Oh Spare Us This Woke Monarchy
Congratulations, Harry and Meghan. I hope you have a long marriage. What I hope doesn’t last quite as long is this Woke Monarchy your nuptials apparently herald. Everyone’s raving about how the monarchy has finally landed in the 21st century, shaking off its old, oh-so-white ways to become a modern, multicultural outfit that signals to all Brits, whatever their hue, that they are much-loved. It’s such a patronising mission, as patrician as any earlier big royal event that was likewise justified as a means of making the plebs feel fleetingly good about their lives.
It was a fascinating wedding. And a nice one, sure. The chamber music was lovely. As was the Kingdom Choir’s rendition of ‘Stand by me’. The sight of David Beckham making smalltalk with Nicholas Soames was hilarious. But the whole thing was just so knowing and strained. It was a carefully orchestrated stab at projecting a new image of monarchy that ended up as a confused pageant that was neither one thing nor the other. The new aristocrats — slebs like Clooney, Oprah and Elton — awkwardly rubbed shoulders with old aristocrats most of us would struggle to name. The black American episcopalian preacher was a hit with the crowds but left the queen and Zara Phillips visibly perplexed. The presence of the black choir was celebrated as a herald of the New Britain and yet everyone ended up singing ‘God Save the Queen’, as they always must, because the queen, for all this institution’s much trumpeted modernisation, is still an instrument of God to lead the British people.
The wedding captured but of course did zilch to resolve a simmering tension in the upper echelons of British society. It brought together modern-day ‘kweens’ (Serena, Amal, Posh Spice) with the actual queen, leaving us unsure who we’re meant to bow to these days. The media talking point — and clearly the guiding principle of Prince Harry’s team — was ‘inclusivity’, yet the monarchy remains the least inclusive organisation in the land. You literally have to have been created by a particular person’s sperm to have a place in it. The rest of us have more chance of being included in a mission to Mars than we do of becoming members of the ‘inclusive’ House of Windsor.
It all spoke to a monarchy at sea, and a political class — they always have their fingers in events like these — uncomfortable with Britain’s old traditions but unable to give meaning to its new ones. The most bizarre idea is that Meghan’s arrival will make the monarchy more representative. The monarchy isn’t meant to be representative — it’s meant to be the opposite. It is supposed to stand above both grubby politics and us mere mortals to embody a superhuman moral aura that might steer the nation. This inherently anti-representative, aloof nature of monarchism is precisely why some of us would prefer to live in a Republic of Britain. Making the monarchy inclusive is political surrealism.
What people mean when they talk about a new ‘representative’ monarchy is that it will make ordinary people, Her Majesty’s apparently confused subjects, feel good. The fact that the royal family’s latest addition is mixed-race will apparently open the eyes of the throng to the importance of multiculturalism. Meghan could ‘change Britain’s attitude to race’, says one headline. ‘A new era dawns’, says the New York Times, telling us that ‘after generations of aristocratic matches, [this union] more closely reflect[s] modern Britain’. (It forgets that middle-class Kate Middleton also wasn’t an aristocratic match.) Commentators tell us black Brits will now feel like worthy citizens, and white Brits will get a lesson in inclusivity. ‘From now on, it will be impossible to argue that being black is somehow incompatible with being British’, says one columnist.
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