The Queen’s funeral, and the accession of Charles III, were adorned with suitably majestic ceremony. Some of it was genuinely moving, particularly the committal at St George’s Chapel, Windsor as the coffin descended to the vault below, an authentic testament to Elizabeth II’s Christian faith. Taken as a whole, the last fortnight’s monarchy-fest tells us much about modern Britain, positive and negative.
Among the positives, the Windsors have not lost their flair for elaborate spectacles which fall just short of kitsch. Their national, heraldic and religious symbols invoke a version of state unity above and beyond the political hurly burly, which is largely the point of having a constitutional monarchy. Charles III, travelling to the four corners of his United Kingdom within days of his mother’s death, wearing a different outfit at each turn, including a kilt at Holyrood, was true to Elizabeth’s dictum that “I have to be seen to be believed.”
It doesn’t matter that many of the uniforms, regalia and ceremonies are of recent provenance—the “invention of tradition”, mostly by the Victorians, as David Cannadine puts it. It sort of works, most British people quite like it, and there is no consensus on anything better as head of state—even in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, let alone for the UK. In these troubled times that is not to be gainsaid.
The monarchy has been particularly successful at bolstering Britain and the United Kingdom. The late Queen spent much of each summer and autumn in Scotland—far longer than most of her 15 prime ministers. It was fitting that she died in Balmoral and lay in state in Edinburgh before her coffin was conveyed to Westminster. William is now Prince of Wales, in the footsteps of his father who did the job longer and better than any prince before him, including a bilingual speech to the Welsh Senedd last week which none of his ministers are capable of understanding, let alone making.
Elizabeth and Charles have embraced the devolved parliaments of the United Kingdom fully and wisely, appearing before them regularly and treating them and their leaders with proper respect. And far greater respect than any Tory prime minister has accorded them, particularly Johnson and Truss. Largely in consequence, neither the SNP nor Plaid are republican parties, while even Sinn Fein bent the knee to the new King, welcoming him fulsomely to Belfast. This is a source of significant strength to the UK as it wrestles with centrifugal forces—many of them, particularly Brexit, created by the supposedly “unionist” Tory Party.
The armed forces dominated the ceremonial of funeral and accession. Their precision and professionalism are one of the things that works in modern Britain, in part, maybe, because they see themselves as proudly serving a Crown above the tawdry political fray. The royal family embrace military service and leadership like a warrior clan. Tellingly, in the ceremonial mourning, the division between “working” and “non-working” royals (Andrew and Harry) came down to who could and couldn’t wear military uniforms featuring more gold braid, stars and ribbons than any tinpot dictator ever crammed onto their chest and shoulders. I hadn’t a clue what most of it meant, but I much prefer that Charles, Anne and William dress up like this, rather than Johnson, Truss and Starmer.
These are worthwhile benefits, helping to promote unity and political restraint in a state which concentrates virtually all its executive power in the hands of ministers from one party, which commands largely untrammelled power if they possess a majority in the House of Commons, as they almost invariably do.
Less positively, the fiction of the Commonwealth, which has no meaningful international role or benefits, is underpinned by a monarchy—and a Tory Party—which manipulates it as the pretence of a global role for post-imperial Britain. The trouble is that too many people believe the fiction, which was a significant factor in Brexit and the fairy tales told by the Brexiters about the Commonwealth as a viable alternative to the European Union.
The monarchy plays along with this pretence by deliberately underplaying its pan-European ancestry—and any role in promoting pro-European sentiment. All the crowned heads of Europe, all of them related to the Queen, were at her funeral, but you would never have known from their non-existent role in the service or any other of the events of the last fortnight.
Queen Margrethe of Denmark, now Europe’s longest-serving monarch, is the Queen’s cousin. She studied archaeology at Cambridge and is an ardent Anglophile. Why was she not invited to undertake even a reading at the funeral? Perhaps even more oddly, Joe Biden, the first US president to attend the funeral of a British monarch, played no part either, and was relegated to the 14th row. Instead, the readings were undertaken by the secretary-general of the Commonwealth and the UK prime minister, both of whom had ample other opportunities to pay tributes.
It was an imperial funeral in a post-imperial nation whose Tory elite still pretends that Britain rules the waves and can turn its back on Europe—and has persuaded too many of the populace of this big lie.
As for the military dimension, obviously post-imperial Britain needs proud and professional armed forces. But the almost exclusively military-religious character of the ceremonial proceeded as if these were the sole emblems of our collective national life. There was no role for the public services or even the charitable, sporting, educational and cultural organisations enjoying royal patronage. The model—and much of the equipment, gun carriage and all—was from the funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901.
We could have done with at least a modicum of Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics and its celebration of the NHS, which as Nigel Lawson remarked is the closest thing the modern English have to a religion. The irony is that the late Queen famously parachuted into the Olympics in London’s East End to huge acclaim—yet the Olympic spirit was totally absent not only from the funeral but also from the mile and a half long procession which escorted the Queen’s cortège from Westminster Abbey to the Wellington Arch. It was an entirely military affair, which felt as archaic as the Commonwealth.
Nor can it be said that the ceremonies did much for the class and cultural—as opposed to the geographical and religious—diversity of modern Britain. There were few non-white faces or non-establishment accents anywhere except in the silent queue filing past the coffin in Westminster Hall.
It was all so different from the funeral of the “People’s Princess”, Diana, in 1997. That was a quarter of a century ago, but it felt as if the monarchy had regressed twice as far back in the funeral of her mother-in-law and the accession of her ex-husband.
Elizabeth II was a product of the imperial and more socially claustrophobic 1940s and 1950s, so it is unfair to criticise her personally for remaining so faithful to them in life and death. The flip side is that she remained an ever rarer and more venerable link with seven decades of national life, a rock of continuity in a world of change. More concerning is if the 73-year-old Charles III remains stuck in the distant imperial past, and if William and Kate think that a walkabout with Harry and Meghan is the mid-21st century face of national unity.
Divinity may hedge a king, but modernity must power a nation.
