DUBLIN // Over 140,000 Britons have signed a petition demanding that the royal family pay for proposed repairs to Buckingham palace costing £369 million (Dh1.7bn), rather than saddling taxpayers with the bill.
The online petition was launched last week, soon after the government decided to increase its annual financial grant to the royal family by 66 per cent, as a way of funding the 10-year renovation process.
The increase in the grant will come out of revenues raised by taxes. Last year, roughly £334m in taxpayer revenue went into the maintenance of the royal family and its properties.
Mark Johnson, a London-based copywriter, started the petition, asking the royals to use their own wealth to fund the overhaul of Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II's primary residence. The royal estate is estimated to be worth £11 billion, and last year made a profit of £304m - of which the queen receives 15 per cent.
"There is a national housing crisis, the [National Health Service] is in crisis, austerity is forcing cuts in many front line services," Mr Johnson wrote. "Now the royals expect us to dig deeper to refurbish Buckingham Palace. The crown's wealth is inestimable. This is, in a word, outrageous."
Mr Johnson's petition is hosted on the 38 Degrees online campaign site. But if he launches a similar one on the official site for parliamentary petitions and secures at least 100,000 signatures then the subject will have to be debated by the House of Commons.
The protest over the renovation expenses illustrates the British public's fraught relationship with its royal family, particularly in a post-Brexit time of deep financial worries.
Mr Johnson told the Guardian newspaper that he was "all for protecting Buckingham Palace, but at a time when the public purse is so pressured ... to fund it publicly is something out of a Charles Dickens novel".
Built in 1703, Buckingham Palace is a magnet for tourists, especially when the queen is in residence. But in recent years, its condition of disrepair has frequently made the news.
Masonry has fallen off the palace facade. Staff members place buckets in strategic locations to catch drips from the leaking ceiling. The 775 rooms of the palace are proving increasingly difficult to maintain.
"It wouldn't take long to raise 300 [million pounds]," wrote Thomas R, a signatory to Mr Johnson's petition. "If we rented out 50 of the bedrooms on Airbnb [at] 250 [pounds] per night, we would have paid it off within the year."
The plans for refurbishment include replacing the palace boilers, which are three decades old, and at least 160 kilometres of electrical cable and 32 kilometres of water pipes, as well as 5,000 light fittings and 2,500 radiators.
But carrying out what will constitute the largest renovation since the Second World War means Buckingham Palace will be "fit for purpose until 2067," according to a royal spokesperson.
"An independent specialist report concluded that without urgent work there is a risk of serious damage to the palace and the precious royal collection items it houses from, among other scenarios, fire and water damage," the spokesperson said.
But Chris Rojek, a professor of sociology at the City University of London, argued: "An age of austerity requires sacrifice. This should apply to all strata or sections of society."
The millions of people who felt "left behind by globalisation" and voted for Brexit ought to feel similarly about being "left behind by a monarchy that is out of touch with the lives of ordinary people, " Mr Rojek told The National. But, he added, "the British have a blind spot with regard to the monarchy."
In general, support for the royal family among the British public remains strong. A study conducted last year by the market research firm YouGov showed 68 per cent of Britons believed that the institution of royalty was good for the UK. Only 9 per cent believed the opposite.
"In the context of the EU, nothing about Britain reveals this outdated form of exceptionalism more starkly than the monarchy," said Mr Rojek. "When the Brexiters take about 'taking back control' of the country, they should look to the culture of deference as a target for their efforts."
Among those Britons who do not support the monarchy, the renovation plans have provoked particularly sharp reactions.
Graham Smith, the chief executive of Republic, one of the country's largest antimonarchy campaigns, called the proposed funding solution "an absolute disgrace".
Parliamentarians have repeatedly pressed for the royal palaces to be open to tourists around the year to raise revenue, but the royal family has declined, Mr Smith said.
"If the royals can't look after the buildings and raise their own revenue to fund maintenance it's time to give them up."
SSubramanian@thenational.ae
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