Opinion The great British show

I left a ramshackle,rumpled and rather gloomy Britain three decades ago and returned recently to the surveillance state. On an average day in London you can expect to be filmed by more than 300 cameras. Eight British cities,including Wigan,have more cameras than Paris. You see them everywhere — and they see you. The omnipresence of Big Brother is scarcely an upper. So I was intrigued to see that the government plans to introduce a “happiness index,” a measure of the psychological wellbeing of Brits. That struck me as a bold move in a cold season of insecurity and cuts. Then — politicians need luck — a royal wedding was announced,sending everyone’s felicitometer up a blip or two. Suddenly all the cameras were on Prince William,the next-but-one king of England,and his gorgeous brown-haired fiancée,Catherine Elizabeth Middleton,or Kate,with her radiant smile and English-rose complexion. He calls her “Babykins.” She knows him as “Big Willie.” The couple,every royal analyst agrees,is on cloud nine. As a Brit once observed,“All you need is love.” Love plus the British monarchy,I’d say. “Thrilled,obviously,” was the response of Prince Charles,the groom’s father,next king and unerring master of the felicitous phrase. “They have been practicing long enough.” That was an allusion to the nine-year courtship begun at St Andrews University. You can’t make this stuff up. Since I left,British Steel has gone,British Leyland too,as Britain checked out of producing things. London morphed into the capital of global capital,as the gleaming new City high-rises attest. Money and the superrich poured in,the so-called squeezed middle got squeezed out of desirable neighbourhoods and schools and eventually jobs. They became the “coping classes” — and found it harder to cope. Russians came,and Poles,and Pakistanis; the sidewalks got so crowded there’s talk of introducing fast lanes. London sprawled. Tube stations got so jammed they’re sometimes “exit only,” which does diminish their usefulness. The new bread line is the money line,great winding queues of people waiting to get at ATM’s (“cash machines”),all mysteriously located outside banks rather than inside,a devious further attempt,it seems,to sabotage pedestrian mobility. Still,nobody’s bought out the monarchy yet and nobody’s stopped Prince Charles putting his foot in his mouth. Continuity can seem like a consolation. Perhaps the monarchy is there precisely to make even convinced republicans wonder whether irrational symbolism on an outlandish scale,and an immutability scarcely less immense,doesn’t satisfy some deep human need. Certainly,Britain betrayed buoyancy this week. Estimates of the 2011 royal-nuptial stimulus have been as high as $1 billion. That’s once you factor in all the “Will ‘n Kate” commemorative memorabilia (anyone for a two-handled loving cup?),wedding tourism and binge boozing and feasting for the celebration. It’s really brilliant. Prime Minister David Cameron’s cabinet reacted with “a great banging of tables.” The United States needs this sort of fillip. Perhaps the couple could honeymoon in New Jersey. Economic stimulus is also about intangibles — morning in America and all. Nobody binges in Gloomsville,home of many Americans today. A full-circle feeling has gripped me. It was another season of economic gloom when I departed,the “winter of discontent” of early Thatcher,with British Steel on strike,unemployment headed skyward,public spending cuts rampant,social unrest brewing (the devastating Brixton and Toxteth riots were just a year away),and the Yorkshire Ripper prowling. No wonder my one-year assignment turned into three peripatetic decades. I’ve returned now to high unemployment,tube strikes,a riot by protesting students at Conservative party headquarters,and cuts,cuts,cuts that have not only students but generals,police chiefs,middle-class moms,actors and labor leaders protesting Cameron’s balance-the-budget blitzkrieg against benefits,services and subsidies. (There’s even talk of some of those surveillance cameras running out of film — a huge upside to the austerity.) Plus ça change. But things do change,really. Take the royal weddings,then and now,punctuating the moroseness at a 30-year interval. Princess Diana was a fairytale figure,plucked young from an aristocratic family to play a Cinderella role: Only love was lacking,with disastrous results.

By contrast,Kate’s parents,once British Airways employees,started life in an apartment in downtown Slough,before making it,Thatcher-style,with an online business selling stuff for kids’ parties. The bride-to-be is a “commoner” and,yes,she’s been “practicing” with Flight-Lieutenant William Wales. They seem to know what love is in a more open,tolerant Britain. She surely won’t have a 25-foot train like Diana,whose engagement ring is now hers. Theirs will be an austerity-conscious wedding,ostentatiously so.

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Britain copes. That’s what it does. Through soggy leaves and muddy goalmouths and drip-drip damp,it carries on,past Thatcher revolutions and all that cool Britannia froth. Some quality endures,an ability to change and manage and laugh. As another Brit observed — and the happiness index may now show — “It’s getting better all the time.”

Sort of,anyway. Turn off those cameras,turn down the surveillance society,and turn up,please,for a great British show only Brits know how to produce.

Roger Cohen