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| Diamond jubilee: an institution that hasn't let us down | Diamond jubilee: an institution that hasn't let us down |
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| After four days of jubilee junketing everyone with an opinion on the royal family had got it off their chest one way or another. The repentant republican Jeremy Paxman had belatedly acknowledged the utility and aesthetics of a decorative monarchy. An unrepentant Tony Benn declared himself unpersuaded that the Queen does not still hide unaccountable and subversive powers up her well-tailored sleeve. | After four days of jubilee junketing everyone with an opinion on the royal family had got it off their chest one way or another. The repentant republican Jeremy Paxman had belatedly acknowledged the utility and aesthetics of a decorative monarchy. An unrepentant Tony Benn declared himself unpersuaded that the Queen does not still hide unaccountable and subversive powers up her well-tailored sleeve. |
| No surprises there then. But what did the rest of us learn about our titular sovereign, ourselves and the strange, many-faceted relationship that still exists between us? As Linda Colley, historian of Britishness, noted, in 2012 a Conservative-led government has not even tried to construct a royal narrative for our times, let alone in the romantic way that Churchillian Tories evoked the New Elizabethans in the Britain of 1952, still on food rationing but cautiously optimistic. | No surprises there then. But what did the rest of us learn about our titular sovereign, ourselves and the strange, many-faceted relationship that still exists between us? As Linda Colley, historian of Britishness, noted, in 2012 a Conservative-led government has not even tried to construct a royal narrative for our times, let alone in the romantic way that Churchillian Tories evoked the New Elizabethans in the Britain of 1952, still on food rationing but cautiously optimistic. |
| That may be no surprise either from a regime unable to construct a narrative for itself. But the result is suitably postmodern. The monarchy, increasingly focused in a celebrity culture on the person of the ageing Queen, is whatever we each make of it – good or bad. The Queen's normally impassive features (what private emotions she must have suppressed as God Save the Queen rang up the Mall) give us permission. | That may be no surprise either from a regime unable to construct a narrative for itself. But the result is suitably postmodern. The monarchy, increasingly focused in a celebrity culture on the person of the ageing Queen, is whatever we each make of it – good or bad. The Queen's normally impassive features (what private emotions she must have suppressed as God Save the Queen rang up the Mall) give us permission. |
| She is the unifying symbol of national unity, unsullied by widespread institutional failure, to the six million said to have joined street parties and poured into ceremonial London. Yet the crown embodies class and other divisive scars to disaffected English, Scots, Welsh and Irish, to Islamists and intellectuals. That too is very different from 60 years ago. | She is the unifying symbol of national unity, unsullied by widespread institutional failure, to the six million said to have joined street parties and poured into ceremonial London. Yet the crown embodies class and other divisive scars to disaffected English, Scots, Welsh and Irish, to Islamists and intellectuals. That too is very different from 60 years ago. |
| Not even the vast crowds who gathered along the rain-sodden Thames on Sunday, for the royalists' Glastonbury-for-the-old festival in the Mall on Sunday night, or on Tuesday (more rain) lined ancient streets between the City and Whitehall, could quite drown out the dissenters. On radio phone-ins and on Twitter, at parties in the liberal suburbs where Polly Toynbee's photocopied republican sermon was handed out, they denounced it as nostalgic mumbo-jumbo, as wasteful extravagance or infantile dressing-up, servile and worse. | Not even the vast crowds who gathered along the rain-sodden Thames on Sunday, for the royalists' Glastonbury-for-the-old festival in the Mall on Sunday night, or on Tuesday (more rain) lined ancient streets between the City and Whitehall, could quite drown out the dissenters. On radio phone-ins and on Twitter, at parties in the liberal suburbs where Polly Toynbee's photocopied republican sermon was handed out, they denounced it as nostalgic mumbo-jumbo, as wasteful extravagance or infantile dressing-up, servile and worse. |
| Not all dissent ("Queen uses slave labour") is leftwing. Some see the Commonwealth-and-corgi-loving monarch – of all people – as the acquiescent embodiment of the multicultural society Britain has become, for which they did not vote. They must make up a chunk of the 47% of people who think ours a worse country than in 1952 – though most of us are much healthier and at least three times richer. Not that it stopped the newcomers joining the throng. "More British than the British" and "She's our queen now too" they told ubiquitous TV interviewers. | Not all dissent ("Queen uses slave labour") is leftwing. Some see the Commonwealth-and-corgi-loving monarch – of all people – as the acquiescent embodiment of the multicultural society Britain has become, for which they did not vote. They must make up a chunk of the 47% of people who think ours a worse country than in 1952 – though most of us are much healthier and at least three times richer. Not that it stopped the newcomers joining the throng. "More British than the British" and "She's our queen now too" they told ubiquitous TV interviewers. |
| Yet the republican sentiment, rational and secular, is easily understood in 21st-century Britain. The real mystery is what moves the majority, largely godless but easily moved by reality TV or a dignified old lady, to put out the bunting, fill the Mall and buy 50,000 tins of jubilee biscuits from M&S, a million Union flag socks from Asda. The bling, the OTT flummery in silly uniforms, the archaic ritual and underwhelming fly-past exposed to the global village, it was post-imperial kitsch, as camp as a Gay Pride rally, and just as jolly. Does it take a Queen to rid most Brits of their inhibitions and dress up? | Yet the republican sentiment, rational and secular, is easily understood in 21st-century Britain. The real mystery is what moves the majority, largely godless but easily moved by reality TV or a dignified old lady, to put out the bunting, fill the Mall and buy 50,000 tins of jubilee biscuits from M&S, a million Union flag socks from Asda. The bling, the OTT flummery in silly uniforms, the archaic ritual and underwhelming fly-past exposed to the global village, it was post-imperial kitsch, as camp as a Gay Pride rally, and just as jolly. Does it take a Queen to rid most Brits of their inhibitions and dress up? |
| Perhaps the opaque mystery of monarchy explains the wider mystery of our allegiance. Most British institutions have let us down lately: the army in Iraq as well as MPs in the till, the divided church, the greedy City and immoral media, the leftie BBC – in the Fleet St doghouse ("Bring back the Dimblebys") yesterday for dumbed-down coverage – and mediocre football team, the oft-careless NHS. | Perhaps the opaque mystery of monarchy explains the wider mystery of our allegiance. Most British institutions have let us down lately: the army in Iraq as well as MPs in the till, the divided church, the greedy City and immoral media, the leftie BBC – in the Fleet St doghouse ("Bring back the Dimblebys") yesterday for dumbed-down coverage – and mediocre football team, the oft-careless NHS. |
| The palace had its wobble in the 1990s, but that was then. This weekend even Prince Charles, usually his own worst enemy, managed a graceful and humorous speech in front of assorted Sir Cliffs, Pauls and Eltons (plus Dame Shirley) of the showbiz aristocracy performing outside the home of the woman he called "Your Majesty – Mummy" on Monday night. For him this was an important audition. | The palace had its wobble in the 1990s, but that was then. This weekend even Prince Charles, usually his own worst enemy, managed a graceful and humorous speech in front of assorted Sir Cliffs, Pauls and Eltons (plus Dame Shirley) of the showbiz aristocracy performing outside the home of the woman he called "Your Majesty – Mummy" on Monday night. For him this was an important audition. |
| Would the Queen have preferred a quiet night in with the telly and her uxorious husband – the celebration's chief casualty – at hand ? You bet. But being a good trouper is what she is about. As on Sunday's four-hour cruise and again in St Paul's, the City and Westminster, all of them past enemies of the crown, she toughed it out; a little slow and hunched at times but not bad for 86. | Would the Queen have preferred a quiet night in with the telly and her uxorious husband – the celebration's chief casualty – at hand ? You bet. But being a good trouper is what she is about. As on Sunday's four-hour cruise and again in St Paul's, the City and Westminster, all of them past enemies of the crown, she toughed it out; a little slow and hunched at times but not bad for 86. |
| In return a substantial slice of her fellow countrymen are still prepared to invest respect, affection, even love in her to express uncomplicated patriotic feeling, much as they do when singing the radical William Blake's Jerusalem. The dutiful consistency she is seen to represent in a changing world makes it that much easier, a rare public service that does what it says on the By Appointment tin. | In return a substantial slice of her fellow countrymen are still prepared to invest respect, affection, even love in her to express uncomplicated patriotic feeling, much as they do when singing the radical William Blake's Jerusalem. The dutiful consistency she is seen to represent in a changing world makes it that much easier, a rare public service that does what it says on the By Appointment tin. |
| When some future Shakespeare, Schiller or Verdi looks to the House of Windsor for dramatic inspiration they will settle on "Diana", not Elizabeth II. But life lived always in the emotional fast lane can be exhausting. The Queen represents safety, stability and a kind of security that The X Factor can't provide even if it wanted to. | When some future Shakespeare, Schiller or Verdi looks to the House of Windsor for dramatic inspiration they will settle on "Diana", not Elizabeth II. But life lived always in the emotional fast lane can be exhausting. The Queen represents safety, stability and a kind of security that The X Factor can't provide even if it wanted to. |
| One of the week's new anecdotes claims that the only time she was seen quarrelling in public was with the Queen Mother. "Who do you think you are?" the older Queen was overheard to snap. "I'm the Queen, Mummy, I'm the Queen." Indeed you are, Ma'am. | One of the week's new anecdotes claims that the only time she was seen quarrelling in public was with the Queen Mother. "Who do you think you are?" the older Queen was overheard to snap. "I'm the Queen, Mummy, I'm the Queen." Indeed you are, Ma'am. |
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