Who is this speaking with a sneer on their lips and contempt in their voice before news of the Princess of Wales’s cancer broke? A monarchist or a republican?

‘Kate’s admission that she had doctored the photograph, and her apology for doing so, were the latest self-inflicted wound by the House of Windsor, for which trust and integrity are fundamental commodities.’

There is a limit to how much of this treatment modern members of the royal family will take

Those who do not know the UK might assume it was a revolutionary who wants to undermine trust in the integrity of the monarchy because they want it gone. Republican sentiment in the UK is indeed stronger than tourists like to imagine and the BBC cares to admit.

Irish nationalists and Brits of Irish descent are wary of the crown. Just 45 per cent of Scots want to keep the royals ‘for the foreseeable future’, with 36 per cent ready to get rid of them as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the constitutional pressure group Republic reports that, for the first time, a plurality of people under 45 favour abolishing the monarchy.

But however greatly they have grown in number, British republicans have little vim and less vigour. They (we, if I am levelling with you) don’t care enough about the monarchy to abolish it, or at least most of us don’t. It’s not a political priority or a practical project.

Republicanism last grew in the UK in the 1990s after the marriage of Prince Charles (as he then was) to Princess Diana fell apart. Jack Straw and other Labour politicians of the day were Republicans in theory. But in practice they imagined cancelling all their other political plans so they could focus on dethroning the Queen and recoiled at the prospect.

Even if a majority of the country favoured a republic (which it never has), an embittered monarchist minority would never forgive the government if they let this happen. And as that government became unpopular, as all governments do, the minority would become a majority and demand a restoration.

No way would serious Labour politicians waste their time on the republican cause. Nor would any serious Scottish nationalist politicians who made the same calculations. British republicanism died for the very British reason that it was too much trouble.

But if you want to find creepy obsessions, and bullying, hectoring callousness, turn to the UK’s monarchists. The quote I began with was not from some obscure Republican website, but from the Daily Mail, Britain’s best selling newspaper and most-read news site. It claims to be a monarchist institution.

If you think I am being a snotty intellectual sneering at the tabloids, the BBC was just as bad. The line between snob and mob in the UK is always thin and often invisible.

The BBC has a podcast dedicated to PR called When it hits the fan! In its latest episode, released on Wednesday, it berates the royal family for making ‘big mistakes’ in not explaining why Prince William missed the memorial service for his godfather, and compounding the sin by allowing his wife to be photographed without a wedding ring. (I know, the horror.)

The princess has now been forced by the pressure from those who claim to adore her to admit that she had a cancer diagnosis and needs chemotherapy. She didn’t want to talk about it at first because, frankly, her health ought to be no one else’s business. Given what we know, it seems at least possible, don’t you think, that her husband missed engagements because he was concerned about his wife?

After leaving the hospital, Kate put out a picture of herself and her children she had edited to make her kids look good. She is not the first mother to have done this, and in any case her illness may have distracted her.

Now that they have forced her to talk about her chemotherapy, the ferrets are reversing and everyone who had hectored the royal family is sobbing and sighing. To my mind, and I suspect to the minds of many others, they are displaying the sickest side of British monarchism.

Imagine a criminal who beats you up in the street. He kicks you when you are down, humiliates and destroys you. And just when you think he’s finished with you, he bends over and says with a sweet smile, ‘How brave you are and how courageous. We are all so terribly proud of you.’

There is a limit to how much of this treatment modern members of the royal family will take. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle fled to America, and are hated for it. I accept that a part of that hatred is racist. A larger part is a modern version of British anti-Americanism. The self-aggrandising virtue signalling of the progressive American rich grates with many in the UK. It’s too egotistical, too ‘let’s talk about me’ for traditional British people to tolerate.

But the main reason why conservatives in general, and the conservative press in particular, hate them is that they opted out. They don’t share royal duties. Instead of taking abuse, they call their lawyers. They just won’t play the game anymore.

In truth there are not many who will. The old queen stayed on the throne too long. King Charles was too old for the job when he was finally crowned, and now he is ill with cancer, as is the Princess of Wales. Prince William is pretty much on his own to do the royal duties of a monarchy whose supporters demand that it conducts itself on a grand scale.

I look at his children and wonder if they will put themselves through it or run like their Uncle Harry. You should not blame them if they do. It’s people who claim to worship the royals who will drive them away or drive them mad.

Republicans will never kill the monarchy. Royalists just might.