THE notion that Britain’s royal family represents the superglue that keeps the kingdom united is a gross exaggeration, but the House of Windsor can be relied upon to provide a useful distraction every now and then.
Amid a wide range of alarming political and economic trends, a substantial proportion of the media’s feeding frenzy has been focused on a photoshopped image of the Princess of Wales with her three children. For what it’s worth, the officially released photograph was in the first place a response to weeks of speculation about Princess Kate’s well-being, alongside the thousands of words devoted to the king’s health concerns.
Prostate exams — let alone allegations of paedophilia, such as those unconvincingly denied by Prince Andrew — is probably not what Walter Bagehot imagined when, more than 150 years ago, he identified the monarchy as the ‘dignified’ part of Britain’s political structure. But then, Bagehot also referred to cabinet government as the ‘efficient’ part of the political establishment.
Efficiency has hardly been a hallmark of British governance for most of this century. And while the Thatcher regime could indeed be efficient, it is rightly remembered for its ruthless brutality, best exemplified by its response to the miners’ strike 40 years ago, in which all the coercive arms of the state joined forces to crush the challenge to the economic status quo.
The nation needs more than a change of government.
It took decades for the union movement to find its feet again, and for the purportedly progressive mainstream party to recover from its ‘New Labour’ incarnation under Tony Blair — which Margaret Thatcher recalled as her greatest achievement, apart from anointing Blair as her favourite heir. Even though New Labour’s devotion to neoliberalism depleted its vote share, it remained in power until Blair’s decision to back the Bush war in Iraq, followed by Gordon Brown’s dedication to rescuing banks and financiers in the wake of the global financial crisis, marginally shifted the dial.
David Cameron stepped into the breach on behalf of the Tories, armed with ‘austerity’ and a plan for a referendum on EU membership. Both backfired, paving the way for Theresa May, Boris Johnson (whose epicurean tendencies fed his epic tendencies towards incompetence), Liz Truss (who avoided offering even the vaguest impression of efficiency), and, finally, Rishi Sunak. The incumbent PM’s strategy for limiting the extent of the Conservative wipeout evidently involves tacking further to the right.
That’s partly a response to born-again New Labour under Keir Starmer reclaiming the centre-right ground and sidelining the party’s left wing, often via suspension or expulsion, by taking a sledgehammer to almost every mildly progressive Labour platform in the interests of demonstrating a fealty to markets, the captains of industry, and conservative values.
Starmer’s predecessor as opposition leader was dislodged via a campaign spearheaded by the Israeli embassy in London and reinforced by local Zionist groups, the media, plus the Tories and much of the parliamentary Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn was elected by Labour’s membership (twice) because the innate decency and principled politics reflected in his long record seemed like a novelty.
That record included resistance to racism in any form. The smear of antisemitism ought to have been dismissed as absurd — it was clearly a vicious reaction to Corbyn consistently defending the Palestinian cause as part of his broader commitment to human rights. Even the tiniest likelihood of a British PM who might refuse to worship at the altar of Israeli supremacy was anathema to the Zionists and their acolytes.
Starmer effectively played the role of a snake in the grass, and now doesn’t dare offer any pronouncements on the Gaza genocide without checking with the Israeli authorities. That includes the deviously achieved recent parliamentary resolution on a ‘humanitarian ceasefire’, which translates as a brief interval in the deadly proceedings. After all, ceasefires are humanitarian by definition.
Anyhow, the change in government that will follow whenever Sunak takes a break from redefining ‘extremism’ as chiefly a left-wing, Muslim or ‘woke’ problem to announce the next election won’t alter Britain’s political landscape much. Growing poverty, hunger and homelessness — plus alarming degrees of alienation and racism — cannot be resolved via marginally superior management skills.
But blighted Blighty’s denizens are encouraged to ignore their mounting woes and bring out their magnifying glasses to concentrate on a young princess’s misaligned cuff or her younger brother’s extended middle finger. Perhaps that finger is pointing towards a future in which Britons will abolish the anachronistic monarch and House of Lords and usher in a meaningful democracy. But it could be a long wait.
Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2024
