69%. That’s the proportion of respondents who now agree that Britain would be ‘worse off’ without the monarchy. It’s the highest figure since polling began in 1997. Clearly the institution owes much to Liz’s personal charisma and sound stewardship of the throne. In 1946, Gallup asked the public who they most admired: George VI, her father – lionised in the The King’s Speech – polled 3%, just behind Marshal Stalin.

Since her decadent coronation in 1953, Britain has changed in every way. Our imperial pretensions as a nation have subsided, notwithstanding sporadic efforts to revive them. Our society and economy has become more open, fluid and global. Yet instead of rejecting custom and tradition, the public has overwhelmingly held on to them. So what’s going on?

Ardent Royalists should simmer down. In a popularity contest the Queen has it easy. She never has to voice an opinion (prudently she never does; the Prince of Wales would do well to follow suit) or make a decision. Politicians don’t have that luxury. They are condemned to choose between rival ends, rewarding one interest group to the exclusion of another. Over a long period of time everyone gets pissed off at some politician or other, which is largely why as a class they attract derision. Queen Liz sensibly stays above the fray, though of course she is constitutionally prohibited from venturing into it. The monarchy’s relative popularity has little to do with its inhabitant’s character, though incidentally, having coped with Prince Phillip for sixty-five years surely she has a very steadfast one. Providing a monarch doesn’t do anything silly, like abolish Parliament or order Magna Carta toilet paper into the Palace, they’re bound to rub along all right with their subjects.

That’s not quite sufficient though. Personality matters. The monarch personifies the state; she is Britannia incarnate. Elizabeth’s manner doesn’t merely reflect on our nation but epitomises it. We identify with nationhood and therefore how it is defined by her actions and deeds matters greatly. In that respect we have been fortunate. Whilst the new generation is perceived to be crass, sensationalist and subject to instant gratification, the Queen is its antithesis: measured, phlegmatic and wise. The relationship between the institution of monarchy and the monarch is reciprocal – they lend credibility and reverence to each other.

Popularity is only one reason to credit the monarchy as an institution. Ultimately popularity is transient; it’s likely that current levels of support are to some degree a function of a bumper year for royalty with the Wedding, the Jubilee and the Olympics. At some point a broader public debate about its virtues and vices must be undertaken. Julia Gillard, the Australian Premier, has suggested a referendum on becoming a republic when Elizabeth II dies. That would be timely and perhaps we should follow her lead.

Political heads of state have the strength of relevance; they have the weakness of being polarising across political cleavages, something royals would find very difficult to do. With occasional slip-ups (the lacklustre response to Diana’s death) the royals have assiduously kept the pulse of the nation and are now reaping the rewards.  It is an institution like no other, medieval in origin but not in outlook. The Left are bewildered by the rude health of this anachronism, but really they shouldn’t be. It does what no quangocracy could, for a fraction of the price. In our diverse country it binds us together in a national consciousness; it is an outlet for patriotism and fraternal unity that we would otherwise find difficult to express. In doing so it strengthens our democracy. Orwell understood this; his 1941 essay The Lion and the Unicorn idealised a socialist state absent of the House of Lords but accommodating of the monarchy.  Let’s keep it, not because it’s popular but because it works. 

Martti Ahtisaari is a unique individual. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, he has been at the heart of resolving several of the nastiest and most intractable conflicts of the past few decades. He helped end a bitter war between the Indonesian government and separatists in Aceh, and was a major participant in the negotiations that sought to resolve what to do with Kosovo after the war and genocide of 1999. He was one of the architects of the Namibian independence movement, which made the country independent from South Africa in 1990, worked in Iraq and Northern Ireland, and in between managed to find time to serve a term as President of Finland, during which Finland joined the EU.

He is a tall and broad man, though softly spoken – approachable and imposing in equal measure. Asked what drew him to a career in mediating between groups locked in violent conflict, he is quick to say that he arrived at negotiation only indirectly, after years spent first as a schoolteacher and then as a diplomat. He does admit, however, that his childhood may have left him cut out for the task. The region of Finland into which Ahtisaari was born was annexed by the Soviet Union during World War II, and he spent the first years of his life as a refugee in his own country. He explains, ‘I grew up with the feeling of being a stranger, and I think that allowed me to develop a sensitivity to what people are thinking without even any words. That’s not a bad thing for a peace mediator to have.’ He says that even as a student, he was known among his friends for his willingness to step into disputes and calm things down.

That kind of calmness, he claims, regardless of how gruesome a conflict may become, is vital for third parties if they are ever to help bring about peace. He also stressed the importance of a concerted, international effort in resolving tension: ‘These days, governments don’t want to internationalise their internal problems; they think it’s easier to try to make peace themselves. This is what happened in Indonesia; they tried to make their own ceasefire and it lasted only half a year.’ Indonesia’s Aceh province was wracked by violence between separatists and government troops for decades, with little movement towards peace.

Perversely, it took the destruction inflicted by the tsunami in 2004, which destroyed much of the Aceh region, to bring both parties back to the table. International aid was desperately needed, but could not be brought in while there was still a threat of violence. Ahtisaari emphasises that negotiators cannot step in and initiate a move towards peace: ‘if the two parties are ultimately not interested in solving a conflict, then there is really very little I can do, however brilliant I might be’ he says, with a grim laugh.

Ahtisaari currently works with an organisation called Crisis Management Initiative, an NGO devoted to helping war-torn parts of the globe piece themselves back together. Though he stresses again that third-party groups such as his can never bring belligerents to the negotiating table without the support of national governments, he argues that they do have a useful role to play. ‘Our main advantage from the perspective of governments is to do with blame: if we manage to make peace, then the governments who support us get a piece of the glory; if we fail, then it’s us that takes all the blame.’

It seems like a bleak assessment of his sometimes thankless line of work, but he seems almost pleased to be free of the burdens of political office. I ask what drew him back to run for the Finnish Presidency after so many years spent working on the international stage, and again he is quick to deny any real political ambition. He had never held political office before running for President in 1994, having built his career instead within the diplomatic service. ‘I think that I won in the end because everyone was fed up with traditional politicians, though I doubt anyone with a similar background to me would be able to do it again. I am not pleased with our system, where people start out in politics as a teenager and stay in it till they retire. I would rather see people spend at least some time in another career before they move on to politics.’

In the end, he says, he ran because he was asked to by friends and colleagues, and more importantly because he came top of a surprise poll of potential candidates than included several non-political candidates along with the mainstream party figures. He comes across as perhaps the most reluctant head of state ever to hold office, adding that even after winning his party’s primary, he would have pulled out had the other candidates asked him to. ‘I had my own career and interests,’ he adds.

Ahtisaari is an firm supporter of the EU in a country that had long been sceptical of the organisation, until it joined in 1995 under his leadership. He argues that the EU is better placed than most nation states to help resolve conflicts across the world, not least because it is one step removed from the pressures of national election cycles. More important, and often forgotten in discussions of EU politics which tend to focus on the continents western half, is the diversity of experience in the body. ‘If you look at the Arab Spring, we have countries like Libya and Egypt that are emerging from authoritarian rule, and are trying to reform. A country like Poland that only twenty years ago went through the same process can give much better advice than a more established state like Finland or the United Kingdom.’

Again, he stresses the importance of trust and of good reputation, two qualities that Western states have not always done their best to maintain. Asked what he thinks of more interventionist bodies such as the International Criminal Court, which has come under fire in recent years for focusing almost exclusively on Africa, Ahtisaari seems cautiously optimistic about the organisation’s future. ‘I think we need organisations that can really take to task individuals who have committed crimes against humanity, but they have to deal with all cases in that category, and will face accusations of double standards if they focus on one particular region. But that problem is not unique to the ICC; it’s something that the UN has been dealing with for decades.’ There is still much work to be done. He is annoyed and even ashamed, he says, that the international community has allowed so many wars to become ‘frozen conflicts’ in Africa and Asia, left to smoulder away without any real steps towards resolution. He is throughout the interview a calm, even dour man, but underlying his work and his beliefs is a remarkable degree of optimism, and above all a faith that war is ultimately not necessary. In his own words, ‘all conflicts can be solved’

When the first wave of protests initiated what is now known as the ‘Arab Spring’, Syria hardly featured. A few disturbances were easily quashed and the respected Arab broadcaster, Al Jazeera, even suggested that “a popular president, dreaded security forces and religious diversity make a Syrian revolution unlikely”.

How much difference a year makes. Violence has gradually escalated, sanctions have been imposed, ‘elections’ have taken place, and the Kofi Anan Peace Plan to impose a ceasefire was supposed to come into effect on 10^th April 2012. Instead of peace, however, Syria now faces the prospect of a full blown civil war.

True, Bashar al-Assad’s government is extremely repressive: there is and has never been any real democracy, the human rights record is appalling and bloody massacres have been associated with the regime for decades. However, it is easy to forget that under the al-Assad rule, women’s rights are strongly respected and freedom of religion is greater than in perhaps any other country in the Middle East. The ruling élite are Alawite Muslims, a branch of Shia, and as a small minority group, the government has found it useful to promote other minorities, producing progressive results for perhaps the wrong reasons. There are a few Jews, then 10% of the population are Christian, 16% are Druze, Alawite and Shia, while the 74% majority are Sunni. However, it is from this religious mix  that much of today’s trouble stems.

In Libya and Egypt there was a definite opposition and leaders willing to co-operate against the government. In Syria, this is not the case and co-ordination is still desperately lacking. The UN want dialogue with representative official figures, but with the pockets of resistance all fighting for different sects, different causes and in different demographics, the likelihood of success is low.

The Sunni-led Syrian National Congress has failed to win support from the large minority groups, who have resisted on the grounds that the SNC is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and unrepresentative of the rest. The Muslim Brotherhood are apparently strong supporters of democracy, of sexual equality and while their belief in internal discipline and support for Sharia law remains a worry to the West, their comparative moderation may be the best compromise in a post-Bashar government. But moderation seems a long way off; this is a part of the world where revenge is not just sweet, it is a duty. Alawite communities are petrified of repercussions should the Alawite-led regime fall. The most recent atrocities on civilians in Houla, are widely felt to have been the work of the Shabiha, the Alawite militia who support the regime, and revenge attacks are an ongoing concern.

But what of the ‘international community’? The ‘West’ is trying diplomatic pressure but will not get involved directly when no-one can see and end game, and the situation is one of such complexity. Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia is willing to get involved. True, it has an unsavory record on human rights, democracy and the position of women, but it does sit on a quarter of the world’s oil reserves. Hilary Clinton considers it a “key partner and friend”, and like Britain, is happy to sell them arms on a grand scale: only last week, British defence giant BAE signed a £1.9bn deal to supply Hawk trainer jets.

As a strict Sunni monarchy, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states, now actively finance Syrian rebels and lobbying hard for the US to step up its involvement against the al-Assad regime. But with evidence of Al Qaeda participation, and many attacks carrying the hallmarks of those with bomb-making experience from Iraq, the US finds itself in a tricky situation. It is hard to see any outcome other than further descent into violence and bloody sectarian disaster. No group looks like it can win and yet no-one is prepared to recognize that they can’t.

Ironically, Russia, the regime’s key ally, could now be the key to a path towards a solution. The US and the UK have made their stance quite clear from the outset – that Bashar must go. This bold statement, however, gives little room for negotiation; with their backs against the wall the regime will want to fight to the death. Russia sees its involvement in other countries’ civil wars as a grave mistake and has so far resisted attempts at international action against Syria. But as its patience runs out with the Syrian government, Russia may be the only chance in persuading the al-Assad regime that it must give up, and that exile in Russia is their only hope.

Sadly for the moment, the only certainty is that Syria is beyond all imaginable realms of complexity. There are so many contributing factors, that anyone who claims to understand it almost certainly doesn’t, including myself.

Izzy Westbury lived for 3 years as an expat in Damascus, Syria, between 1998-2001. She was in Damascus when Bashar al-Assad came to power in the summer of 2000.