Against the backdrop of the King\u2019s illness, Britons remain divided: should our royal family be subject to evolution, reform or abolition?<\/p>\n
On this, at least, everybody can identify with King Charles. His cancer diagnosis this week<\/a> is a traumatic moment, and not just for him but for his family. It has also triggered instinctive public sympathy, not least for the monarch\u2019s refreshing relative openness<\/a> about his condition. All this has fired up a powerful media story, made more irresistible by the Prince Harry subplot<\/a>, that will be part of our national life for months.<\/p>\n But do this week\u2019s events actually have institutional implications for the monarchy? The instant reflex of many will be to say no. The British monarchy\u2019s recent history of adaptiveness, under Queen Elizabeth II and now Charles, points that way too. After all, \u201cthe firm\u201d is hardwired for continuity. Seamless adaptation is what the monarchy does. It has been doing it again this week, albeit wrapped in the privileged language in which going back to work becomes the \u201cresumption of duties\u201d. Few politicians have any interest in questioning any aspect of this.<\/p>\n Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Against the backdrop of the King\u2019s illness, Britons remain divided: should our royal family be subject to evolution, reform or abolition? On this, at least, everybody can identify with King Charles. His cancer diagnosis this week is a traumatic moment, and not just for him but for his family. It has also triggered instinctive public … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}