change public opinion sufficiently by raising awareness and getting the debate going, so that there's enough political pressure to achieve it.

Emily: That's quite a tough job, isn't it? We've just had the longest-serving, and most popular, monarch ever in the late Queen Elizabeth II, and the polls are pretty positive on Charles. Certainly more so than when he was the Prince of Wales?

Graham: Well, the support for the monarchy has dropped sharply. It was typically 75% or more 10 years ago.

It's now consistently under 60% in a lot of polls. There were Savanta and YouGov polls last year that put support at 48% and 45% respectively*.

Emily: But don't you think that the King and the Princess of Wales' openness about their cancer diagnoses has meant that, generally speaking, people are more sympathetic to them as well as more supportive of the monarchy as a whole?

They're going through something that many of us, and our loved ones, experience, and it makes them more relatable and thus more popular.