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9 May, 2018 15:53

Charles as King would help end the royals - Labour MP makes monarchy jibes despite death threats

Charles as King would help end the royals - Labour MP makes monarchy jibes despite death threats

Labour MP Emma Dent Coad has taken another swipe at the monarchy saying Prince Charles' ascension to King would be the end of the royals. The MP came out fighting after reporting some 400 death threats over her republicanism.

Dent Coad, who snatched the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council from the Tories in a shock result during last year’s snap general election, claimed Prince Charles would help the republican cause to tear down Britain’s democracy if he succeeded his mother Queen Elizabeth.

“Prince Charles as King will help a lot,” she told the Daily Mirror’s republican podcast Not The Royal Wedding. Dent Coad has on multiple occasions made headlines over digs targeted at different royal family members. She has previously referred to Charles as “disgraceful” after he told a woman from Manchester, but whose mother is from Guyana, that she didn’t look like she was from the city.

She also said Prince Harry and his older brother Williams were “not very bright” during a ‘Reigning in the monarch’ meeting in Bristol last autumn. And before that she demeaned the soon-to-be married Prince Harry, saying he “can't actually fly a helicopter, he tried to pass the helicopter exam about four times and he couldn't get through it at all so he always goes for the co-pilot. So he just sits there going 'vroom vroom'."

Her vocal republicanism doesn’t come free of repercussions. Dent Coad in fact claimed she received up to 400 death threats after making light of the royal brothers. She said “all hell was let loose” and that she had to carry a GPS so she could be tracked down in case she suddenly disappeared.

The Labour MP, who is in charge of the West London borough which is home to both brothers and their partners, said she also had to team up with a local police borough commander.

“I was quite frightened, actually, because some people are just very rude and unpleasant online and some people will come for you physically so it was awful. I had CCTV on my house, I have a GPS tracker which I have to have with me all the time. Somebody else had to open my mail.

My poor staff were very shaken. We had to have my office CCTV’d - we have every possible security on it...it’s very, very frightening and the whole idea, the British values of fairness, decency, free speech and respect, where on earth does that come into that kind of thing when somebody’s made a joke about something that some people have a lot of time for and some people don’t? What about where’s free speech there?”

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