Queen Elizabeth II watches with a smile from the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London. Photo / AP
Despite its anachronistic customs and privileges most Britons favour a continuation of the monarchy.
David Quinn has been carpeting floors in Lewes for 41 of Queen Elizabeth's 70 years on the throne and was first among the Sussex town's independent shopkeepers to festoon his high street shop window with bunting to mark her platinum jubilee.
"This is what people need — something to lift the spirits and take our minds off all the other things going on: partygate, Ukraine, inflation," he said of the four-day celebration starting this Thursday to commemorate the longest reigning monarch in British history. Thousands of public events, broadcasts and locally organised carnivals will be held across the country.
Quinn's sentiment speaks to one of the chief attributes that Queen Elizabeth has cultivated since assuming the throne at the age of 25 on the death of her father King George VI in 1952: to have remained above the fray, whether the dramas in her own family or the political turbulence of her times.
It is a characteristic that has helped preserve the popularity of the monarchy, with its anachronistic customs and privileges, over the course of her 70-year reign.
While recent opinion polls have suggested that younger Britons are more ambivalent about the role of the royal family, the overall majority in favour of the institution has remained relatively steady throughout Queen Elizabeth II's reign and was still buoyant on the eve of her jubilee celebrations. Six in 10 Britons said they favoured the continuation of the monarchy in a YouGov poll released on Wednesday.
"She has been the one constant in a rapidly changing world," said royal commentator Penny Junor. "We see our politicians as chancers, people out for their own benefit. They lie. They disobey the rules, they are narcissistic . . . All of these things are part and parcel of politics. The Queen is above all of that."
That she has been able to maintain this perception for all her decades on the throne is partly because she has kept herself unknowable and her views discreet, unlike other members of her family.
Clive Irving, who cut his teeth as a journalist in the early years of her reign and is author of The Last Queen: Elizabeth II's Seventy Year Battle to save the House of Windsor, said she had provided a masterclass in inscrutability while lending a reassuring sense of continuity to the state during an era when Britain's influence in the world was in the throes of decline.
He described the ups and downs of her reign using the "antithesis principle". "If she is the antithesis of turbulence, it works for her. If she is the antithesis of progress it doesn't. At times of big positive social changes from the 1960s on in terms of cultural freedom, then she looked like she was behind where the people were," he said. The death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 was another moment when the Queen appeared out of step with the public mood.
"But if you get a divisive political situation like Brexit or the (1980s) miners' strike, her calming, neutral quality makes her seem important," said Irving.
As Quinn, the carpet fitter, suggested, this modus operandi is working well for the Queen. With the government of the day mired in scandal, the world in the throes of geopolitical and economic turmoil, she, though frail at 96 and for the past 14 months without her husband Philip, soldiers calmly on.
Speaking from years of personal knowledge of the Queen, a former senior aide believed that the loyalty she has persistently commanded has been down not only to the sense of detachment she has presented, but also the personal sacrifices she has made.
Her strong sense of duty was first articulated in a speech she gave in Cape Town at the age of 21 when, echoing her namesake Queen Elizabeth I, she pledged to devote her life, however long, to service.
Her willingness to listen and accept advice along the way has also helped ensure that she moved just enough with the times, the aide said, adding that the Queen would also present a warmer version of herself when occasion demanded.
Supporters have remarked on her empathetic appearance at the Grenfell Tower in west London, in the aftermath of the 2017 fire, which claimed 72 lives, compared with the awkward response of then prime minister Theresa May. More recently she produced a heartfelt appeal to national solidarity in the frightening early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
"It's a matter of luck getting the right person on the throne, and we are very lucky to have had her," the former aide said.
The possibility that luck is running out has added to a sense of national anxiety after recent signs of her mortality in the run-up to the jubilee.
While last year at the G7 summit in Cornwall she mixed happily with fellow heads of state, for much of this year the Queen has had to forgo public engagements as a result of what the palace has said are "mobility" issues. In a sign that her duties are gradually being transferred, her son and heir, Prince Charles, for the first time delivered the Queen's Speech setting out the government's legislative agenda at the opening of parliament last month.
"She is a world-class figure, Charles is not," said Irving, alluding to the soft power her longevity has brought to Britain on the world stage. "Her going would be another sign of uncontrollable change."
While it is culturally taboo to speak ill of the Queen among large sections of British society, the same does not apply to her heir or to other members of the family, raising in turn the possibility that the wider issues of the accountability, privileges and place of the monarchy in a 21st century democracy could soon come under greater scrutiny.
Ann Simpson, who was at a recent discussion on the future of the monarchy at a pub in Lewes, remembers being swept up in the almost religious spirit of the coronation in 1953. At the time she was 15, and universal suffrage had been in place for less than three decades. She and other school children watched the events at the cinema in a special coronation documentary as the TV signal had not yet arrived in Scotland, where she grew up.
Simpson said that she regretted that the Queen had not moved faster to modernise the monarchy and tailor it to leaner times. "There was a real opportunity to shift things. I wish she had adapted more," she said.
But she added: "I see her as someone who has shown great stamina and consistency and has taken her role very seriously."
Written by: William Wallis
© Financial Times
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