For many of us, King Charles III’s coronation will be celebrated only for the extra bank holiday it brings. But it’s also costing us quarter of a billion quid and raises that recurring question – what are the monarchy for?
The guillotine is the answer according to Bonnie Prince Bob, scourge of Scotland’s chattering classes, and Fringe persona-non-grata following his brilliant, close-to-the-bone skewering of the gentrified modern festival in 2019. Joining a long line of republican musical tradition, he’s collaborated with duo Gutterblood on a rap-punk-metal call for revolution called Gardyloo. As coronation day approaches, we spoke to him to find out more…
How did the song come about?
Andy and Adji from Gutterblood asked me to collaborate on a forthcoming Oi Polloi and Gutterblood Abolish the Monarchy special release. They had sampled me on a previous record and I knew they made solid music. When Andy sent me the track I couldn’t refuse, it’s a belter. I was compelled to conjure a suitable invective to complement their sound and express my perspectives on the hallowed institution.
We’re nearly 50 years on from the Pistols doing God Save The Queen. Why do you think monarchism has been so persistent when other social changes over that time have been huge?
The monarchy sustains not only because it has historically provided the state with a powerful device of social control and cultural conditioning but more so because the political class love the monarchy. They are sociopaths, aroused by opulence and status. There’s no appetite amongst our public purse parasites to liberate our democracy from this regal perversion.
If Scotland did become a republic, how do you think it would fare, given the current state of our political class?
A Scottish republic could only exist on a landscape beyond our neoliberal political class so that would already mean things were looking up.
For a long time, swathes of Scotland paid Sturgeon’s SNP the same deference that a lot of people show the monarchy. What do you think Scotland’s political future looks like now that the scales have fallen from people’s eyes?
I honestly haven’t paid attention to any of that, but I get the gist. An evangelical church pastor and his wife got found out for peddling lies and ripping folk off, that’s all there is to it. Have the scales fallen off? Won’t folk just shift their hopes onto some other political party grifters?
Any plans to run for office again yourself? (Bob opposed Angus Robertson in Edinburgh Central in 2021)
I am always interested in entering the political field as an independent.
How will you be spending coronation day?
With the machine elves.
Gardyloo is out now and available to buy via Gutterblood’s Bandcamp