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| Oh for the days when we merely tolerated the Queen | Oh for the days when we merely tolerated the Queen |
| (4 months later) | |
| It was Friday and the end of a long week which had unleashed the most embarrassing acts of performative fealty. It was not enough to merely wish the Queen well on the occasion of her 90th birthday. There was a frenzy of competitive astonishment and delight. One of the richest millionaires in the land, with no known health complaints, had managed to remain alive to her 91st year, and the blessing was unimaginably vast. | It was Friday and the end of a long week which had unleashed the most embarrassing acts of performative fealty. It was not enough to merely wish the Queen well on the occasion of her 90th birthday. There was a frenzy of competitive astonishment and delight. One of the richest millionaires in the land, with no known health complaints, had managed to remain alive to her 91st year, and the blessing was unimaginably vast. |
| The nation stood united in gobsmack at her ability to plant seeds not just in the generation after her own, but the one after that, and fresh offspring still in the one after that, each of them as royal as the last. In an unparalleled demonstration of her slave-like sense of national duty, she managed to have lunch with the Obamas, a mere 24 hours after her previous lunch. | The nation stood united in gobsmack at her ability to plant seeds not just in the generation after her own, but the one after that, and fresh offspring still in the one after that, each of them as royal as the last. In an unparalleled demonstration of her slave-like sense of national duty, she managed to have lunch with the Obamas, a mere 24 hours after her previous lunch. |
| Surely, with her quiet gravitas, her sombre dignity, her born discretion – and all those other combinations of words that mean “never says anything” – she is all that stands between us and being an international laughing stock. That last point we must concede to the royalists: without the Queen, with only David Cameron leveraging every handshake and Boris Johnson slinging shameful discourtesy from the sidelines, Barack Obama would have looked hopelessly out of scale against our miniaturist political landscape. But the rest of this verbiage was like bunting: nostalgic, flimsy, twee and utterly pointless. | Surely, with her quiet gravitas, her sombre dignity, her born discretion – and all those other combinations of words that mean “never says anything” – she is all that stands between us and being an international laughing stock. That last point we must concede to the royalists: without the Queen, with only David Cameron leveraging every handshake and Boris Johnson slinging shameful discourtesy from the sidelines, Barack Obama would have looked hopelessly out of scale against our miniaturist political landscape. But the rest of this verbiage was like bunting: nostalgic, flimsy, twee and utterly pointless. |
| Twenty years ago monarchists, like fans of the Archers, would identify themselves mainly to one another | Twenty years ago monarchists, like fans of the Archers, would identify themselves mainly to one another |
| Anyway, it was Friday, and this came up on Radio 4’s Any Questions. Saint George’s Day, Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary and the Queen’s birthday all clustered into the same week, so which did the panel feel was the most important to the nation’s identity? Nigel Farage at least had the smarts to say: “this is an unanswerable question” since its real point is not to pick a favourite but to relegate two un-favourites. Yet he and the others failed to recognise what was really wrong. | Anyway, it was Friday, and this came up on Radio 4’s Any Questions. Saint George’s Day, Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary and the Queen’s birthday all clustered into the same week, so which did the panel feel was the most important to the nation’s identity? Nigel Farage at least had the smarts to say: “this is an unanswerable question” since its real point is not to pick a favourite but to relegate two un-favourites. Yet he and the others failed to recognise what was really wrong. |
| If anyone ever asks you to stand up and proclaim your love for someone, don’t do it. It’s a trap. It brings out your glib and oily arts, and makes you sound like a wrong ’un. Shakespeare knew this, and maybe the Queen knows it too, thought it is hard to tell what a person knows when they only animate around horses. Saint George wouldn’t have a clue. Justine Greening chose the Queen’s birthday. Seriously. Because, you know, look how hard she works. | If anyone ever asks you to stand up and proclaim your love for someone, don’t do it. It’s a trap. It brings out your glib and oily arts, and makes you sound like a wrong ’un. Shakespeare knew this, and maybe the Queen knows it too, thought it is hard to tell what a person knows when they only animate around horses. Saint George wouldn’t have a clue. Justine Greening chose the Queen’s birthday. Seriously. Because, you know, look how hard she works. |
| This time 20 years ago, to worship the monarch so feverishly was rather abnormal. People did it, but it was niche; like fans of the Archers, monarchists would identify themselves mainly to one another, and leave the rest of us alone. It was understood at the end of the 20th century, that we lived in a post-subservient age, in which no one was de facto superior to anyone else. | This time 20 years ago, to worship the monarch so feverishly was rather abnormal. People did it, but it was niche; like fans of the Archers, monarchists would identify themselves mainly to one another, and leave the rest of us alone. It was understood at the end of the 20th century, that we lived in a post-subservient age, in which no one was de facto superior to anyone else. |
| Against that backdrop, the continued existence of a royal family was ugly and overly ornate, like a rococo dresser in the middle of an open-plan loft space. We dealt with it by pretending it wasn’t there, since there was no way of squaring a fundamental belief in equality with an aristocracy built on ancient conquests and questionable bloodlines. There wasn’t much republicanism, because such a seismic act would have required more passion than anyone could muster. | Against that backdrop, the continued existence of a royal family was ugly and overly ornate, like a rococo dresser in the middle of an open-plan loft space. We dealt with it by pretending it wasn’t there, since there was no way of squaring a fundamental belief in equality with an aristocracy built on ancient conquests and questionable bloodlines. There wasn’t much republicanism, because such a seismic act would have required more passion than anyone could muster. |
| Occasionally someone would make a salty remark about why the royal family didn’t pay tax. Very few people were contorting the known facts of the universe to make a heroine out of someone they didn’t know, who only waved. The prevailing view was that the Queen was a diligent public servant who was probably a decent enough person, but it was hard to valorise that work when it came accompanied by such anachronistic privilege. | Occasionally someone would make a salty remark about why the royal family didn’t pay tax. Very few people were contorting the known facts of the universe to make a heroine out of someone they didn’t know, who only waved. The prevailing view was that the Queen was a diligent public servant who was probably a decent enough person, but it was hard to valorise that work when it came accompanied by such anachronistic privilege. |
| There was no sense of her as a kind of modern-day Hercules. Back then, if you’d thumped on too much about the workload, you probably would have had some resistance – how hard it could be to trundle around the world in outrageous plushness, periodically having to stop and ask some strangers what they did? | There was no sense of her as a kind of modern-day Hercules. Back then, if you’d thumped on too much about the workload, you probably would have had some resistance – how hard it could be to trundle around the world in outrageous plushness, periodically having to stop and ask some strangers what they did? |
| Now that sort of criticism is sacrilege, and any deviation from the rhetorical register – sentimental gratitude, aerated awe – is considered perverse. Yet in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death the Queen’s fabled reserve, previously seen as a trait that was neutral-to-benign, was suddenly a critical flaw. Her failure to come back to London immediately to lament the loss of her former daughter-in-law was considered to be the death knell for the family. It had failed to modernise, and was the incarnation of all that was missing, emotionally, from British aristocracy, and indeed Britain generally. | Now that sort of criticism is sacrilege, and any deviation from the rhetorical register – sentimental gratitude, aerated awe – is considered perverse. Yet in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death the Queen’s fabled reserve, previously seen as a trait that was neutral-to-benign, was suddenly a critical flaw. Her failure to come back to London immediately to lament the loss of her former daughter-in-law was considered to be the death knell for the family. It had failed to modernise, and was the incarnation of all that was missing, emotionally, from British aristocracy, and indeed Britain generally. |
| It is incredible, now, to consider that it was Tony Blair’s intervention that persuaded the Queen to break with protocol and address the nation at some time other than Christmas. The change in their respective status is intertwined: the monarchism has been driven by the dishevelment of the political culture. Dignity is an unreachable note in a parliamentary landscape where the most senior among them are squabbling about who’s shared a platform with whom. | It is incredible, now, to consider that it was Tony Blair’s intervention that persuaded the Queen to break with protocol and address the nation at some time other than Christmas. The change in their respective status is intertwined: the monarchism has been driven by the dishevelment of the political culture. Dignity is an unreachable note in a parliamentary landscape where the most senior among them are squabbling about who’s shared a platform with whom. |
| Michael Gove, speaking far too fast on the radio about how to rediscover Britain’s greatness, creates nothing more than the queasy sense of being governed by sixth formers. Commentators and news-makers, those charged with making order out of events, have started to look to the Queen for the reassurance of some institutional maturity, its absence being so marked elsewhere. Yet she cannot fill this vacuum. She may feel a duty to, and I’m sure wouldn’t stint on the work. But she is simply a person, born by accident into a circumstantial hierarchy. | Michael Gove, speaking far too fast on the radio about how to rediscover Britain’s greatness, creates nothing more than the queasy sense of being governed by sixth formers. Commentators and news-makers, those charged with making order out of events, have started to look to the Queen for the reassurance of some institutional maturity, its absence being so marked elsewhere. Yet she cannot fill this vacuum. She may feel a duty to, and I’m sure wouldn’t stint on the work. But she is simply a person, born by accident into a circumstantial hierarchy. |
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