STEPHEN GLOVER: Royal spin so clumsy it's left even the nasty SNP on the moral high ground
We all awoke yesterday morning to the maddening news that the Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh is snubbing the Queen by pulling out of a deal to fund the monarchy.
According to widespread reports in the British Press, the SNP government is refusing to pay its annual £2 million share towards the upkeep of the monarchy and will spend the money on doubtless less deserving projects north of the border.
The story had originated with a plainly much exercised and seemingly distressed senior Buckingham Palace official, who felt compelled to offer some reassurance to journalists about what was made to sound almost like a constitutional crisis.
We awoke yesterday morning to the news that the Scottish National Party government is snubbing the Queen by pulling out of a deal to fund the monarchy (Nicola Sturgeon and the Queen pictured last year)
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The Queen would still visit Balmoral and she would ‘continue to be Queen of Scotland’, despite the terrible snub.
The official — apparently, Sir Alan Reid, the magnificently named Keeper of the Privy Purse — went on: ‘Even under this situation, Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom.’
It all sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? To those of us who believe that the SNP is the authentically nasty party, harbouring horrible internet ‘trolls’ and betraying a paranoid loathing of a free Press, this was, indeed, an incendiary story.
For the SNP to have treated our revered 89-year-old monarch in such an insulting and high-handed manner seemed only to confirm that it is, at heart, a Leftist and republican party, as well as a deeply unpleasant one. Its true nature, for so long concealed from suggestible Scottish electors, was at last being revealed.
Except that the Scottish government’s intentions appear to have been bizarrely misrepresented by the Palace. It turns out that the Queen is not being short-changed after all.
As a result of a measure introduced by the Chancellor George Osborne in 2010, the monarchy is entitled to the equivalent of 15 per cent of the revenues of the Crown estate, a property portfolio valued at £11 billion. I say ‘equivalent’ because, in fact, the money is paid out of general taxation.
Following the recent Smith Commission, whose proposals for further devolution north of the border have been largely accepted by David Cameron, the SNP government will keep profits from Crown Estate assets in Scotland.
It is, therefore, perfectly true that Edinburgh will be hanging onto the £2 million that would have otherwise gone to the Queen, though in doing so it will merely be acting according to the Smith Commission’s recommendations.
But since the money paid to the monarchy comes out of general taxation — to which the Scots contribute in common with all other citizens of the United Kingdom — the Queen will get exactly the same amount as she would have got under previous arrangements.
The Edinburgh government will admittedly be £2 million a year better off than it would have been, but the monarchy will not be worse off. I suppose the SNP could give the Queen a gift for this amount, but that might possibly be overdoing things.
Believe me, if I could honestly accuse the Scot Nats of acting disgracefully I would happily do so. There is something intrinsically unpleasant about them, as there is about all ultra-nationalists, and I pray that one day the Scottish people will wake up to this fact. But on this occasion, there is no reason to believe the SNP has acted abominably.
Indeed, its leader, Nicola Sturgeon, is astute enough to realise that the Queen and the monarchy remain overwhelmingly popular with most Scottish voters, including those who support the SNP. She may be a republican at heart, but she is not going to weaken her cause by admitting it.
The question is why a senior Palace official should have given such an apocalyptic — and misleading — briefing.
Sir Alan Reid cannot have been reflecting the views of the Queen who, although the staunchest of unionists, has always been careful not to say anything in public that might inflame the nationalists.
And yet what was said was surely calculated to be divisive. It amounted to tossing a hand grenade in the direction of the nationalists, and can only have served to make them wonder whether the monarch is as even-handed and neutral as they have been led to believe she is.
My only explanation is that this was intended as a diversionary tactic. Sir Alan may have wished to concentrate the focus of media attention on the allegedly devious activities of the SNP in order to play down a number of possibly embarrassing disclosures.
The row threatened to overshadow the Queen's visit to Germany, where she met Chancellor Angela Merkel
The Queen’s own spending is above board and apparently moderate, as one would expect of a naturally frugal person who has always watched the pennies.
That said, her grant of £40.05 million this year is expected to rise to £42.8 million next year, which is somewhat more than the rate of inflation.
More potentially controversial — and also overlooked because of the brouhaha over the Scot Nats — are some of the travel costs racked up by global-trotting Royals.
In all, travel expenditure was £5.1 million last year, with Prince Charles spending nearly £500,000 on one doubtless invaluable trip to Latin America.
The Prince spent, in total, more than £1.5 million of public money on travel, largely on private jets criss-crossing the world, which is an increase of 14 per cent over the previous year.
As a climate change doomsayer who advises the rest of us to keep an eagle eye on our emissions, he must have convinced himself that his elaborate journeying was of pre-eminent importance.
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Meanwhile, Prince Andrew, aka ‘Air Miles Andy’, knocked up £63,000 on one jaunt to Kuwait, which was obviously of great benefit to the British taxpayer.
Prince Harry’s trip to Brazil, which happily coincided with the football World Cup, was combined with a visit to Chile, with the total cost coming in at just over £100,000.
Little, if any, of this should make anyone furious. It is right that the members of the Royal Family should represent this country abroad and we should on the whole be grateful that they do so.
But it is also reasonable to ask whether money has been well spent and whether every trip was necessary or desirable.
The effect, and I presume the intention, of Sir Alan’s unjustifiable broadside against the SNP was that the media did not on the whole examine the small print of the Royals’ expenditure, though the figures were certainly published in this newspaper.
And the upshot may have been soured relations between the Queen and the Scottish Nationalists.
There has evidently been disquiet in the Palace, and last night Sir Alan was forced into an embarrassing climbdown.
He said that the briefing on the royal accounts ‘was never intended to be a criticism of Scotland or the First Minister’.
Beware of spinning is the moral of this tale — and particularly where the Scottish National Party is involved.
The Palace has idiotically succeeded in giving the moral advantage to as big a bunch of rogues as you could hope to find in a democratic parliament. I can’t bear to see them smelling of roses.
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