A Royal Wedding is the perfect distraction from cock-ups and cuts

The Paul Richards column

In 1981, when there were only three TV channels and a digital watch was considered hi-tech, you can understand why so many people organised street parties to celebrate the wedding of Charles and Di. There wasn’t much else to do, especially for all the newly-unemployed people. It was a truly national event, like the Silver Jubilee four years earlier. Anyone aged 40 or over in 1981 had memories of VE Day. Most people in public life, including the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet, had been adults in the Second World War. In 1981, they were closer in time to the Coronation than we are to Charles and Di’s wedding. Like the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special, watched by half the British population, the Royal Wedding seized the popular imagination.

It is hard to imagine the same happening this April, when Kate Middleton and Prince William get married in Westminster Abbey. Isn’t Britain a fundamentally different place from 1981? That’s the success of Ashes to Ashes, showing us how far we’ve come from the deferential, racist, stunted Britain of 30 years ago. Most children seldom eat at a table with adults, using a knife and fork. What will they make of a ‘street party’, after years of being told to avoid going out of doors for fear of abduction? The ADD will kick in before the chicken drumsticks are even served. In communities where people don’t know their next-door-neighbours, will communal events attract the masses they did in 1981?

That’s not to say the Palace and No.10 won’t try. By April, the government will be even more unpopular. By April there will have been more government resignations, more policy cock-ups, more unpopular cuts to cherished local services. A Royal Wedding is the perfect ‘feel-good’ distraction. Panem et circenses, as Boris would say. We’ve already seen the Palace PR machine show a little ankle this week with the earth-shattering news that the royal couple will be driven in a car to the Abbey, and driven away in a carriage. Majesty magazine has already condemned this dangerous break with tradition. At least we’re going to get a ‘balcony moment’ at Buckingham Palace, when the newlyweds kiss in front of a crowd of millions, or as the Sun reported it: ‘Wills and Kate to snog on balcony.’

There’s a grid of announcements mapped out – the guest list, the best man, the dress, the rings, the honeymoon – leading up to the day itself. In 1981, David Cameron camped out on the Mall catch a glimpse of Charles and Di. Would he have waved his Union Jack just as enthusiastically if he had known that Charles intended to keep on sleeping with his mistress, Diana would have been driven half-mad by mental cruelty and rejection, and the marriage would end in prurient affairs, unseemly revelations and divorce?

Not everyone camped out on the Mall, or even attended a street party. One group of royal wedding refusniks took a ferry to Boulogne to drink wine in a country which had guillotined its aristocracy. The party included Sue Nye, Peter Mandelson, Jack Dromey and Harriet Harman. Three of the day-trippers ended up in the House of Lords, and two in the Cabinet. I wonder if they’ll stage a re-enactment?

There’s already a body of opposition building up. There are those complaining about the cost. Westminster Abbey, unsupported by the taxpayer or Church Commissioners, will be half a million pounds poorer because of lost entrance fees in the days leading up to the wedding. The contribution from the Palace has been described as ‘token’ not full compensation. The democratic rationalists at Republic are making the deeper arguments about democracy and the role of monarchy in the modern age. Their commemorative ‘I’m not a Royal Wedding Mug’ is flying off the shelves. The Royal Wedding is the perfect opportunity to review the role and function of the monarchy, and decide, with calm heads, what kind of monarchy we want, if any. We should start with the simple demand that no taxpayers’ money should be spent on a wedding where the groom belongs to a family in the top 1% wealthiest families on the face of the planet.

Last time, Cameron waved the flag, and Harman got on the ferry. This time, our response should be calibrated in tune with these austere times and changed popular culture.