The coronation of King Charles III is planned for May 6. It will be a pared-down coronation compared with his mother’s 70 years ago. Two thousand guests, rather than 8,000. It’s contemplated that the dress code for aristocratic guests might be plebeian: lounge suits rather than ceremonial robes. Prince William is taking a keen interest in modernising the ritual.
Why? Partly, out of genuine respect for ordinary Britons undergoing hardship as economic austerity cuts deep into their lives.
But also, it has to be said, out of a sense of self-preservation for the ‘family firm’. The monarchy can’t survive if it seems completely out of touch with the victims of the likely budget cuts – hungry schoolchildren, families in cold homes, pensioners unable to pay the bills, the sick waiting to be treated by a crumbling NHS.
It will be a coronation with a social spirit. But no one’s pretending that Charles is a born-again social democrat. It’s part of a royal family tradition.
In 1902, Charles’s great-great-grandfather, Edward VII, had appendicitis on the eve of his coronation. It had to be postponed by six weeks. The food for the 250 grand guests, however, had already been prepared.
In her history of feasting, Charlemagne’s Tablecloth, Nichola Fletcher tells us what happened next.
The caviar was put on ice; the 2,500 quail, too. The jellies (Bordeaux and liqueur) were poured into 250 magnum champagne bottles. But the consommé with pheasant quenelles and snipe cutlets à la Souvaroff wouldn’t keep. Six or seven courses from the coronation banquet went straight to the Little Sisters of the Poor to be distributed among the poor families of Whitechapel and the East End.
This sensitivity to social circumstances has a name, noblesse oblige. It’s an ethic of social responsibility that is unapologetically aristocratic and paternalist. It displayed itself again at the coronation banquet of the last Hapsburg emperor, Karl I of Austria.
In 1916, the times were uncannily like ours. A war was shaking Europe. Economic conditions were depressed. There was a growing gap between rulers, cosmopolitan imperial elites and the ruled, moved by nationalist sentiment. (A terrible pandemic, the Spanish flu, was soon to follow.)
Royal feasts had to be lavish and Karl’s was no exception. Fletcher tells us the 19 courses, served on gold platter, included pheasant, goose liver with truffles, venison, quail in jelly, pork, duck, turkey, mountain trout, a fruit jelly ‘from Turkey’, pastries, bonbons and marzipan.
By all accounts, Karl was a good man with a keen sense of social responsibility. (The Catholic Church beatified him in 2004.) Each dish was presented to Karl and the Empress Zita with a bow and flourish; then it was whisked back to the kitchen. After a toast to the country, the food was distributed at a nearby hospital housing war victims. Still, Karl’s throne did not survive the war and he died, aged 34, 100 years ago this year.
It’s possible to act generously, beyond expectation, with social benevolence towards people struggling to survive, yet within a political system that cries out for radical reform.
The prime minister tells us it’s a budget with people at its centre. People, eh? Who else could be at its centre? Lizards? (Not at the rate we’re building in pristine areas.) Birds? (Not as long as hunters conduct ‘research’ with ministerial blessings.) Trees? Ha!- Ranier Fsadni
Which brings us to this year’s budget and how it’s being sold to us.
The prime minister tells us it’s a budget with people at its centre. People, eh? Who else could be at its centre? Lizards? (Not at the rate we’re building in pristine areas.) Birds? (Not as long as hunters conduct ‘research’ with ministerial blessings.) Trees? Ha!
There’s no budget that doesn’t have people at its centre. Tax cuts and rises, investment and austerity, all have people at their centre. Even Mad Liz Truss’s mini-budget, although most people at its centre were victims.
We’re told this budget has a social spirit. Again, it would be impossible not to have one. Even the most unimaginative or incompetent budgets operate, inevitably, with society in mind.
Feudalism, fascism, patrimonialism and conservative paternalism are concerned with social welfare too. The issue, as always, is the kind of ‘spirit’ we’re talking about. Does it treat us as adult or political minors? Does it want our emancipation or subjection?
You may entertain any number of views about this year’s budget. Good, bad, best-to-be-hoped-for, unimaginative, whatever. But you are not free to call it ‘socialist’ just because it had a number of handouts to mitigate inflation and help firms survive.
If, to redeem itself with its increasingly angry base, the Labour Party calls this budget socialist, or social democrat, it only shows how detached its leaders are from their supposed principles.
There is nothing socialist in handouts and subsidies from a government whose inner circle thrives on eye-watering salaries, cronyism and ad hoc tax exemptions. Even Gulf princes manage that.
Nor is there anything socially democratic about a budget if the government won’t answer media questions about how it spends funds. True social democrats are accountable and transparent. They don’t behave like feudal barons.
How social is a vision that has yet to address the aspirations of youth, who increasingly express a desire to live elsewhere? It’s as barren as the vision that treated foreign workers as chattel, with no preparation for what large numbers meant for schools, hospitals, infrastructure and neighbourhoods.
It’s mendacious to speak of austerity as the only alternative to this year’s budget. The Chamber of Commerce, for one, has indicated an economically mature, strategic alternative.
Commentators miss the point if they speak of unaccountable spending, bloated public-sector employment, environmental destruction and lack of long-term planning as though they were merely overlooked side issues. They’re at the core of the business model of our current political system.
Whatever the state of our finances this year, the present system is unsustainable. There is no historic precedent that hasn’t crashed. The republic will not survive rule by barons, even if a few do have a social conscience.
The system needs an overhaul before it’s too late for all of us.