{"id":8065,"date":"2024-02-16T03:15:16","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T03:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/?p=8065"},"modified":"2024-02-16T03:15:17","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T03:15:17","slug":"anti-monarchists-in-uk-are-determined-to-continue-their-campaign-efforts-about-royal-familys-health-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/?p=8065","title":{"rendered":"Anti-monarchists in UK are determined to continue their campaign efforts, about royal family’s health challenges."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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London: King Charles III\u2019s health struggles following his recent cancer diagnosis will not stop anti-royalists making the case for an end to Britain\u2019s monarchy, says pressure group Republic.The organisation, which campaigns for an elected UK head of state to replace the monarch, says the end of Queen Elizabeth II\u2019s record-breaking reign in 2022 boosted its cause.Last year was \u201ctransformational\u201d, the group\u2019s chief executive Graham Smith told AFP.\u201cExcessive\u201d media coverage of Charles\u2019s cancer battle and speculation over its impact will buttress their arguments for the abolition of the centuries-old institution, he added.\u201cWe\u2019re sensitive to the fact\u2026 that he\u2019s got cancer, but it\u2019s the institution that\u2019s the problem,\u201d he told AFP in a recent interview.\u201cThere are bigger issues than the individual.\u201dSmith believes \u201cbig\u201d royal news, such as births, deaths, marriages and coronations, pushes the monarchy into the foreground \u2014 and that fewer Britons like what they see.Opinion polls show heir-to-the-throne Prince William and his wife Catherine are among the most popular royals.But Smith downplays the impact of any increased attention on the couple as William performs some of Charles\u2019s public duties.\u201cI don\u2019t think that William is particularly a harder target\u201d for criticism than his father, Smith insisted.Long a fringe group in Britain, the group seized on Elizabeth\u2019s death \u2014 the biggest change to the monarchy in a generation \u2014 to press for reform.Republic boosted its publicity efforts ahead of Charles\u2019s landmark coronation last May. Heavy-handed policing also ended up increasing their profile.Police arrested Smith and five other group members before a planned protest on the route, eventually releasing them without charge.The police handling of the affair drew widespread criticism and Smith is suing London\u2019s Metropolitan Police for wrongful arrest.Republic has enjoyed a \u201cmassive\u201d increase in income and members since the queen\u2019s September 2022 death, he said.\u201c(That) September was one of the biggest months we\u2019ve had since we started, and it just continued to snowball from then on,\u201d Smith said.Revenue last year was nearly \u00a3600,000 ($750,000), compared to \u00a3286,000 in 2022 and \u00a3106,000 the year before that, as its paying membership swelled to 10,000 alongside 140,000 non-paying supporters, he added.\u201cThe monarchy is rapidly losing support,\u201d Smith said, pointing to two polls last month showing an uptick in republican sentiment.YouGov recorded 45 percent backing the monarchy and 31 percent favouring an elected head of state. That was a few weeks after a Republic-commissioned Savanta survey also found less than half of respondents supported the institution.\u201cThis is huge,\u201d Smith said at the time. \u201cRoyalists have spent years saying the monarchy has the support of the country. That\u2019s no longer the case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

London: King Charles III\u2019s health struggles following his recent cancer diagnosis will not stop anti-royalists making the case for an end to Britain\u2019s monarchy, says pressure group Republic.The organisation, which… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8067,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8065\/revisions\/8067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofmelange.global\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}