THE Queen was sporting green, white and gold when I was asked to accompany her around the old Herald offices 20 years ago. My immediate reaction was one of admiration at the level of research undertaken by her people when they had first approached my people to have me checked out. Perhaps, after all, I might not need to usher her away from my office with the framed pictures of Henrik Larsson and Bon Scott and the obligatory Che ephemera.

Yet, what struck me most when I introduced her to other members of staff – few of them supporters of the British monarchy and most who’d identify with the left – was with just how much affection she was received by them. This, I think, stemmed from a very human appreciation of her decency and humility, both of which could be observed in half an hour of unforced and warm conversation.

Perhaps there was a lesson to be had here for those of us on the left who wish eventually to see an end to this feudal and dysfunctional enterprise.

For many complicated and emotional reasons a lot of working people with good politics truly admire this woman. They don’t need lessons from the leftie political elites about unearned privilege and gilded lifestyles paid for by us: they know all that but have chosen to admire her – if not the rest of her caravan – on their own terms. Accord them the respect of allowing them to like Queen Elizabeth and – by extension – her family.

That said; there’s a world of difference between quiet respect for a 94-year-old woman who goes about her business with a hint of class and the full-blown royal propaganda machine on which the BBC spends our licence fees each year. This public sector media corporation dispenses with any pretence of impartiality, objectivity or the urge to deploy the merest hint of dispassionate scrutiny where the conduct of the royals is concerned.

That the main item on Tuesday’s flagship 6pm news programme was Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was perhaps not surprising after the young multi-millionaires had hinted at racism in the royal household. That they took up half the programme with it on the day children in England were about to return to school was simply evidence of an organisation that – on too many occasions – acts as an advocacy group for the British state.

No connection is considered too tenuous; no idea too contrived for the BBC to commission fawning documentaries about royalty. In the last few years we’ve learnt about ancient royal feeding practices and their clothing and soft furnishing choices. As well as their interior décor skills we’ve also been granted peeks at the favoured techniques in herbaceous bordering and topiary in the gardens of all the royal residences.

Not even the most loyal of royal cheerleaders would claim that this family had been blessed with any exceptional abilities in the creative arts, science or philosophy. They seem remarkably impervious to anything resembling wit or original thought and have provided the square root of bugger all to our understanding of the world and people around us.

READ MORE: How the British media responded to Harry and Meghan's racism accusations

And yet, when a member of this dull clan feels moved to offer their humdrum opinion about an issue the BBC have an entire broadcasting unit at its disposal to arrive dutifully suited and booted to record the moment.

Let’s dispense here with the usual stuff about the feudal grift that is the Duchy of Cornwall; the 11 royal residences; the vast travel expenses; the re-fits; the champagne bills at London’s most exclusive nightclubs: we know all of this and seem to be cool with the fact that we are all expected to pick up the tab for it.

Let’s instead consider this: the main reason why a large proportion of the UK population is accepting of this lies in the careful monitoring of what is permitted to be taught in our schools. Thus they’ll all travel through the education system for a dozen years or so seemingly ignorant of the fact that the Windsors are sprung from an obscure and unremarkable branch of the German aristocracy who, by religious and political expediency were in the right place at the right time to uphold the divine right of political Protestantism.

IT’S for the same reasons that Britain’s evil role in the Irish Famine when they drained Ireland of its natural resources while the population starved is only hinted at. And why our role in the slave trade, until recently, was concealed. And why casual genocides throughout Africa, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent are all papered over. The BBC’s history programmes keep the lid firmly screwed on these by devoting so much of its output to the wars of empire and aristocracy.

It all amounts to a vast and very well-planned programme of brain-washing. In recent years we have become more sharply aware of how Big Tech fiendishly deploys those rascally algorithms to influence our choices and to monetise our predicted retail behaviour for advertisers.

But the British state, backed by the BBC and the aristocratic owners of mass circulation newspapers has been doing this for generations. It’s a form of HyperNormalisation, to borrow from Adam Curtis, the visionary British film-maker. In his wonderful films Curtis shows how we are all living in a carefully constructed human zoo where our behaviours and the minutiae of our days are shaped and cultivated to ensure the balance of power, influence and money is always tilted in favour of those few whose interests are best served by the status quo.

It’s a counterfeit world that unfolds in plain sight of us and which requires our attention always to be pulled in other directions.

The Harry and Meghan circus may seem like it has the wherewithal to bring down the monarchy or “rock it to its foundations” (copyright: every tabloid sub-editor in the UK). It won’t of course, because too much power, influence and money has been invested in this counterfeit family for it to fall. It’s key to maintaining the writ of the elites in the UK by putting on a high-class freak-show at regular intervals to maintain the fiction of continuity and stability.

The real damage is that another generation accepts this and thus much more stealthy examples of unearned privilege and cheating by governments and their familiars on an industrial scale goes unscrutinised and unpunished.

For, if a country can be made to approve of keeping a family like this in perpetual luxury then they can be made to accept anything at all. Especially when the BBC is around to propagate the myth.