When The Grovelling Stops

The brief period of euphoria is about to come to an end: for all Britons, Royalist, Republican and in such matters agnostic, the routine drudgery of everyday life is about to return. As Winshton put it after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, “we may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing, but let us not forget for a moment the toils and efforts that lie ahead”.

Toils and efforts, indeed: Charles the Third has received his Coronation, at significant cost to the taxpayer, in a country where there are now more than 2,000 food banks. He, his family, and senior politicians have overseen lavish feasts, yet food poverty is real and spreading. For him, the world is excellent. For millions of citizens, it is bad, and becoming rather worse.

Small wonder that our free and fearless press continues to demand that its readers keep looking over there: last night’s Coronation concert is today’s front page lead for most of them, with the Prince of Wales widely quoted telling Brian “Pa, we are all so proud of you”, and “Granny would be proud”, while not mentioning The Firm’s treatment of his own late mother.

It is partly for that reason that those same papers churn out an incessant tide of knocking copy, almost all of it bad faith, bottom feeding yellow journalism, aimed at Will’s brother, the Duke of Sussex, and wife Meghan. Haz has rocked the boat, has never forgotten Diana, and never will. He is in the process of suing the arse off the Mail and Sun. Hence the hostile copy.

But the feel good factor brought on by the Coronation is about to prove no more than fleeting. Those pundits using the Royals to tell others what they should be doing, how they should act, and in what manner they should deport themselves are, equally, about to realise the limits of their authority. Britons will realise there are haves and have nots. And that most are have nots.

They will begin to look around their corner of King Charles’ realm, seeing the cracked pavements, the littered parks and greens, the boarded-up shops, the closed banks, the empty town centres of an evening, the increasingly deserted bus stations, the closed pubs, cafés and restaurants, and the long trudge or obligatory drive to the supermarket, and realise they’ve been had.

Thus will the fawning, grovelling and faithful experience the end of euphoria and the return of reality. They were told things would improve, especially with the departure of the UK from the European Union. The reverse is proving true: Brexit has brought soaring costs, especially of food and drink, while the rest of the EU continues to do better than us. We were conned.

That realisation is beginning to dawn: support for rejoining the EU has now climbed beyond 60% in a recent opinion poll. Those politicians who continue to deny this, refuse to consider moving closer to the European mainstream, are out of touch with the people they claim to represent. And that, to its continuing shame, includes the Labour Party.

Increasingly authoritarian laws, exemplified by “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”, which brings us ever closer to “looking at me in a funny way”, and its implementation on the streets of London last weekend with the lifting of peaceful protesters and even a group of volunteers working with vulnerable people around Westminster, will ultimately provoke a backlash.

Here, too, the politicians are out of touch: not just the Tories who brought us this legal equivalent of state intolerance, but a Labour opposition that dare not say boo for fear of antagonising an equally intolerant press establishment. No erosion of human rights is too much for them: they therefore appear allied with the Tories. They think this will gain them power. They’re having a laugh.

Will this increasingly grim status quo endure? Only until someone, somewhere, charts a way out of the decline, cutting through the fog of media falsehood and misinformation, providing leadership rather than abject subservience to an establishment, too many of whom, especially in the media part of it, treat this as a kind of game. For the have nots, it is anything but.

Labour appears not to have taken on board Galbraith’s definition of leadership: “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership”. Living standards. The NHS. A decent environment. And not authoritarianism.

Nor has the party taken on board Galbraith’s corollary: “A leader can compromise, get the best deal he can. Politics is the art of the possible. But he cannot be thought to evade”. Keir Starmer and his faithful lieutenants have been evading big time. Last week’s local election results were better for the Lib Dems, and especially the Greens, than The Red Team.

As the Coronation vanishes from view, so politicians must respond as the people rediscover reality. Who will lead? And if no-one will, what then?

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