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Zarah Sultana calls for a referendum on the monarchy

Appearing on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Your Party MP Zarah Sultana has called for a referendum on the British monarchy:

Given that most countries gave their royals up centuries ago, it’s more than past time the public should have a choice.

Zarah Sultana—Abolish the monarchy

In her reasoning for why we should reconsider the monarchy, Sultana drew attention to the ex-prince Andrew’s relationship with the dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein:

You’ve got a Royal Family with a sovereign grant that will increase to £132m next year, and you’ve got prince Andrew who’s had £12m of tax payers’ money to defend his legal costs – a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein – we need to have a referendum on the monarchy, and talk about democratising society as well.

Kuenssberg asked if Zarah Sultana would campaign to abolish the monarchy, to which Sultana responded:

Absolutely, I’m a republican.

Gadzooks — abolish the monarchy?

Just because they provide no value and cavort with known sex offenders?

Are you for real, woman?

What will they do — get jobs like the rest of us?

Clearly she hasn’t thought this through!

Jokes aside, Sultana’s intervention is already boiling people’s piss:

This isn’t new, of course, with the same thing happening any time she dares to question our inbred overlords:

The case for abolition

The Scottish Greens have also called for the UK to abolish the monarchy, writing:

The Monarchy is an outdated and fundamentally undemocratic institution. With a new King on the throne, this is exactly the time to question and challenge the system of hereditary privilege and build a proper democracy.

We are in a cost of living crisis, with households and families all over our country struggling with extortionate bills and soaring costs, At the same time, the UK government spent £100 million pounds on an elaborate celebration for an institution we have never voted for and that many feel increasingly alienated from.

Going into further detail, the Equality Trust wrote the following after the coronation of king Charles:

The Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam International calculated that the late Queen owned 3,200 times the wealth of the average UK citizen. It is of course well documented that Charles has avoided paying any inheritance tax on the vast fortune he inherited from his mother as a result of a clause agreed by then Prime Minister John Major back in 1993.

Another peculiarity is the monarchy’s exemption from Freedom of Information Requests, which shields them from the type of accountability that you would expect any publicly funded institution to be held to. This weekend’s coronation ceremony is just the latest in a long line of indulgences afforded to the monarchy at the taxpayers expense.

Last week the ONS released the results of their winter pressures survey (conducted between November 22 and February 23) which found that one in twenty adults had run out of food and had not been able to afford to buy more in the last two weeks. The survey also found that around 20% of adults said that they were occasionally, hardly ever or never able to keep comfortably warm in the past two weeks.

These shocking findings are compounded by the fact that now nearly 30% of children in the UK live in poverty (4.2 million children), 90,000 people per year die in poverty and Shelter estimates that 271,000 people are homeless in England alone.

Against this backdrop, the Daily Mirror reports that the Coronation of King Charles III, curiously codenamed Operation Golden Orb, will cost the UK taxpayer up to £250 million. Although around 60% of this cost relates to securing the event, it seems fair to question whether spending a quarter of billion pounds on a wholly unnecessary ceremony for a man believed to have a private wealth of nearly £2 billion is an appropriate use of public money.

It has been widely briefed in the media that the new King has asked for a ‘scaled-back’ ceremony in light of the ongoing cost of living crisis the country is enduring. This doesn’t appear to have materialised; his coronation will cost five times more than his mother’s coronation in 1953 even when adjusted for inflation.

Value for money

As people have previously highlighted, many nations continue to enjoy tourism despite having rid themselves of their royals:

We’re not saying we need to do what France did and get the guillotines out, but obviously the referendum should have a range of options to ensure all voices are represented.

This is a joke, clearly, but maybe we could consider plastic guillotines with rubber blades — you know — to fully embrace the cultural moment without anyone losing their heads.

Featured image via BBC

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.