Starkest propaganda

Glad the Jubilee endurance has now ended?   

Well, here's a last reminder of the grovelling media-fest, with David Starkey in full flag-wallowing flow, breaking down and waxing effusively on the glories of our English-rooted monarchy.  

Listen (clip 6/9) as he intones reverentially on the "very strange interchange between the balcony and the crowd, each one, as it were, telling each other what to do" and the way in which The Mall doesn't actually fill, rather "it's like water, it's a slow flood...the Union Jacks become like water, the colours merge into each other...like a wave, slow, slowly [voice breaking], very good-humoured, gently...

The ITN presenters, Julie Etchingham and Philip Schofield, seeing Starkey's "emotional" and  "overwhelmed" state, encourage him on, asking for more of his close feelings on monarchy and the constitutional order.

Recomposed, Starkey obliges with further romantic reverie on this country's "non-forced" civic society and a rant against North Korea and other such 'communist conformism', before launching into a misty-eyed gush on "the genius of England".

Realising, in mild panic, that he's now gone uncomfortably off-message, Etchingham splutters "no, no, it's the United Kingdom, it's Britain", trying to cut him off, the cameras panning quickly back to the flag-waving crowd.

Starkey's drooling commentary may have been an English-centric jingoism too far for a media obediently cued-up to play the Jubilee as an 'all-inclusive, modern, classless, community celebration'.

But the huge blanket propaganda we've seen over the last few days confirms its vital role as a key check on democratic modernity, caring society and social equality in serving to reinforce the archaic forces of feudal privilege, inherited wealth and cultural militarism.

Does this lavish media-driven spectacle lend 'ideological majesty' to 'our country', 'our system', 'our values', 'our ever-benign rulers', 'our right to intervene' in foreign lands? Most assuredly.

The imperial establishment and its servant estate operating at its most brilliantly efficient.

John