Australia may have won the Ashes but Australian republicans are smarting.
When England won in 2005 Liz Windsor thanked each player. But there have been no congratulations for the Australian victors from their head of state. The problem is that Australians do not have their own head of state. They share the English Windsor with the UK and Canada.
Australians also had to endure some England supporters, known as “the barmy army”, taunt them by chanting “When you had a chance to vote, you voted for the Queen”, a reference to the 1999 referendum in which Australians voted 45% to 55% not to become a republic.
In an editorial called “We are the barmy ones” the Herald Sun newspaper commented in response to the chanting that “Sometimes it takes a pack of English yobbos to remind us why having a foreign head of state shows a lack of national self-respect and pride”.