Whatever one thinks of the monarchy as an institution or the royal family as people, the Queen Mother’s death is obviously a sad occasion: she lived through a whole turbulent century, preserved a dignity and charm that don’t seem to come easily to the younger members of the Firm (apart from the Queen and, arguably, Prince Philip), continued to carry out public duties to the very end long after lesser mortals would have retreated into grateful retirement, and – partly by refraining from speech-making and giving interviews, partly because of her down-to-earth interests in horse-racing, gin and large overdrafts – inspired genuine affection among a wide cross-section of the population. But there is more than one way to interpret the massive turnout of people queuing for up to ten hours to file past her coffin in Westminster Hall, standing on a chilly morning outside Westminster Abbey to listen to (and participate in) her funeral service and lining the route of her final journey from the Abbey to Windsor, her final resting-place. Of course many, including tourists, were simply drawn to a great spectacle and a historic event taking place during and just after a holiday weekend, lavishly (indeed excessively) covered for days on end by the media: somewhere to take the children, and to tell the grandchildren that "I was there". Others also certainly went out of respect and affection for a splendid old lady, still admired, especially by the older generation, for staying in England throughout the bombs and rockets of world war two. But the unexpectedly large scale of the popular turnout has been attributed by many media commentators to more than any of these things: as evidence that the monarchy and the royal family are still hugely popular, despite the mocking and sniping of a small minority of effete republicans, and that the royals needn’t be so defensive about their roles and their future. I wonder if this is true. After Princess Diana’s death and the tide of emotion which that had evoked, the Economist magazine, no nest of lefties, warned that the only remaining member of the royal family who attracted real affection and admiration (as distinct from the Queen, who perhaps evokes respect and admiration rather than love) was now the Queen Mother, who in the nature of things was not going to live for ever: and that the Queen Mother’s demise would leave the royal family dangerously short of anyone with the iconic status enjoyed by both Diana and the Queen Mother. Possible candidates for the role certainly include Prince William and perhaps even Camilla: but neither quite seems to fit the bill, and it’s hard to avoid the impression that the royals have finally lost their chief remaining asset.
However, love and affection are by no means the normal or traditional attitudes of the British towards their royal family, and we can be sure that – barring some personal or national catastrophe – they will be with us for a few generations yet. A columnist in the Guardian of the day of the funeral asserted that the "only one really good argument against abolishing the monarchy is that doing so might be more trouble than it was worth… there will always be more important things to worry about". This is an obviously absurd proposition. On any rational calculation, the one really good argument against abolishing the monarchy is that a substantial majority of the population want to keep it. But it’s true that if ever an overwhelming majority came to favour abolition, the task of disentangling the monarchy from our constitution, society, procedures, ceremonials, armed forces, government services and national psychology would be immensely difficult. One of the most tricky elements would be the need to define, codify and re-assign a whole raft of unwritten doctrines and conventions revolving around the monarchy and the royal prerogative – including not least the remaining personal powers of the sovereign in regard to the appointment of a prime minister and the granting or refusal of a dissolution of parliament, and the circumstances in which those powers may properly be exercised – on which there is at present no consensus among the constitutional lawyers and experts, not to mention the problem of identifying someone else who could safely be entrusted with these powers in the monarch’s place. Another headache would be managing abolition with the 15 or so other Realms of which the British monarch is also head of state. But all this, if it ever arises at all, is a long way into the future. I doubt if even my grandchildren need to lie awake at night worrying about it (especially as they are both Americans).
I’m surprised at how little reaction there seems to have been to a remarkable letter in The Times (London Times, that would be) of 4 April, from a Mr Michael Shrimpton. The letter described the failure to give the Queen Mother a state funeral (she only had a "royal ceremonial funeral", apparently, for which the Queen, not the taxpayer, footed the bill) as "not only an insult to her beloved memory but also to that of [her late husband] the King"; deplored "the Prime Minister’s impertinence in going ahead with a visit to the US during the official period of mourning" instead of inviting President Bush to the funeral; and called the government’s failure to send additional RAF aircraft to fetch the Princes home from their holiday in Switzerland an "irresponsible breach of security". The route of the funeral procession was too short; and if there had been no official messages of condolence from "the EU and Communist China", then "those powers [sic] must forfeit any claim on the friendship of the British people." The BBC, "having failed the nation yet again", would face renewed calls for the abolition of its licence fee. My wife remains convinced that the letter was a spoof, perhaps held over from April the 1st, although dated April 2. I have a terrible suspicion that it was probably genuine. Presumably those who might have been tempted to write replies to Mr Shrimpton’s letter found themselves understandably lost for words.
The Sunday Times on 7 April recalled Tony Blair’s words at the beginning of his second term: "As a nation we are wasting too much of the talents of too many of the people. Our mission … must be this: to break down the barriers that hold people back, to create real upward mobility, a society that is open and genuinely based on merit and the equal worth of all." Unfortunately, the last six words of this passage are in bleak conflict with the rest of it: the sabre-toothed meritocracy which he is shamelessly advocating ("real upward mobility… genuinely based on merit") flatly denies "the equal worth of all", sending the weak and vulnerable to the wall. The "equality of opportunity" which is here by implication sanctified as society’s guiding principle is a deeply Tory concept, unless accompanied by a firm commitment to equality of outcomes: far too revolutionary a concept, alas, for New Labour. Of course no-one, even the most Utopian, advocates total equality of wealth and income for all; but if there’s to be any justice and humanity in the way society is ordered – real respect for "the equal worth of all" – it’s essential that the state should intervene actively in the economy to minimise the gross inequalities which ‘equality of opportunity’, market forces, flexibility in the labour market, and the rest of the capitalist shibboleths automatically produce. According to the Sunday Times Rich List published on7 April, Britain’s richest person, the Duke of Westminster, is worth some £4.7 billion, while the eleven individuals who bring up the rear in 740th place boast a mere £51 million each. Envy is no doubt a deplorable emotion, but those of our fellow-citizens who have to get by on the minimum wage, and who agonise over whether to lash out on a leg of lamb for themselves and the kids once in a while, might be forgiven for wondering what justice there is when a few hundred people enjoy wealth on such an unimaginable scale while others of "equal worth" spend their lives worrying about the weekly supermarket bill. New Labour’s commitment not to raise income tax rates – much the simplest and fairest instrument available for redistributing wealth – is incomprehensible and unforgivable.
An apology. In the last instalment of these notes, I expressed a fear – close to a prediction – that President Mbeki, as one of the trio of Commonwealth leaders entrusted with the decision on whether to endorse the Zimbabwe elections as free and fair (and if not, whether to suspend Zimbabwe from the association), would resist any formal condemnation of the conduct of the elections and therefore also resist any proposal to suspend Zimbabwe. I’m very glad to have been proved wrong. Two out of the three leaders who made the decision were African leaders (the other was President Obasanjo of Nigeria). Some of us were afraid that this would make it much harder to get a just verdict. In fact, the two-thirds African majority in the troika gave the decision extra weight and authority. We doubters should be hanging our heads.
A number of very interesting speeches and articles in the US and Britain in recent weeks signal the gradual emergence of a new doctrine of limitations on national sovereignty, the asserted right of intervention in failed states or states which may pose a threat to others from terrorism or weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or both, and the question of unilateral versus collective international action, either in the name of self-defence or to forestall or terminate gross breaches of human rights in other countries. Some of these issues were discussed by Tony Blair in his Chicago speech in 1999 and his speech to the Labour Party Conference on 2 October 2001, but in both the doctrine was in early embryonic form. Now an article by a senior serving British diplomat, Robert Cooper, made public with official authority (and so by implication reflecting British government thinking) in a collection of essays published by the New Labour-leaning Foreign Policy Centre puts more flesh on these bones: and echoes in many respects the new ideas voiced by Richard Haass, Colin Powell’s director of policy planning, in an interview in the New Yorker of 1 April 2002 about future policy against global terrorism, in which (to quote a seminal Guardian article of 2 April by Hugo Young) "he articulates a new doctrine of the limits of national sovereignty, to justify the interventions the US is currently contemplating." Before we have had a chance to absorb all these alarming (or stimulating, according to taste) new ideas, along comes Tony Blair’s speech in Texas on 7 April at the George Bush Senior Presidential Library, warmly praised (although not actually reported) by the Guardian as important, brave and in many ways reassuring. The salient points made by Haass are quoted in his article by Hugo Young, mentioned above, but the whole New Yorker interview repays study, as do some of the other essays, such as those by Tony Blair and Jack Straw, in the Foreign Policy Centre’s collection. This promises to be a fascinating debate with very significant implications for the future of international relations: the title of the collection of essays is "Reordering the World: the long term implications of September 11", which gives an idea of their ambition and scope. More later on these complex issues. Meanwhile, apologies for this blizzard of hyperlinks: but they’re all worth clicking on. Honest. (But don’t forget to use the Back button to get back to here.)
Meanwhile the debate on the rights and wrongs of an eventual military intervention in Iraq to compel compliance with UN resolutions on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continues to rage. Tony Blair has been repeating in speeches, articles and interviews his reminder that no such action is imminent and that indeed no decision to intervene militarily has even been taken. But it seems impossible to dispute his warning that Iraqi WMD programmes and ambitions, and defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, pose a real and growing threat to its neighbours and to the wider world: and that in the face of this threat, inaction can’t be an option. The use of force to remove the threat must certainly be a genuinely last resort, but it’s hard to devise an argument for saying that it can safely be ruled out. It begins to look as if the really divisive issue will be whether or not the use of force against Iraq would be illegal under international law unless expressly authorised by the Security Council. It would be nice to think that this time Washington and London will pay more attention to keeping the Russians and Chinese on board at every stage than they did in 1999 when they resorted to bombing Serbia before every possibility of a diplomatic solution had been exhausted. But in practical terms, it seems unlikely that there’ll be much appetite for a military campaign against Iraq as long as the crisis in Israel and Palestine remains at boiling point.
