Brendan O’Neill won’t expect his name to show up on the royal honours list after this scathing piece:
Now that the I do’s have been done and the dress has been papped to death, it’s time to put the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton into perspective. Friday’s knees-up in London and other parts of Britain was not, as both right-wing fantasists and bitter republicans would have us believe, evidence that everyday Brits remain in thrall to monarchy. Rather, the Big Day confirmed just how far the monarchy has been hollowed of meaning, and the extent to which it has rather desperately thrown its lot in with one of the few institutions that still has political purchase in Britain today: celebrity culture.
The observing classes were in equal measure overexcited and disgusted to see so many little people waving Union flags on Friday. For monarchists, this was evidence that Britons still have ‘great affection’ for their Queen and her brood and all that they represent — including hereditary privilege. For the more fashionable Windsor-weary set — republican commentators at publications such as the Guardian and the New Statesman — the sight of hordes of happy people cheering a prince and his gal was utterly alien. They are ‘brainwashed drones’, sniffed one columnist, partaking in a ‘monstrous [display] of imperial pride’, said another.
What both these cheerers and sneerers amongst the chattering classes fail to appreciate is the extent to which the royal wedding was a celebrity event rather than an imperial one. And people related to it accordingly, cheering and photographing Will’n’Kate not as their future natural rulers, but as individuals who have the aura, and authority, of celebrity. This was a celebrity happening not only in the much commented-upon fact that slebs such as David Beckham, Elton John and Tara-Wotsit-Wonkynose squeezed into the pews alongside the King of Tonga and the Queen of Denmark, but also in the fact that all those Union flags were handed out to the revellers by Hello! magazine. Responsibility for adding a nationalist gloss to Friday’s proceedings was effectively outsourced to the army of ‘Hello! helpers’ who ‘lined the royal wedding route’ armed with thousands of factory-made Union flags.
