"The monarchy is a political referee, not a political player, and there is a lot of sense in choosing the referee by a different principle from the players. It lessens the danger that the referee might try to start playing... which I usually construct in terms of the way it institutionalises deference, can be expressed much more simply: it rots the brain. … This romancing about the royal family is, I fear, only a minor symptom of the softening of the brain of socialists ..."