Historians, anthropologists and – hopefully – psychiatrists will be busy for years trying to figure out why the British did Brexit, but it’s clear they still mean it, since they persist with emphatic displays of nose-despite-face-ism.
Exhibit A: a poll showing Britons want the royal family to talk more about social issues – the very habit that sent the Duke and Duchess of Sussex fleeing to America in public odium.
Exhibit B: the Jaguar rebranding, which attempts vigorously to repel the demographic that can afford its cars’ steep prices in favour of one that struggles to afford rent.
Other examples abound, notably with respect to electric cars and heat pumps. Both are well accepted in comparable European countries, but Britons seem militantly opposed – hostility exacerbated by the country’s remarkable achievement in making electric cars mostly more expensive to run than petrol or diesel.
Postage is now so expensive it’s been calculated that given cheap fares, one could save money flying to Europe and posting one’s Christmas cards from abroad than buying 100 first-class stamps from the local post office.
But the Daily Telegraph Ipsos poll showing Brits want the royals to talk more about social issues and less about their personal lives does rather take the Battenberg.
Few things aggravate the populace more than wealthy aristocrats banging on about conservation, the planet and mental health. Living in palaces and estates, they can hardly engage on housing affordability – not even Prince Andrew, who now claims to have stumped up sufficient millions to stop his big brother, the King, evicting him from Royal Lodge.
As for the royals’ personal lives – which poll respondents said they least wanted to hear about – you could power the nation’s electric fleet for free, given the energy generated from royal gossip.
The reportage of it, factual and speculative, and the massive reciprocal reader participation, much of it self-aggrandising huffage about what nonsense it all is, keeps the media afloat.
As for Jaguar, the pre-launch promo for the venerable British marque’s new all-electric fleet was as bonkers as any Eurovision entry. A group of non-binary, unexplainedly aggrieved-looking people, most dressed in Teletubby suits, advanced menacingly and wordlessly and contemplated redecorating a lurid desert-like set. The prospect didn’t appear to cheer them up. The narrative, like the stretch-and-grow suits, remained opaque. There wasn’t a car anywhere.
Jaguar also announced it had flattened and mattified the gleaming springing-cat logo and scrapped the “Growler” snarling-face badge altogether. When people expressed dismay, the company suggested they were bigots. When controversial MP Nigel Farage – a typical Jag owner: old, white, male and wealthy – echoed the dismay, the company said he was exactly the type of customer it no longer wanted.
Notwithstanding the massive own-goal scored by the bank that last year tried to sack Farage as a customer, actively alienating one’s existing customer base before securing its replacement is a risky commercial practice.
Whatever the merits of the new Jags, belligerence towards baked-on customers is a daring new strategy – even were a brand not struggling already.
The polled attitude to the royals is plainly self-deluding – as with polls showing people mostly claim to watch documentaries, when ratings prove it’s actually reality TV all the way.
But maybe the Jag rebrand – near-universally derided – will give the country something to rally around. Downgrading a premium brand, valued even by those who could only buy one courtesy of Lotto, is the antithesis of why a majority still supports Brexit.
Suffer the de-fanging of the leaping cat, and how long before Rolls-Royce’s Spirit of Ecstasy bonnet ornament will be rocking a stretch-and-grow?
