Previously, Andrew would submit his yoga bill to the privy purse – the British sovereign’s private income, mainly derived from the duchy of Lancaster, and amounting to some £24 million (₹243.17 crore) a year, before taxes – and it would be cleared without demur. This time around, however, the king told the yogi’s regal chela that he’d have to shell out the sum from his own pocket money of £249,000 (about ₹2.52 crore) a year. To add insult to financial injury, Andrew has been advised that his allowance will be cut, and that he is to be ousted out of Royal Lodge at Windsor – where his guru would be ensconced as a guest for a month each year – and be moved to Frogmore Cottage, from which the disgraced couple, Harry Windsor and Meghan Markle, were evicted after a right royal kitchen-sink drama.
What with the current cost-of-living crisis, caused by rising fuel and food bills, affecting not just hoi polloi but also high polloi, publicly pruning the monarchical budget might seem to be the prudently populist thing to do. Having cut the yogic yuvraj down to sighs, Charles might well resort to some further cost-cutting measures to shore up the royals’ ratings on the nation’s popularity chart.
With the passing of the second Elizabethan Age, much of the gilt has worn off the gingerbread of royalty. As queen, Elizabeth Windsor was seen as an icon of unity and stability, both within the sceptred isle and abroad. Hers is a tough act to follow. Britain’s second Carolean Age got off to a rocky start, what with Harry’s hiss-and-yell memoir, Spare, being unsparing in its x-ray expose of the skeletons in the crown’s closet. Polls have shown a sharp decline in the AQ – approval quotient – of the monarchy, with Andrew being voted as being the most unpopular royal, having scored an 85% thumbs-down ballot.
The Republic, a long-established anti-monarchy activist group in Britain that believes that a hereditary throne has no place in a democracy, has launched a nationwide online campaign, #Not My King, and is busy raising funds to print and plaster London, and other British cities and towns, with posters proclaiming this disavowal on May 6, the day of Charles’ coronation. If the Republic has its way, the monarch will be replaced by an elected head of state – as distinct from head of government – who would remain in ceremonial office for a fixed tenure.
Bean counters totting up the cost of the crown to the public exchequer must make their way through the fiduciary labyrinth of the sovereign grant of 2011. This establishes the amount of the annual payment to the royal family – salaries; events like garden parties, weddings, funerals, and coronations; maintenance of palaces – and is tax-free for the recipients.
Last year, the grant paid out £102 million (₹1,033 crore, a figure which could be quadrupled if palatial refurbishment requires it – which does not include the cost of the security bandobast. Such concerns are not necessarily founded on paranoia. As a rabble-rouser proclaimed to his anti-monarchist audience, ‘They have the champagne, while you and I have the real pain!’ But Coronation Street is not a one-way thoroughfare, but provides a revenue stream that, according to the London-based Brand Finance, comes to a whopping £1.76 billion (about ₹17,832 crore) annually by being a major tourist attraction with its mystique and ‘appeal of pomp and circumstance,’ and by promoting the sale of everything ‘from biscuits to luxury items’ through royal endorsements.
Britain’s game of thrones needn’t become a game of throes if it minds its Ps and Qs in terms of budgetary control. By disallowing Andrew’s yoga expenses, the monarchy demonstrated that it does know its aasan from its elbow.
