Making the public pay for King Charles III’s coronation is a royal offense. The newly appointed king certainly has the means to fund the event himself.
It’s been eight months since Queen Elizabeth II died and passed on the crown to her son, who decreed that he would reign as King Charles III. Saturday marks his coronation as ruler of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, making him the 40th monarch anointed at Westminster Abbey.
The coronation is set to be a suitably royal affair with the cost ranging between £50 million and £100 million (about between $63 million and $126 million), according to estimates cited by the BBC. But it comes as Britain is in the midst of an ongoing economic downturn that has the country bracing for one of its longest recessions ever.
Even in a scaled-back format, the pomp and splendor are set to make a garish split screen with the daily hardships of the British public. There are signs that Charles understands this and the need for the monarchy to adapt as it once did under his mother, but he needs to go further and faster if the institution is to survive a new era.
The country’s economic strife was triggered by Brexit, exacerbated during the pandemic and really hit home last winter as the war in Ukraine helped spike home heating prices. When combined with overall inflation, which has been higher than in either the U.S. or the eurozone, rising interest rates increasing the cost of mortgages and public services having their budgets slashed, the cost-of-living crisis has been a massive weight on Britons’ shoulders. In a clumsy bid to lower consumer spending and thus inflation, the Bank of England’s chief economist said on a podcast that people need “to accept that they’re worse off.” That went over about as well as you would expect.
And in the midst of all that gloom, we have Charles’ coronation. While some might agree with the Evening Standard that this “renewal of contract between the king and country” could help people forget their woes, a viral Instagram post from model and British Vogue contributing editor Munroe Bergdorf this week didn’t quite share that sentiment:
I couldn’t find the original Twitter source for the text that Munroe cited in her caption, but there really are more food banks than McDonald’s operating in the U.
