The royal problem may have more to do with showers than with mysterious powers

FRANK JOHNSON

have not checked the exact wording, but Mr Paul Burrell quoted the Queen as having warned him: 'There are forces at work in this country of which we have no knowledge.' This was an obvious mishearing on Mr Burrell's part.

What she would have said was: 'There are horses at work in this country of which we have no knowledge.' This would be much more consistent with what we know to be her main interests and concerns. She would explain that these days the form book seems to count for nothing. A horse, of which we have no knowledge, at work within this country, can come from nowhere to do well at Cheltenham, entice punters like herself to chance an arm and a leg at Ladbrokes at its next outing, and then prove to be a spavined nag. So be careful with your spread betting, Mr Burrell.

In keeping with journalistic practice, I have now checked the quote after having printed it. What she actually said, according to Mr Burrell, was: 'There are powers at work in this country of which we have no knowledge.' So disregard all of the above. But the more accurate quote was also an obvious mishearing on Mr Burrell's part. What she would have said was: 'There are showers at work in this country of which we have no knowledge.' This would be much more consistent with what we know to be her main interests and concerns.

On the matter of showers, they are no different from those of most of her showers. cannot speak for London hotels, since I live in London and have no need of a London hotel room for any purpose. But outside the capital, the showers are often either scalding hot or freezing cold. It is one of the few examples of there being no Blairite Middle Way. The more expensive establishments confront us with huge calibrated dials, as on a Royal Navy warship. They cannot be operated without lengthy vocational training. It is presumably the same in the royal residences.

Unless the Queen was referring to people, as in: 'Mr Burrell. you may in the course of your duties have formed the view that my eldest son, the heir to the throne, and all the dreadful people who litter Kensington Palace — PR persons, one is told they arc called — constitute a right shower.'

Mr Burrell: 'That is not for me to say, ma'am.'

Her Majesty: `Except in exchange for £300,000 from a tabloid, it seems.' Mr Burrell; 'I like to think that, wherever she is, your daughter-in-law, Diana, Princess of Wales, is looking down on me, and..

Her Majesty: 'Well, Mr Burrell, some of my family certainly looked down on Diana. That's what's caused all this trouble.'

There is a link between the terrible difficulties which two institutions, variously called 'historic' or 'great., have been in these last couple of weeks: homosexuality.

Not that, over the centuries, homosexuality has been unknown to either of those institutions: the monarchy and the Conservative party. But, in the past, tolerance of homosexuality was seen, by the Left as well as by the Right, as evidence that someone was disreputable. Today, it is seen as evidence that someone is respectable. It is pointless for Conservatives to deny this. An opinion poll at the weekend showed 49 per cent in favour of gay adoption — the cause that has provoked the party's latest troubles.

What is considered disreputable, when going on in a royal household or anywhere else, is rape, not homosexuality. Concern would be the same were it heterosexual rape. It is the broad middle class which decides what is, and what is not. respectable. From that quarter, most of us discern no worry about a 'homosexual rnafia' in royal circles. It is assumed that many a royal servant is a certain type of homosexual.

At the time of writing, the troubles for the royal family, which the Burrell prosecution has visited on it and us, look murky indeed. Rumours fly. Some of us fear the worst. But the troubles are not caused by, or because of, greater tolerance of homosexuality. They are caused by the suspicion of the aforementioned illegality, or by 'cover-up..

If the worst comes to the worst at Kensington Palace, the Conservative leadership should not draw the conclusion that homosexuality as such is to blame, and that it was right to oppose gay adoption and Section 28. To act on that conclusion would be to tell the broad middle classes that the Conservatives were the anti-homosexual party. That would not be respectable because nearly four decades of homosexual law reform have obviously convinced them that homosexuals are not per se disreputable.

Middle-class respectability has been an essential part of the Conservative appeal since at least Baldwin: an electorally rather successful leader. It was the source of all that mockery about the ladies in floral hats, the Cheltenham colonels and the Young Conservatives as a marriage agency. But the very fact that there was so much for mockers of the middle classes to satirise was a sign of the party's strength in a country in which the middle classes set the tone.

The middle classes still do. What? it may be objected. The respectable middle classes set the tone when the lower orders are drunk every Saturday night in the streets even of our market towns, and the upper classes might well be covering up homosexual rape at Kensington Palace? Some middle-class tone-setting!

But to flout middle-class respectability is not to deny it. The yobs do not deny middle-class respectability. They just, on occasion, do not live up to it. Once sober, they do not deny that only the middle classes can produce the pharmaceuticals that fight their hangovers, or the surgeons sometimes needed after their Saturday-night misfortunes. Given the choice, they would probably rather possess those middle-class virtues. This would make them richer and more respected than they are. It may well be the lack of them that makes them behave as they do in the first place.

And at Kensington Palace? The air of panic in that quarter over the last few days suggests that it is middle-class respectability that they fear. You do not fear something that does not set the tone. But the fear is not of the middle class's disapproval of homosexuality — otherwise the middle classes would tell pollsters that they oppose gay adoption. The fear concerns goings-on of which the middle class would disapprove even if heterosexuality was what they had all been up to.