Opinion

Jake O'Kane: King Charles should stick the crown on his own head and save us a fortune amid cost-of-living crisis

Queen Elizabeth's funeral may soon be viewed as the last hurrah of a UK drowning in debt, diminished politically and economically on the world stage following Brexit...

Jake O'Kane

Jake O'Kane

Jake is a comic, columnist and contrarian.

King Charles and members of the royal family follow behind the coffin of Queen Elizabeth as it is carried out of Westminster Abbey after her State Funeral on Monday. Picture by Danny Lawson/PA Wire
King Charles and members of the royal family follow behind the coffin of Queen Elizabeth as it is carried out of Westminster Abbey after her State Funeral on Monday. Picture by Danny Lawson/PA Wire King Charles and members of the royal family follow behind the coffin of Queen Elizabeth as it is carried out of Westminster Abbey after her State Funeral on Monday. Picture by Danny Lawson/PA Wire

IT is estimated that Queen Elizabeth's funeral will cost the public purse approximately £8 million. I question the priorities of a nation which expends such an amount during a cost-of-living crisis resulting in its children going hungry and its elderly forced to live in cold homes.

Then there's the growing problem of our underfunded NHS, with thousands living in pain as they languish on hospital waiting lists while others won't survive to get the treatment they desperately need.

As I watched the legions of military and world dignitaries play their part in the funeral service, I couldn't argue that Britain does public pageantry like few others. Yet it reminded me somewhat of the band playing on the deck of the Titanic.

Indeed, the queen's funeral may soon be viewed as the last hurrah of a UK drowning in debt, diminished politically and economically on the world stage following Brexit.

The glittering royal gold and jewels prominent throughout the ceremony are relics from an empire on which the sun has long since set. When Elizabeth became queen in 1952, she was Commander-in-Chief of a military numbering 871,000; at her passing, that had dropped to 148,000.

The Royal Navy no longer rule the waves and would be unable to send a taskforce across the world as it did in 1982 to fight Argentina over the Falklands. The aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, recently built at a cost of £3 billion, broke down in August having just left Portsmouth on its way to take part in exercises in the US. It was forced to limp back to port for repairs.

It's long overdue that the UK woke up to its true position in the world. This year, it dropped behind India, becoming the world's sixth largest economy; the pound has hit a historic low in value with its descent matched by a rise in inflation. Unicef rates the UK as one of the world's least family-friendly countries and the NHS has dropped from a prestigious first to fourth ranking in best health systems among developed nations.

The UK holds the ignominious position of ranking second in global money laundering hotspots, with an estimated £88 billion washed through London every year. Three quarters of its universities have slipped down an international league table, and a list ranking happiness has seen it fall five places since Covid. In short, while Britain can still put on a great show, the stage on which the show is being performed is crumbling.

But you know me, I always try to end on a positive note. So, here's my sure-fire solution to get the UK back up the happiness table. Have King Charles forego the cost of a coronation and stick the crown on his own head.

It's not as if we don't know he's king, what with the national anthem on repeat. Not only would this save taxpayers millions, it would allow us to escape countless hours of tedious television covering his coronation.

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YESTERDAY'S Tory mini-budget highlighted new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's innovative approach to giving the stagnant UK economy a kick-start.

With public sector pay frozen, he lifted a pay cap on bankers' bonuses, imposed after that sector's greed and stupidity almost bankrupted the world economy in 2007. When taxpayers' money was used to bail out the banks, governments promised us a similar situation would never again be allowed to happen.

Yet profits-linked banking bonus schemes - identified as a main cause in the banking crisis - are again up and running, creating another wild west of bankers gambling on the Stock Exchange.

The message seems clear: the working class must continue to tighten their belts while the wealthiest one-per cent can now buy another super yacht.

In other counterintuitive moves, he also cancelled a rise in corporation tax, reversed a rise in National Insurance and cut stamp duty, arguing this will attract investment and result in a 'trickle-down' of wealth.

Of course, there's nothing to say that trickle-down is anything more than a convenient theory used by politicians to justify enriching their wealthy friends. In practice, all that will trickle down from the billionaires to the rest of society is job insecurity, frozen wages and increasing debt.

One statistic from Citizens Advice which caught my eye during the week showed that while in 2019 it took an average debt client 39 years to repay what they owed, today that figure has risen to 190 years, moving debt from being individual to generational.