The Queen would never abdicate, but what about a regency for Charles?

A grateful nation might forgive the Queen if she decided to put her feet up at long last, as her late husband did, but everyone knows it’s out of the question, explains Sean O'Grady

In the 1980s, there was serious talk about pensioning off the Queen and letting the glamorous Prince and Princess of Wales take over (Getty/PA/The Independent)

The extreme longevity of Elizabeth II presents the country with the delicate question of how a monarch who is inevitably growing more frail can best deal with the duties of office, even if they are confined to the “light” sort. This applies most obviously to some constitutionally irrelevant ones, such as visits, and to those with greater significance, if only ceremonial, such as attending the Remembrance Day service, but also to those with modest political ramifications, such as advising her prime minister.

She is 95, and by far the longest-lived monarch in British history. Her father, a lifelong heavy smoker, died at the age of 56. Her great-grandfather and grandfather, also smokers, passed at 68 and 70 respectively, and Queen Victoria, who we think of as impossibly old, went to that great empire in the sky aged 81, just beating George III’s record. Victoria was old for her era, but would have been considered no great age these days.

In her way, Elizabeth II is a symbol of the greying of Britain. If she lives as long as her mother, in 2026 she will be one of the country’s 16,000 or so centenarians, who are mostly female and were part of a baby boom that came after the end of the First World War (though some of her contemporaries will have died before their time because of Covid). She’ll be able to send herself the famous telegram.