It is political correctness gone mad. In their endless quest to undermine simple British patriotism, the woke crowd is now force-feeding its insidious agenda by holding up, as the embodiment of loyalty, tradition and duty, a multicultural asylum seeker.
I refer, of course, to the man born Philippos von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, aka Phil the Greek, aka Philip Mountbatten, aka the Duke of Edinburgh. He was a refugee plucked from the Mediterranean. In childhood, he thought of himself as Danish and adhered to the Greek Orthodox church, in which his mother later became a nun. He went to school in Paris and in Baden-Württemberg. Perhaps the biggest influence on his life was his headmaster, Kurt Hahn, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. How utterly, appallingly, European can one man get?
In October 2016, high on the fumes of Brexit, the then prime minister, Theresa May, set the tone for the revived populist British patriotism that was meant to give meaning to that moment. She attacked those who "have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road". She warned that "if you believe you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere".
Royal bloodstock
It would be hard to imagine anyone more qualified under both of these headings than Prince Philip. He was born into an international elite, a footloose familial brand that provided, at one time or another, royal bloodstock for Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Greece and the UK. He was, after his family's expulsion from Greece, a literal citizen of nowhere, effectively stateless until he was given a Danish passport. He did not become a British citizen until February 1947. And it is not entirely clear how much he had in common with "people down the road".
Fintan O’Toole: Why we should welcome the new tribe of Anglo-Irish people
Fintan O’Toole: Somebody McSomebody is spreading Covid in Ireland
Fintan O'Toole: Skipping the vaccine queue isn't a breach of the health system, it's the system
Fintan O’Toole: Men need to be scandalised, appalled and outraged by misogynistic violence
When she made that speech in 2016, May was invoking a trope used against Jews by both the Nazis and by the Stalinist Soviet Union: the rootless cosmopolitan. It was also revived in the United States, in Donald Trump's White House, where the hardline nationalist Stephen Miller accused CNN's Jim Acosta of "cosmopolitan bias". It is a constant note of the right's dog whistle.
And then the plot twist that would take this bad novel into overdrive: this nomadic adventurer, this nowhere man, seduces the princess royal
So why is Prince Philip’s rootlessly cosmopolitan background of so little concern to the culture warriors of the right? The answer is in those baby blue eyes. Imagine the sinister tale if Philippos/Philip had been dark-skinned or Jewish or perhaps even just actually Greek. The family that moved opportunistically around Europe. The refugee smuggled out of the country of his birth in an orange box. The shifting, shifty adolescence moving between France and Germany. The changes of nationality, names, religion, identity. The Jewish-German mentor.
And then the plot twist that would take this bad novel into overdrive: this nomadic adventurer, this nowhere man, seduces the princess royal. She becomes queen (and didn’t her father die suspiciously young?) and there he is, right at the heart of the British establishment.
This would all be absolute tripe, of course. But that dish is the main course of all racist narratives. The reason the culture warriors don’t relish it in this case is simply that Philip was both privileged and white.
Dangerous
You don’t have to look very far to confirm this. Think of a more recent arrival into the royal family who was neither privileged nor white. Think of the stories that have been woven around her, the stereotypes so blankly applied: pushy, insidious, ambitious, dangerous.
Philip, on the other hand, is configured, in death even more than in life, as the epitome of self-sacrifice, the acme of selfless public service. Even the extreme privilege he attained through his marriage is construed as a kind of martyrdom: he gave up everything for his adopted country. It is as if his natural condition, as a man and aristocrat, were much higher than all those titles and mansions and horses and servants and sycophants he had to put up with for the sake of grim duty.
He can personify a national self-image of mild irascibility, bluff superiority and ramrod steadfastness
What’s interesting in all of this is not the royal family itself. Those who do not live under it can enjoy it for free through the vicarious delights of The Crown than being subjected to it in political reality.
The fascination lies, rather, in the way the shaping of this story allows us to see how bogus the whole anti-elitist, anti-cosmopolitan, anti-European, anti-immigrant discourse around Brexit really is.
An elite, cosmopolitan, transnationally European immigrant can be, not just “one of us”, but a touchstone of British belonging. He can personify a national self-image of mild irascibility, bluff superiority and ramrod steadfastness. But only when it suits the story.
A threat
And when it doesn’t suit, the asylum seeker, the outsider, the person with multiple and complicated national identities, the stateless wanderer, the person seeking to make a new life in a new country – all of which Philip was – is a threat, an interloper, a trespasser on the sceptered isle.
It would be nice to think that in all the orgy of coverage of, and commentary on, Prince Philip’s life, there might be some recognition that what that life really shows is how inescapable European and multicultural Britain is. The woke crowd didn’t invent that reality. Its own elites have always lived that way. Little England has always been for the little people.