“ I know,” said the Queen pensively, “that the only way to live my life is to try to do what is right, to take the long view, to give of my best in all that the day brings and to put my trust in God.”
It is not a complicated credo. It expresses the dutiful, dogged ordinariness which enrages intelligentsia, bores republicans rigid, and comforts the humble. Perhaps that is why, 50 years on, the crowds turn out to applaud an aged monarch battered by social change and family scandals. On The Mall in June, hoarse from singing and suffering flag-stick wounds, we were all struggling away from the final balcony appearance when a woman near me said: “You know, she’d have been out there waving, even if only two people and a dog turned up.”
Yes, I thought: that’s it. The Queen is there for us, whether we care or not. As survival strategies go it may prove to be the subtlest of all. Let lesser royals petulantly threaten to spend the rest of their lives ski-ing, or move to America and turn their backs on an ungrateful nation. The Queen won’t, and we like her for it. Beneath all our Americanised susceptibility and global pretensions the old Britain survives, waiting for a chance to say “Mustn’t grumble” and “Could be worse, could be raining”. The Queen strikes that chord. The contrast between the unglamorous persona and the pageantry is unique: there was a curious moment at the Golden Jubilee horse spectacular at Windsor when the Household Cavalry escorted her landau into the arena. Under the floodlit castle, flanked by the glitter and jangle of magnificent young men, sat not some fairy prince and princess but a tidily dressed elderly couple, he looking keenly around like any old gent on an outing, she a bit shy, lifting a tentative hand.
Personally, I like that. I am aware, though, that it drives some people crazy: they wish we would grow up and stop wanting both glitter and matriarch. A hilarious think-tank pamphlet demanded this year that honours should be given “in a democratic ceremony at the House of Commons, presented by the Speaker in clothes he would be happy to wear on public transport”. I prefer the jubilee remark by Martin Amis: “Sometimes every nation needs a holiday from reason. On our holiday, we do no harm.”
Either way, it seems a good moment to review what we have learnt this year about the relationship of Queen and people. This is not the same as the relationship of palace and media. The media are not the people: we try to lead, but in the end we must follow. The “stealth jubilee” succeeded despite numerous editors and opinion-formers, who began by joyfully predicting a flop and were wrong-footed by evidence that real people were keen, even if they saw no reason to advertise June parties in February. The hostile stories mutated into more helpful ones, lambasting local authorities and insurance companies for making street parties difficult; those bodies swung into line, and community celebrations proliferated.
Two other things jolted the media. The first was the death of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. When Princess Margaret died commentators were scornful, but the old pictures had the opposite effect. They reminded us that the Princesses were once beautiful, the Snowdons smart and witty, and that the years wear us all down in the end. They created a reflective mood, with compassion for the Queen. Then the Queen Mother died. Again, some media resorted to sneers about privilege: but suddenly the decorous but decorative funeral arrangements caught the national imagination. In a time of security alerts we enjoyed the sheer nerve of parading the Koh-i-noor diamond through the streets of London, followed by half the Royal Family on foot. Moreover, in a demonstration that government serves the nation, not vice versa, we had the delightful spectacle of Cabinet and Opposition leaders penned up like schoolchildren, paying honour to a centenarian who for complex historical reasons somehow represented the rest of us. In defiance of expectation people queued to file past the coffin, day and night. The Palace dispatched Princes and Princesses out to chat. News crews caught the spirit and sought out Rastafarians and teenagers in the queue. It was a funeral carnival.
The other PR coup was less public. The Palace gives parties for professional groups, and invited “the media”. The Queen spent two-and-a-half hours practically body-surfing through crowds of the rudest, most irreverently reptilian press with her polite opener of “It’s so nice to meet the media!” and well-judged expressions of concern about David Beckham’s foot. Numerous scoffers threw in the sponge at this point, and wrote amazingly polite pieces about her: when the fierce republican Jonathan “Bring home the Revolution” Freedland softens, you know something has happened. It was, I think, her sheer courage that turned them round. Journalists are not accustomed to gentle smiles from people they torment.
So the tours were a success and the jubilee weekend happy and glorious. With two million on the streets of London, there were fewer arrests than on a normal weekend and railways and the Underground rose to the event heroically, handing out sweets to travellers. The crowds in the Palace gardens made themselves at home (Michael Parkinson idiotically opened the concert booming “don’t be awed by your surroundings” to picnic-parties who had been making whoopee in shellsuits for three hours). The day after the gold coach procession and the eccentric carnival finale, the Queen was seen visiting a bus garage to say thank-you. Business as usual. The other notable thing was that so few people wondered who was running the weekend: for security and co-ordination it was, inevitably, a Home Office committee and later one from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport under the relevant ministers’ aegis. But with miraculous self-restraint, neither the PM nor his Cabinet did any grandstanding. Most people, if asked, would say that it just “sort of happened”. That was a sort of triumph, too.
So what do we learn? That people like a party, and a modest monarch is a great focus; that being British can still feel good; that the matter of Diana, while not forgotten, is largely forgiven; that royal faithfulness wins affection; and that a wise government stands back and keeps out of Black Rod’s way when these national mysteries are afoot.
Then came the Paul Burrell trial. Hysterical journalism says the jubilee year was ruined, but I am not sure. The Queen did not “intervene”: she gave evidence that would have been irrelevant if there had been any truth in the police story of his selling things. Once the police admitted that this was nonsense, her evidence became important again and she gave it. It was the judge who stopped the trial. Sane people can grasp that much. As for the succeeding welter of stories, few were damaging — apart from the dodgy psychic saying that the Duke of Edinburgh called Diana a trollop, which he explicitly and credibly denies. One revelation was powerfully favourable: that the Queen corresponded weekly with Diana even after the divorce, and was not the cold horror she is portrayed as.
The really uncomfortable effect is elsewhere. If I were a royal adviser my dismay would be reserved for the Prince of Wales’s reputation. While his mother wins affection for being quietly faithful to family and nation for half a century, the unfortunate Prince has no such reservoir of habitual love to draw on. Apart from the shadow of his late wife’s misery, serious harm has been done by glimpses and allegations of warring courtiers, favourites, hissy-fits, extravagant self-indulgence and over-artful spin-doctoring at St James’s Palace. It is not Charles’s fault that he never will have his mother’s history of long service as monarch; his charity work is exemplary and his support of the jubilee year was modest and appropriate. But none of this outweighs the year’s negatives. Even the matter of Camilla Parker Bowles is unresolved. The other week my own liberal views on the matter were shaken when, at a provincial literary lunch, I met a unanimous chorus of “We will never, never accept her”.
Odds are worryingly stacked against the Prince of Wales right now. At the end of 2002 the monarch is closer to the people than she has been for years, but her heir is farther away. Monarch very safe: monarchy itself rather less so. Its past is more than satisfactory, but the future is all to play for.
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