Modern royalty is as silly an idea as a plastic crown or a Perspex sceptre. It is a contradiction. M oreover, for purists, modernisation means accepting a principle they regard as plain wrong. Committed republicans object to the very idea of selecting Britain's head of state not on merit or democratic will but by the accident of birth. Slimming down the number of HRHs does nothing to tackle the fundamental wrongness of that practice.
Republican instinct opposes it.
And yet perhaps we ought to learn the lessons of recent success. Making moderate, reasonable demands for change does seem to work. The purist would have dismissed calls to make the royals pay tax as a distraction from the main cause. Yet it established a precedent, making clear that the Windsors were not beyond the reach of politics or parliament. Yet raising that issue wrongfooted monarchists, forcing them to admit that the foundations of their institution are archaic.