King Charles tells Britain to weather the cost of living crisis whilst wearing a hat worth 5 billion pounds.
the King delivered a speech about the cost of living crisis. He was wearing a hat worth six billion pounds at the time.
Good day, spectators,
And I watched a video yesterday that perfectly encapsulated everything that is wrong with Britain. The whole thing. A lifetime of systemic failure, of grotesque inequality, of ruling-class contempt disguised as concern, all of it distilled into a single glittering, nauseating image.
There he was. King Charles III. Dressed in his finest robes, the Imperial State Crown on his head (this is a solid gold construction studded with 2,868 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 269 pearls, and four rubies). The Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross contains the largest clear-cut diamond in the world, weighing in at 530 carats…was present but not in the shot. The crown jewels are estimated to be worth up to $8 billion in total. And this man, wearing a hat that could solve homelessness in London, who holds a stick that could fund the NHS for a year, draped in robes worth more than most people will earn in a thousand lifetimes, was telling the British people to ‘weather the storm’ of the cost of living crisis.
His ministers, he assured them, would ‘support measures’ to help working people. An ‘active state’ would partner with business to deliver ‘a fair deal for working people.’
The sheer, staggering, breath-taking audacity of it pissed me off enough to want to write a whole post about it.
the numbers behind the sermon.
Let me provide some context that His Majesty’s speechwriters apparently omitted.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s UK Poverty Report 2026 reveals that more than one in five people in the UK, around 14.2 million people, are living in poverty. That doesn’t mean ‘struggling a bit’ nor ‘doing it tough,’ but living in poverty and unable to meet their minimum needs. 6.8 million people are now living in ‘very deep poverty,’ the highest number since records began. 4.5 million children are in poverty, rising for the third year in a row. 3.8 million people have experienced destitution, the most extreme form, where households cannot afford to stay warm, dry, clean, clothed, or fed. The Family Resources Survey confirms that 6 million people in the UK are facing hunger, with 2.5 million forced to rely on food banks, and the Trussell Trust provided more than 2.6 million food parcels last year, 45% more than in 2019.
Six million hungry people. Six million. And a man wearing a six billion pound hat is telling them to weather the storm.
the hat.
The Imperial State Crown is not just a hat. It is a monument to extraction. The Cullinan I diamond in the Sovereign’s Sceptre was mined in South Africa in 1905, a colony, not by any coincidence. The Kohinoor was taken from India. The entire collection is a museum of imperial plunder and violent exploitation showing that which built the British Empire, and it sits on the head of a man whose family costs the British taxpayer an estimated half a billion pounds a year. His Duchy of Lancaster provides him with a tax-free income of around £24 million a year from assets worth £680 million. His son William nets around £21 million a year, tax-free, from the Duchy of Cornwall, worth nearly £1.3 billion.
These are public assets held by private individuals, generating tax-free income for people who have done nothing to earn it. Graham Smith of the anti-monarchy group Republic called it ‘the root of the problem — the dishonesty of the palace about who owns the Duchies. They are public assets, not private estates.’
And he’s right.
Public assets. Held by a private family. Tax-free. And the British people are told there is no money for social housing, no money for the NHS, no money to feed the six million people facing hunger.
When a protestor confronted the King in July 2025 and asked why his family costs the country half a billion pounds a year, Charles nodded and said:
‘Ah, yes,’
…before moving on. When asked why he pays his gardeners the minimum wage, the King said nothing. Ah, yes. Indeed.
the flag-wavers.
And there’s something even more farcical. A significant portion of the people at the bottom of British society choose between heating and eating, whose children go to school hungry , are among the most jingoistic, patriotic, flag-waving royalists you will ever meet. They cheer the coronation. They camp out for royal weddings. They defend the monarchy with the fervour of the converted. They are being crushed by a system that treats their suffering as an acceptable cost of doing business, and they thank the system for the privilege.
The British working class has been conditioned for centuries to see their poverty as natural, their rulers as inevitable, and their suffering as a test of character. The monarchy is the ultimate expression of this conditioning, quite literally a living, breathing symbol of inequality, a daily reminder that ‘some people are born to rule and others are born to obey’. The data suggests the spell is weakening: support for the monarchy has fallen to just 45%, its lowest level since records began, and among 18 to 24 year olds it drops to 23%. But millions still wave the flag. Millions still believe the fairy tale. And the ruling class is counting on it.
Peter Matejic, chief analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, put it plainly:
‘Poverty in the UK is still not just widespread, it is deeper and more damaging than at any point in the last 30 years. When nearly half of the people in poverty are living far below the poverty line, that is a warning sign that the welfare system is failing to protect people from harm.’
The welfare system is failing. The social safety net is shredding. The NHS is collapsing. Schools are crumbling. And the man with the sceptre is telling the working class to have faith in the government.
The King’s Speech is nothing but a performance and ritual designed to reinforce the natural order, to remind the commoners that they are common, and to distract from the collapse of living standards with a display of glittering opulence. And it works, because the conditioning runs deep, because admitting the monarchy is a parasite would mean admitting that an entire worldview is built on a lie.
So the King will deliver his speech and the cameras will capture the jewels. The commentators will marvel at the pageantry. And six million people will still be going to bed hungry. Pure disgrace in 2026.
The next time you see a royal event, please remember the hat. Remember the sceptre. Remember the six billion pounds of jewels on the head of a man telling his subjects to weather the storm.
And ask yourself: who is weathering it? And who is causing it?
And on that thought, I’ll let you go,
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Read more from the magazine:
If you go through Republic's reports tallying up how expensive the Royal family is to the tax-payer, it's just as shocking to see how much the data is hidden from us.
They have to use headlines from old newspaper articles and back of the envelope calculations to get these numbers because the Royals enjoy absolute freedom to avoid scrutiny.
The latest report is at the bottom of this article:
https://www.republic.org.uk/royals_cost_over_half_a_billion_pounds_a_year_and_the_cost_keeps_rising
Such a powerful commentary.