The sadness of the Queen's jubilee

....and what I learned from lunch with the sovereign

It should be a moment of joyous celebration. Elizabeth R, as she signs herself, is marking her platinum jubilee. The United Kingdom’s longest serving monarch can feel great pride in the popular respect and affection for her found in every corner of the land. And yet. As she scales back her duties to manage failing health, the Queen’s much-deserved satisfaction must surely mingle with deep anxiety. Her kingdom has never seemed as disunited as during the twilight of her reign.

The sovereign’s (strictly limited) official role is set down in the constitutional textbooks. During Elizabeth’s long reign the real-life responsibility has reached much wider. During often turbulent times, she has served as a focus for stability and national unity. The crown has provided a symbol of shared identity and patriotic pride. The Queen’s secret strengths - a source of grudging admiration even among many who count themselves Republicans - have been patience, constancy and self-restraint. She does not do gossip. 

I met her many years ago at a private lunch, where I was fortunate to be placed directly opposite her on a small circular table of about 12 guests. The topics of the conversation - and they ranged widely - remain state secrets (well, strictly off-the-record anyway), but I don’t think I will be placed in the Tower for saying that she was sharp, amusing and, once or twice, irreverent. Like her son and heir Charles, she has strong views on bad architecture.

Strict Royal protocol says that at such occasions, the monarch will talk only to the dignitaries seated either side of her. Her courtiers, I suppose, want to shield her from unwelcome surprises. Yet she made no complaint when, breaking the rules, I gently lobbed a question from the other side of the table. 

After that, the conversation around the table flowed quite normally. As far as it was possible to say, the Queen enjoyed herself. In any event, the host never received the expected reprimand from the Palace for the blatant breach of protocol. And I learned that if you are the sovereign you can fix your make-up at the lunch table.

What I also took from the occasion was a distinct impression of royal nostalgia - regret for the passing of traditional standards - alongside a stubborn readiness to confront the world as it had become. Perhaps, and this is only my supposition, she had learned something from a brief falling out with the national mood after the death of Princess Diana a few years earlier.  What was certainly evident was that, above all else, she saw her duty as keeping the show of the road, whether that be sorting out junior royals, or more importantly, providing a sheet anchor for a united United Kingdom.

Those in the know say she has worked hard, whether it be taking seriously the constant flow of state papers, welcoming foreign dignitaries, opening hospitals and new railway lines or bestowing honours on local volunteers. It cannot have been fun playing host to the late Nicolae Ceaușescu or, more recently, to Donald Trump. She has been the face of the nation at the Trooping of the Colour and at Remembrance Day. This before the “soft power” foreign travel and holding together the Commonwealth. “She’s the cement…and, by God, we need it”, one senior Downing Street official told me not so long ago. 

During 70 years on the throne, she has watched her kingdom endure more than its fair share of trials and tribulations - think loss of empire, economic descent to the role of the “sick man of Europe”, and a 30-year war in Northern Ireland. All this alongside the well-publicised troubles of her own family, most recently the controversy engulfing her son Andrew and the rupture with her grandson Harry. Royal flinching has been done in private, as has mourning for the loss of her beloved husband and partner Prince Philip

The Queen has seen up close the flaws and foibles of the 14 prime ministers who since 1952 have trekked to Buckingham Palace, Windsor and Balmoral for royal audiences. She must, then, be tough. But none could have caused as much grief as Boris Johnson. 

The monarch now finds herself with a prime minister whose most recognisable character trait is a compulsion to tell lies. She has personal experience too. At the height of the Brexit crisis in 2019 Johnson lied when persuading her to prorogue parliament - a decision she was then obliged to reverse.

It’s here we come to the anxiety that must hang over her jubilee. Prime ministers, she knows well, are sooner or later turned out of office. In Johnson’s case the hope must be sooner. But how much damage has already been done to the fabric of the union?

By wrapping Brexit in the flag of English nationalism, Johnson has turned fissures into fractures. Scotland is looking again at a case for independence made much stronger by the fact that it has been locked out of Europe at England’s whim. In Northern Ireland, the prime minister’s double-dealing has destabilised the Good Friday Agreement and reopened the question of Irish reunification. 

London and a handful of other big cities have been set in opposition to the towns and villages of provincial England. Conservatism has been redefined as a constant fight between “them and us”, with Johnson presuming to lead the people against the establishment. In Westminster and Whitehall, he has set what the historian Peter Hennessy has called in the Financial Times a “bonfire of the decencies”. Britain’s international standing has never been lower.

Queen Elizabeth can only look on. Will this, the 96-year-old monarch must wonder, be the inheritance of her son Charles?