Justifying hierarchies, encouraging deference, pushing a myth of national unity. Validating the crimes of empire and making people bow down to their “betters”. That’s what the monarchy is really about—and why it should go now.

In an interview with CBC News in Canada this week, the king’s sister, princess Anne, admitted one of its key functions. She said, “I would just underline that the monarchy provides—with the constitution—a degree of long-term stability that is actually quite hard to come by any other way.”

She was saying that amid the tumult of class struggle, the monarchy acts as a glue to hold society together in the interests of those who have power and wealth. Monarchy says inequality is unavoidable and basic to society.

It’s increasingly ineffective as more and more people turn away from its supposed magic. But that doesn’t stop politicians and the media trying to keep it going. And it’s disgraceful how few MPs or trade union leaders will openly say that the royals should go.

The £100 million basic cost of the coronation, plus the £150 million for “security” on top, could hardly come at a more grating time. Tens of millions of ordinary people in Britain struggle to pay their bills but there is lavish ceremony and untold wealth for the king and his hangers-on.

None of that bothers Labour’s slavish loyalist Keir Starmer. At the start of the week he wasn’t wondering if he should boycott the ceremony but whether to wear an ultra-posh morning coat to the ceremony or to stick to his “Sunday best” suit.

Irish socialist James Connolly was right when he said, “Neither in science, nor in art, nor in literature, nor in exploration, nor in mechanical invention, nor in humanising of laws, nor in any sphere of human activity has a representative of British royalty helped forward the moral, intellectual or material improvement of mankind.