The Diamond Jubilee puts British psyche under the microscope

I should say "English psyche" and not "British psyche", because most of the people who call the Diamond Jubilee a great example of "British" culture and tradition are, in fact, English.
To be more precise, the people who are most endeared to the monarchy are those who live on the "right" side of the North-South divide; the line roughly drawn between the source of the Severn and The Wash. And when I say "right" side, I of course mean the side including London.

This is the reality of the Diamond Jubilee: as reported in "The Guardian" here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/05/bbc-jubilee-propagandising-failed-scotland of the almost 10,000 street parties in England and Wales, there were only 60 in Scotland. Of those, 20 were organised by The Orange Order, itself a right-wing unionist clique. I also wonder how many were held in Wales, and how many were held north of the north-south divide.

The point I'm making is this: the monarchy and the traditions of "Britain" are mostly celebrated by people who live within two hours drive of London. It's telling that the people who are most likely to call themselves "British" are the English. What does this tell us?

The UK, its dependencies and the Commonwealth are, looking at it from a neutral point of view, the leftovers of Empire: an Empire that was begun by the English.

It's worth comparing the UK to other contemporary "post-Imperial" states. France got rid of its monarchy in 1789, but continued to have a republican empire until the 1960s, like the UK. France has plenty of pomp and circumstance in its culture, but it has few obvious "imperial leftovers". For a start, it's one country, not four like the UK, which helps to define its identity much more clearly. Defining "Britishness" is difficult for the average Briton; a Scot or a Welsh person has a much easier task describing their own culture, leaving the average English person to fall back on out-of-date concepts that are more Imperial than English.

Compared to France, Spain has more "post-Imperial" similarities to the UK. Although it lost its empire quite a while ago (South and Central America in the early 19th century, and Cuba and the Philippines at the end of the 19th century), its Imperial legacy lives on in the many millions that speak its language, as does the Anglo-Saxon legacy. It still retains its monarchy, like ours (though it also flirted with republicanism for a while); and Spain is constitutionally like the UK in its fragmented make-up. Spain's devolved regions, Catalunya, the Basque Country, and Galicia, in some ways correspond the the UK's Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales respectively, in that they have a distinct sense of identity (and language) separate from the core.

There are other, smaller, European "post-imperial" states (the Netherlands being another similar example), but these two offer the most relevant comparisons.

Getting back to the Diamond Jubilee itself, it's also telling to look at how the different celebrations were organised.
The river pageant, designed to replicate the pageants that happened on the Thames hundreds of years ago, was not only a damp squib; it looked shoddy at times, and reeked of amateurish organisation. It was impressive in only its mediocrity. It was a testament to the scale at which Britain's one-time might has been  reduced: for example, having just a single aircraft carrier that doesn't even have any aircraft. I heard that when the pageant was shown in France, for example, the French cameras only showed close-up shots of the boats, so as not to embarrass the fact that the scale of the pageant was so under-whelming. Although there were meant to be thousands of boats, they seemed organised in a haphazard way, with large gaps between segments of the pageant.
And as for the official coverage of Britain's state-sponsored TV channel, the less said the better. It was even more embarrassing to watch the amateurish presentation offered by the BBC.
Then there was the Concert outside Buckingham Palace. This was organised better, but the choice of performers and presenters was also quite indicative of the second-rate quality that Britain too often displays to the world.

As a spectacle overall, the Jubilee revealed a more telling truth: that, more than ever, Britain is a world power in the twilight of her age. Like former empires that have fallen on hard times, shedding their colonies and their prestige along the way as their economies have declined, they have little more than their name to trade on.
Like Rome at the end of its empire, when it was populated as much as by immigrants as by natives, this empire is a shadow of its former self, its population living in denial. Like Byzantium at the end of its long years of empire, surrounded by enemies and indifference, shorn of its territories till there is just a bare rump state left, all that is postponing the final collapse is the goodwill and charity of its contemporaries.

Many English people have become complacent: they assume that Scots do not have the courage to break away by themselves. Perhaps this is true, but it is also true that Scots will only stay in the Union so that they can get what they want out of it: military protection, as long as Scots can conduct their own affairs unmolested from the old Imperial capital, London - what is called "devo-max". That will leave England with its surly neighbour Wales, and England itself is a heterogeneous cocktail of racial backgrounds, with some cities in having a majority non-white population.
This may all have a whiff of fatalism about it, but that is not my intention - I am just describing what the reality is without passing judgement. I feel no pity. All nations have their rise and fall: Greece is going through a traumatic period of its national history, but it has been through worse.

Britain has had a long and enviable history; an unlikely location for a world empire. Its legacy has been enormous, but witnessing its slow fading out of the limelight, with the inevitable demonstrations of that fading, as we have seen with the Diamond Jubilee, is oddly poetic.
Some say that the Queen embodies all that is true about British culture. It seems truer to say that she embodies everything that was true when she became monarch, sixty years ago; when the British Empire still existed, and those "values" seemed so clear. So to look at the Queen is to see a living embodiment of how Britain has changed since she came to power, and what Britain has lost.

From what I can see, what Britain has lost most of all is its identity, never to return.

A culture of connections and glass ceilings drags Britain's integrity into the gutter

"Corruption" is something that British people tend to think of something that affects the Third World. When people think of corruption, they think of bribery, brown envelopes, nepotism, a closed and unresponsive elite, massive government waste and grossly dysfunctional government.

But they need look no further than our own shores; for the political and media circles that turn the cogs of British power is full of it.

 To be fair, a lot of "corruption" nowadays, compared to thirty or forty years ago, has evolved and been modified to fit into the times. Direct bribery, such as it is, is at a much smaller degree than it was thirty years ago.
The Metropolitan Police, the largest and most dysfunctional police force in the UK, have made large steps forward; yet, there are still a number of openly corrupt police officers who have taken bribes from media figures, as we have seen (ironically) from the media.
Bribery is a left-over symptom of the wider issue that pervades the two institutions that have the most influence on British society, politics and media.

The wider issue is this: the culture of connections and exclusivity, in particular that culture which pervades the right-wing media and politics.

The long inquiry into media and politics that has been the Leveson inquiry has opened-up this particular can of worms for all and sundry. Although the average person on the street does not pay much attention to it, the constant drip-drip of revelations in the press about the reliance that many politicians have on the media (in particular the Murdoch media group), and the influence that the Murdoch media group has long sought and abused, leaves little to doubt. The average person on the street will (rightly) think that the whole thing stinks of sleaze, of an exclusive portion of society that pulls the levers of power and that the average person has no chance of controlling.

This is the definition of corruption, albeit just one segment of it. The media is corrupt in that it is an industry that only people who are from well-off backgrounds have a fair chance of gaining entry to. If you want to be a journalist, and have no contacts within the industry already, the only way to get your foot in the door after university is through being an intern. But these are virtually unpaid positions, so anyone who is unable to fund such a position without their own funds, or (more likely) their parents', has little chance of being able to afford such an indulgence. So by definition, you need to be from a wealthy background to stand a chance.

An example of this can even be seen at the quality of TV personalities and organisers at the BBC, as the massive criticism of the BBC's TV coverage of the Diamond Jubilee river pageant shows. The common criticism is that you had presenters who didn't know what to talk about (discussing banal and pointless issues without being remotely informative), and a poorly-thought-out programme for the spectacle. This is a direct result of the closed world that media represents; incompetence follows corruption, as night follows day.

(I should also say that the same goes for the arts: anyone interested in working in fashion/design/arts and so on, would likely find a similar scenario, unless they were lucky. This is what usually happens in London, where these industries, as well as media, are centred)

Then there is politics. As I wrote on my previous article, we can learn a lot about the nature of politics from the quality (or lack of) in government personalities. Jeremy Hunt is perhaps the best example of this kind of corruption of connections and exclusivity. I described him as one of the government's "donkeys" in my previous article, but it's also indicative to look at how he, and the likes of David Cameron and Gideon/George Osborne, got where they did.
They did not get there through "merit": Jeremy Hunt worked as a manager of a design company for three years, and his staff thought he was a clone of Harry Enfield's character, Tim Nice-But-Dim. The fact that he had no opinion on most subjects, showed no talent at most things whatsoever, but that his parents were both solidly Conservative, made him an ideal candidate for Conservative MP. And so he became one.
This tells you all you need to know about the Conservative Party. Of course, Labour and the LibDems may suffer from some form of exclusivity, but it seems that the Conservatives are the most guilty of this form of corruption.

When you have a system in place that excludes anyone who is one not "one of us", this is the definition of corruption. This system runs like a virus through segments of politics and media in Britain today. This system, by definition, breeds only incompetence upon arrogance, and is why corruption is the plague of Third World governments.

It is ironic, then, that other nations considers Britain's parliament and media to be the envy of the world. What is there to envy? Their exclusivity? Better to look somewhere else.

The Diamond Queen? Let's think about that...

Yes, it's the Queen's sixtieth anniversary as monarch of the UK and head of state of a bunch of other former colonies. Wonderful.

Before I go on, I should say this as a disclaimer: I have nothing against the Queen as a person. As far as I see, she seems like a nice woman, overall. True, it's been said that she cordially detested Diana after her divorce with Charles, and the way she initially dealt with Diana's death made much of the public question their loyalty to her person, but no-one's perfect. Queen Victoria, after the death of her husband, Albert, was not seen in public for something like thirty years. Thirty years! That's like if Elizabeth's husband, Philip, had died in, say 1970, and she stayed out of sight in Balmoral till the turn of the millenium. No wonder that the calls for the abolition of the monarchy reached their height during the middle of Victoria's long years of isolation.

No, the point of what I am saying is not to defame the Queen or the monarchy as a whole. In general, I'm a constitutional agnostic: I'm indifferent to if the head of state is elected or born to rule, so long as the government is democratic. What I'm objecting to is the sickly-sweet, gushy, pseudo-hagiographic portrayals of the Queen by the media. She's not a saint, or a national treasure, really: she's just a person who's had a very specific upbringing.

Yes, the Queen has been there for sixty years; yes, she has been, to paraphrase the media "the stalwart of British values and continuity through decades of unprecedented social and technological change" - but come on! So, by that definition, has practically any person over the age of seventy.

Any person who grew up during the Second World War can say the same thing, and, moreso can any person who actually fought for the country during those "darkest hours". I respect the Queen as much as I respect any person who has done something for the sake of others; but it would be much more fitting for the media to, rather than glorify "The Diamond Queen", better to celebrate "The Diamond Generation" - the generation that fought for the survival of Britain and (what was then) the Empire.

The Queen is now well into her eighties. That age, and the anachronism of her values, were starkly exposed with the death of Diana; she was seen to be out of touch, not realising that the idea of "stiff upper lip" had been slowly growing out of fashion for years. It took the midas touch of Tony Blair to carefully point her in the right direction, and show a public human side that did not come instinctively. That must have been a real eye-opener for the Queen at the time; for a monarch that had known nine Prime Ministers to be outshone by a fortysomething political newcomer.

Yes, the Queen has been through a lot in her life. Her younger sister, Margaret, was often stealing the limelight with her with her larger-than-life charisma and relationships. Yes, if Margaret had been the elder sister, the monarchy would rarely have seemed dull to the public. Margaret shared her charisma and love for the risque with her uncle, Edward VIII, and her great-grandfather, Edward VII. Margaret was also like her mother, the forever-popular and charismatic Queen Mother; Elizabeth, however, was her father's daughter.

If one was being unkind, where the media uses euphemisms as "a reign of assured stability", you could say that the Queen's long reign has been pretty dull compared to some previous monarchs. But I am not unkind: any monarch's reign mostly depends on the personality of the monarch, and the Queen has from the start of the reign made it clear that she sees her role as maintaining a sort of symbolic rock of understated but secure British values.

In terms of values, it can fairly be argued that the Queen no longer "represents British values", as Britain has not just socially progressed, but has been socially transformed almost beyond recognition from 1952, when Elizabeth Windsor became Queen. Not only is she one of the longest-reigning monarchs of the UK, but she has been monarch through a time of unprecedented social change (and I say this even though I realise am repeating the same sickly-sweet phrases the media use). By that definition, there is an argument for saying that the Queen should abdicate in favour of someone more suited to reflect British values as they stand in 2012 rather than in 1952.

But that would be to misunderstand the Queen's temperament. She is not the kind of person to abdicate for sake of convenience; for her, it is a lifelong commitment that she made upon her coronation. If that means she is still Queen come 2020 and beyond, then so be it.

That's what it means to have a monarchy: a monarch is for life, not just for Christmas.