Just what has Elizabeth Windsor ever done for us?

I’m typing this, QWERTZ keyboard and all, from an internet café in central Berlin since the broadband connection in my flat died yesterday. Taking the S-Bahn on my way here, I stumbled across a copy of today’s Daily Telegraph , discarded no doubt by a British tourist underway from Schönefeld airport. On its front page, an article by Victoria Ward is headlined, ‘ Queen renews her dedication to the nation in Jubilee message ’.

Mrs Windsor, we are told, is moved by ‘messages of support’ sent to her and her husband, and ‘will mark the historic milestone in typically modest fashion’ with a school visit, having ‘renewed’ said ‘dedication’ ‘despite her advancing years’. And David Cameron, for his own modest part, ‘led tributes’ to her.

Tributes? Really? She hasn’t (yet) died. ‘Messages of support’? That’s what you send rape victims and their parents, for goodness’ sake. And the British royalty, ‘typically modest’? An acquaintance, whilst living in Denmark a few years ago, once saw the country’s queen while out shopping for groceries. That’s modesty; gold horse-drawn carriages and private jets? I’m afraid that doesn’t count.

The full text of Cameron’s comments, as quoted by the paper, reads:

Some people characterised the monarchy as simply ‘a glittering ornament, a decoration on our national life’. That misunderstands our constitution and it underestimates our Queen. Always dedicated, always resolute and always respected, she is a source of wisdom and continuity. All my life, and for the lives of most people in this country, she has always been there for us. Today, and this year, in the 60th anniversary of her reign, we have the chance to say thank you.

Cameron of course was in PR before politics, making him a professional bullshit merchant all round, and it’s rare for anything he says to withstand a moment’s scrutiny. I don’t especially respect Elizabeth Windsor, for one thing, and I don’t know many people who do. Look too at  The Telegraph ’s nauseating, Kremlinesque language of ‘dedication’ and ‘service’: what is it, exactly, that she’s done in a personal capacity when crises have hit?

Does she, when rubble falling from London’s buildings threatens passers-by below, swoop in from above at the last moment to save mothers with prams? Does she, when single mothers and the disabled are struggling to keep roofs over their heads, let the homeless stay for free in her empty palacial homes? I’m sure all the other unemployed people who depend on the state for a living would love to be declared a public service the same way she is.

For that matter, why bother with any others? Damn the NHS, the postal service and National Insurance. Let’s just establish a few extra royal families! I’m sure that if, perhaps via an ITV talent show with Gary Barlow, we can find some more insanely rich people who are willing to have their incomes bolstered by tax money and give their future children automatic power of law, we won’t need that funding for nurses or dinner staff any more.

Let’s start taking redistribution seriously. All that money we’re pouring into schools and hospitals and job centres for poor people’s benefit? I’m sure they don’t really need it all that much. Let aristocrats use it to decorate their living rooms and sit around for 60 years, waited on by servants and attended by simpering politicians from public schools while their households grow steadily more deranged. The police might have to beat it into us at first, but after a while, the rest of us will indeed learn to thank them for it.

Alex Gabriel