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'Sophiegate' stirs debate on monarchy
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THE British media was questioning the role and future of the monarchy on Monday, amid a royal scandal over ill-judged comments made by Queen Elizabeth's daughter-in-law to an undercover tabloid reporter.
Sophie, 36, the Countess of Wessex, was tricked into making the unguarded comments about British public figures by a News of the World reporter posing as a wealthy Arab sheikh who was offering her PR firm a lucrative contract. Sophie Rhys-Jones was forced to quit as head of a public relations company called R-JH.
The revelations rocked Buckingham Palace just as it was starting to feel it may have recovered from the scandal-plagued years of the 1990s when it had to squirm over the late Princess Diana's ``Squidgy tape'' conversations with an infatuated male admirer and the Duchess of York was pictured cavorting topless by the pool with her ``financial adviser''.
Sky news television urged its viewers to take part in an opinion poll on the question "Do we really need a royal family ?" while Channel 4 asked simply "Should we abolish the monarchy?"
Britain's top-selling Sun tabloid said the monarchy would not last another generation in its present form and suggested that heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles was hoping a scaled down royal family would save the crown. ``Our guess is that it may -- for one generation at most. After that, all bets are off,'' the Sun said in an editorial. ``This is our country. Why do they have a right to be heads of it?''
Under the headline ``A hollow crown'', the Financial Times said there were obviously potential conflicts of interest between running a public relations firm and the public duties of royalty. ``The best, and least likely, outcome would be that the countess and other springs of the royal family decided their careers were worth pursuing, and abandoned their public role and privileges,'' the newspaper said.
Several newspapers joined some members of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party in calling for a shakeup of the royal family's role. Tony Wright, chairman of a parliamentary Public Administration Select Committee, was prominent among Labour voices raised in favour of a review of the monarchy's future. Blair, however, said he was 100 per cent behind the monarchy.
Queen Elizabeth, standing by her youngest son Prince Edward and his wife, stepped in quickly to try to minimize damage to the royal family after Sunday's News of the World tabloid splashed the countess's indiscreet comments across 10 pages.
The queen slammed the press for waging a campaign of ''entrapment, subterfuge, innuendo and untruths'' against the couple but acknowledged that new guidelines were needed on the way royals with careers combined business life with public duty.
Rhys-Jones said in a statement she regretted the embarrassment she had caused after being taken in by the News of the World's sting. ``I am deeply distressed by the carrying out of an entrapment operation on me and my business but I also much regret my own misjudgment in succumbing to that subterfuge,'' she said.
Despite a long series of bruising revelations about the royal family over the past few years, opinion polls show a majority of Britons still support the monarchy.
(SD-Agencies)
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