If some Machiavellian palace official is working off a strategic grid, making carefully-crafted announcements designed to maximise support for Britain’s ancien regime they couldn’t have planned yesterday’s developments any better.
The news that a royal child is on the way tops out a dismal year for po-faced republicans. 2012 has unquestionably become the year of enforced patriotism and a firebreak for declining support for the monarchy, with four out of five of us now supporting its retention.
A strained insistence to join in and be part of it all has come in waves this year. First it was the Queen’s diamond jubilee. Next it was the European Football Championships. Then the London Olympics. Now it’s the royal baby. Even stalwart republicans have to concede they are on the wrong side of public opinion and in mortal danger of sounding like mean-spirited elitists. Precisely the criticism we usually level against the monarchy.
So what is a republican to do? Some of this phenomenon is quickly explainable. The jubilee was an extension of the Royal Wedding fever from last year, while admiration of the Queen as dedicated public official transcends the divide between those who take a 16th century view that kings and queens are best placed to rule us and those us who hold to the new-fangled 18th century view that they are not.
Meanwhile this summer’s twin sporting leviathans: the European Football Championships and the Olympics are golden calves for our post-religious, post-political society to worship over. The lure of tribal sports-spectating (clearly not actually playing given our problems with obesity) is now our national religion. It makes offering fealty to monarchs look positively modern.
So here we are at the end of 2012, a slam-dunk year of success for the House of Windsor, with grateful subjects falling over themselves to embrace a neo-patriotism of public-emoting, vicariousness, tribalism and sentimentality.
All we cynical republicans can hope is that surly anti-celebrity Bradley Wiggins can win Sports Personality of the Year.
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