WHAT with Andrew, Harry and Meghan, more of Her Majesty’s subjects have come to the conclusion that the monarchy should go.

I am opposed to this view and believe that the monarchy is still of immense value to our nation.

The Queen, who studiously avoids politics, is the perfect head of state, whom no partisan president could ever replace.

In times of national crisis, like the two world wars, the monarch represents continuity and holds the country together.

The monarch personifies and animates our glorious history which, otherwise, would be confined to dusty museums and old film clips.

A further criticism is that the royal family lives in a degree of splendour.

But, valuable foreign visitors wouldn’t be interested if the royals lived in an ordinary house, in an ordinary street, as in Sue Townsend’s satirical novel ‘The Queen and I’.

In Richard II, Shakespeare recognises how the institution of monarchy keeps the peace and protects us “Against the envy of less happier lands”. Take the Brexit crisis. Even though the country has been divided and frustrated, we’ve had little serious disorder.

Without the monarchy, we’d no longer be special on our “sceptred isle”.

Steve Kay, Redcar & Cleveland councillor.