This whole four-day Jubilee celebration is more than just an excuse for an enormous national party. It’s why it’s more even than just a celebration of having achieved six decades on the throne.
Its real value lies in the wonderful transformative effect upon the nation of the monarchy itself, which through such events brings out once again the best in people. It does so by bringing the nation together in what unites rather than divides. As people said yesterday over and over again, it’s the coming together that’s so joyous. They suddenly find that they all have something that they share and want to celebrate together.
The fact is, however, that the monarchy is immensely popular. Having been through an extremely rough patch in the days after Princess Diana’s death, it is now supported by some 80 per cent of the people.
Indeed, the Queen is far more popular than any elected politician. A recent poll suggests that four times as many think she is more concerned than politicians about their own problems and three times as many believe she is more in touch with ordinary folk.
Through a number of ways — such as her Christmas broadcasts, and what she says and does on her numerous walkabouts and at her garden parties and the like — she shows over and over again how deeply she feels for and cares for the people.
Politicians don’t care for the people. They merely want something from them — their vote. The Queen wants nothing from anyone. Her life really is devoted to serving the public.
In addition, people feel that the Queen is grounded. She is a country woman, rooted in the unchanging landscape of Britain and its natural rhythms.
She is therefore utterly, totally, eternally reliable. She embodies authenticity in an age of charlatanry and spin.
The deeper reason people love her — and they do love her — is that she represents a steadfast point in a tumultuously changing, often disturbing or terrifying world. People feel that so much of Britain’s identity and culture is being lost or trampled underfoot.
In an era of deepening flux and chaos, to have such a ‘rock in a stormy sea’ becomes ever more important to people. So the notion that in an inexorably changing society the monarchy becomes evermore irrelevant is the exact opposite of the truth.
Listen to those who have occasion to speak to her on a regular basis — Prime Ministers, the Archbishop of Canterbury — and you hear them all testify to her remarkable wisdom, keen observation and kindness.
The people see other virtues in her with which they closely identify. She is stoical, she never makes a fuss, but just gets on with it.
That’s the spirit of Britain: just getting on with it.
