RogerRabbit
Master Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 05 Sep 2004
Posts: 748
Location: Oregon
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 Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 11:43 pm Post subject: Time for some British Humor |
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;sessionid=BCKXJF5CAGTNNQFIQMGCM54AVCBQUJVC?xml=/opinion/2005/04/12/do1202.xml
| Quote: | I yield to no one in my disdain for Britain's petty and graceless political class, but I have to confess a certain reluctance to go once more unto the breach with my dear friends opposite.
You'll recall that yesterday, in the midst of the leader page's general rejoicing over Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of - no, hang on, the Prince and Duchess of. . . well, anyway, in the middle of a bunting-draped leader, The Telegraph's editorial eminences deplored the decision of the three party leaders to show up in lounge suits, rather than the morning dress favoured by the other chaps - Melvyn Bragg, Jools Holland, David Frost, Rowan Atkinson, etc.
As a general rule, I'm all for dressing up as much as possible. But, honestly, I doubt whether the most extensive guide to court protocol and precedence says that, for 20 minutes in a register office and a "finger buffet", you've got to climb into knickerbockers and buckled shoes. Does Charles Kennedy own morning dress? And, if not and you were in his Hush Puppies, would you have gone along to Moss Bros and rented it?
It's one thing if you're going to be making chitchat over the finger buffet with the King of Tonga and the Governor-General of Grenada. But when it's Ken Branagh and Meera Syal and Richard E Grant, showing up in morning dress could easily make you the equivalent of the schlub Best Sound Editing nominee from New Zealand who's the last guy at the Oscars in a conventional tux when all the A-listers are going for that Nehru-jacket-with-diamond-clasp
Granted, by opting for lounge suits, Messrs Blair, Howard and Kennedy were making a point. But, at a royal wedding whose every aspect was without precedent, why get hung up on dress code? And in the sense that everyone was winging it, the nuptials were a strangely apt embodiment of modern Britain at the start of this election campaign. What do you hold on to? What do you let slide? At what point have form and tradition so parted company from reality that it's no longer tenable?
That's also the problem those three party leaders face. I've no reason to disbelieve the crop of polls showing Labour and Conservatives neck and neck, but, unlike American polling, where distinctions between "registered" and "likely" voters are carefully studied, none of us has any clear idea which unloved party will do the least effective job at further depressing the turnout of whatever unenthusiastic faction of its dwindling base is most unresistant to being cajoled to the polls.
I would be very surprised if the trend toward ever lower voter participation were to be significantly reversed on election day, even with the assistance of postal ballots, Mr Blair's answer to dimpled chads.
Considering what's just been (Iraq) and what's just ahead (the European constitution), the inability of British politicians to stir up anything but apathy is curious. The Guardian complained yesterday about Michael Howard's assertion that "for too many years immigration has been a no-go area for public debate", and I sort of agree with them. It's not that it's a "no-go area for public debate", but that you can debate it all you want and in the end nothing happens.
There's a palpable feeling that the decisions on these things are made elsewhere: you could vote in the biggest Tory majority in history to clamp down on immigration fraud, and Osama and Mullah Omar would still be living on welfare in a council flat in Tottenham and jumping ahead of you on the hip surgery waiting list, and there's nothing Her Majesty's Government could do about it.
Even in its pooh-poohing of Mr Howard, the Guardian tended to confirm this suspicion, its analysis of immigration leaning most heavily on accusations of "crisis rhetoric" and "xenophobia" levelled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' representative in Britain - the implication being that this figure carries far more weight in these matters than any humdrum political party dependent on the votes of mere electors.
Indeed, what "no-go area" generally means is that you can vote for Tweedle-left or Tweedle-right but all the great questions have been settled by transnational elites sufficiently insulated from your tedious parochial griping. And if the European constitution wiggles through - which is still the way to bet - the Westminster elections next time round will be even less consequential.
In what sense then will the United Kingdom still be a monarchy? The Queen's other realms - Barbados, Tuvalu, Belize - are now more monarchical than the head office, at least in the technical requirement that laws can only be passed by the Crown-in-Parliament, which is no longer necessary in Euro-regulated Britain. The prince may not be over the water, but the monarchy largely is. And, with a "European President" welcoming the visiting US President to "Europe", the House of Windsor will be reduced to something analogous to the nizams and maharajahs of the princely states in India.
After that, who knows? The lesson of Australia's referendum is that it's much harder to get rid of the Crown in Her Majesty's younger realms, where difficult constitutional hurdles have to be met. In Canada, abolishing the monarchy legally requires a degree of federal-provincial unanimity unprecedented in the country's history, which is why it can never happen. But in Britain it's all much vaguer, and, between the remorseless erection of the ersatz Euro-state at one end and the lounge-suit surliness of Tony Blair at the other, the monarchy could easily be whittled into oblivion.
The Royal Family have been ingenious improvisers, reinventing themselves - "the House of Windsor" - and their roles - "Head of the Commonwealth" - and their court - "Lord Bragg", "Sir Elton John" - with an ingeniousness and creativity few other fields of endeavour, from the British car industry to the British film industry, have been able to match. But the so-called public "indifference" to the royal wedding is part of a deeper fatalism toward British institutions and the British state. The Windsors have been wily adaptors to the evolving mood of their kingdom, but with the kingdom evolving itself clear out of business, who needs a king? |
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