Passing of the Queen leaves Britain paralysed by sycophantic mania

As I write we’re nearing the end of the first day after the death of the Queen and it’s all getting a bit ridiculous. The Queen was “the best Queen we’ll ever have”, she was a comedian with the common touch, she was a rock, a great Christian, a master with horses, a beacon for the whole world ... it goes on and on and on describing her as if she was a deity rather than a human being.

It’s all so over the top, so false, so unmeasured.

At times like this Britain just feels like a farce of a place, dripping in deference and servility, a media and wider society completely unhinged by the experience, as if her passing has unbottled some mania, some unresolved deep well of weird un-nameable delirium.

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It’s a difficult balancing act for the monarchy and the state media to navigate through. They have to simultaneously manage the resurrection of Camilla, highlight Prince William and Kate (but not too much), while really milking the “Scottish connection”/Balmoral angle, which they have been doing ad nauseam.

Perhaps most difficult they have to pretend that the monarchy (and by extension Britain) can change and is evolving, even while we see manifested the most ancient and feudal aspects of the country with its endless titles and grotesque Ruritarian performances.

They are unlikely to judge the public mood, such is the mania of the official mourning. Everything must stop. This will go on for weeks not days, services, laying in rest, moving her body about, going to Holyrood, going to St Giles, going to London by train with helicopter footage, more laying in rest, more crowds, more mourning, more hyperbole, then a funeral, then a coronation and on and on.

There’s two very difficult questions hanging in the air, unspoken as the tone police parade social media and the realm of public discourse.

THE first is: does the goodwill and respect for the individual person Elizabeth transfer across to her successor? How much of the trust and faith she has adhere to her as an individual – or to what extent does it come from the role and the position?

My feeling is that much of it (rightly or wrongly) is about her and the mythology around her than it is in the institution. This presents Charles III and his court with a problem.

All of the mythology and stories around the Queen have gone. The young princess emerging out of post-war Britain, the new TV phenomenon – the silent still and calm presence who avoided the carnage of most of her children’s marriages.

Instead we have an elderly King with an unpopular wife emerging from a dysfunctional family. This scenario, this story has a very different energy to work with.

The second is that the strikes have been called off for now, but the Britain that Charles III reigns over is one in deep social crisis more bitterly divided than anyone can remember.

This doesn’t just go away as we parade endlessly in forced mourning and mandatory deference. It will still be there when the bunting goes away.

It’s unlikely that the state media and the surround-sound media will take this on board. But there’s a risk that this completely over-the-top coverage will backfire as people realise that all of our own problems remain. None of it has been resolved by Liz Truss’s offensive “solutions” to protect the profiteering energy companies at the expense of ordinary people.

So when the sycophancy eventually subsides and the official mourning period ends, we can look around Britain 2022 and see a country wracked with deep institutional poverty, disfigured with inequality and with millions and millions of people facing eviction, debt, fuel poverty and destitution.

MUCH has been written about how the Queen was a lifeline, a tangible link to the past, and in particular to the Second World War, a totemic historical event for British people to be proud of.

And this is true, she was. But you can’t just live in the past. If the only story a country can tell itself is about past glories and wonders of 80 years ago, it is lost.

The ridiculous solemnity and forced grieving is so over the top it will not end well.

While people have room for some remembrance and some shock at a loss of continuity they will get sick of it.

A woman who lived a supremely privileged life lived to a grand old age. There is very little sad about that.

Few senior editors or producers will have the nous to sense any of this such is the level of hysteria we are in. For someone to take a stand and suggest a change of tone or some diversity or an iota of critical thinking would risk their career.

But the reason for this hysteria is obvious.

If the Queen was routinely held up as the “glue of the nation” and a “unifying force in a nation that is visibly pulling itself apart” – she has gone and it’s highly unlikely that Charles can play the same function.

One of the myths of Britain is that it’s a place that evolves that changes and adapts. But the replacement of a Queen by a King and of Johnson by Truss says otherwise.

It’s a broken Union in which millions of ordinary people can’t meet their basic most basic needs, a reality that is met with a shrug from their government.

They’re scared. The Queen was a powerful unifying force and the slightly hysterical coverage of her passing is not going to be capable of papering over the cracks.

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A more confident union of nations might have appropriate remembrance and marking of this significant event, but might also allow some critical thought, some different voices, some room for reflection on what the role of the monarchy might be and how might want to organise ourselves.

None of that is possible in a country where a form of celebrity feudalism holds sway and mandatory reverence and fealty is considered normal.

Many commentators have made play of the fact that she came to the throne at a time when their was still rationing in place.

It’s a neat – but unrecognised – symmetry that there will be rationing again this winter in many households across the country.