The Diana inquest has revealed a real conspiracy: to destroy what is left of Old Britain
Suddenly, I’m starting to think that maybe Mohamed Al Fayed was only half wrong. Maybe dark forces were, indeed, involved in a cover-up surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Or rather, maybe these dark forces want you to think that there was a cover-up. Maybe it’s a double bluff.
I’m nervous, writing this. I’m looking over my shoulder. Would these dark forces balk at another assassination? I don’t think so. Their last assassination was flawless. It didn’t happen in a tunnel in Paris in 1997. It is happening, now, in the Royal Courts of Justice. As yet, the victim isn’t even quite dead. Still, not long now.
From where, one wonders, did Al Fayed get his vision of Britain? James Bond films? Alan Clark’s Diaries? He looks east from the doors of Harrods, and somehow manages to see a tweedy, Stalinist overlord in Buckingham Palace. Doesn’t he realise that we dispensed with our tweedy Stalinist overlords decades ago? How has he missed all those Little Hitlers in M&S suits? Mohamed Al Fayed and the Duke of Edinburgh, they are in the same boat. Don’t they realise it yet? They have a common enemy. It is shadowy and sneery and institutionally Blairite. It is winning.
In years to come, when Modern History students study the demise of the British establishment, I reckon their syllabus will probably be bookended between the Profumo affair and the current fandango. The former was the point at which it suddenly became impossible to see a man in pinstripes without envisaging the panties and suspenders underneath. The latter shows what we are left with, four decades on. Freaks and weirdos. Hobbled royals, simpering courtiers and lunatic shopkeepers. Inquest? This? Oh no. This is the show trial of a vanquished foe. All that awaits is execution.
So, I’m piecing together my own conspiracy theory, about the shadowy, antiestablishment forces that really run Britain today. They are a vast and secretive network. Among them are special advisers, local councillors, newspaper pundits, psychologists, call-centre managers, social workers, and the people who leave cuddly toys in memory of murdered teenagers. They are everywhere. They are all in it together. And yet, look at them directly and they disappear. These people, they stifle debate. They make us afraid to speak out. From the word go, they have claimed Diana as one of their own. Well, let us be brave and risk their wrath. There was the Elton John side to Diana, true enough, all Hello! magazine and charity, and being nice to Piers Morgan, but the woman was hardly Lily Allen, was she? Diana was titled, entitled, old money to the core, and that was how she lived. In time, she would have embarrassed us. For many, she already did.
Let us be brutal, also, about Mohamed Al Fayed. Really, what is going on there? What is his agenda? Can he truly have been ‘blinded by grief’ for a full decade? Wouldn’t his business have suffered? And what about his two Michaels — Mansfield, his QC, and Cole, his ever-present spokesman (who will doubtless pop up in the letters page next week)? What are they playing at? These are supposedly intelligent, eloquent people. Each morning, they have to look at themselves in the mirror. Are we really supposed to believe they have simply been bought, as part of one egomaniac’s vanity project?
No, I reckon somebody has got to them. Dark forces, probably. The forces of anticonservatism. Shadowy powers with a vested interest in this inquest. These are the people behind those Diana rumours — the pregnancy, the engagement ring, all of it — and they did it because they wanted this inquest to happen. They wanted to see us sniggering at the idea of Prince Philip as a secret service mastermind. They wanted to see us grow to view the Royal Household as a collection of liars and dunces, staffed by closet gays who just happen not to be Paul Burrell yet. They want us to snigger at Al Fayed, too, and his gaudy shop, and that backward, backcombed breed that frequents it.
Was there a chaotic plot by incompetent old gents in old school ties? They don’t care. However it plays out, these new dark forces come out on top. Pay attention, they are say ing. Whatever happened, it’s a mess. This is what you get when you let toffs run your country. You don’t want all that again, do you?
It has been said, so many times, that it is a great travesty that this inquest has been allowed to happen. That’s very true, and not just because it is a costly and undignified indulgence of one man’s misery. It is a great collective failure of nerve, which has allowed New Britain to stick Old Britain on trial, before lopping off its head. That’s my Diana conspiracy theory, anyway, and I’m sticking to it. It seems as good as any. I have no great fondness for that Old Britain, and I am happy to see it go. But not now. Not like this. It is too cruel.
Not enough fuss, I am inclined to think, about the lavish grace-and-favour government homes standing vacant across Westminster. There are four: the Home Secretary’s residence at South Eaton Place (in Belgravia), the Foreign Secretary’s in Carlton Gardens (on the edge of St James’s Park), and two flats in Admiralty House (on Whitehall), one of which is usually occupied by the Defence Secretary. They are unlived in and unloved. It is most peculiar.
A declaration of retrospective interest here — as a teenager I occasionally stayed in both Admiralty House and Carlton Gardens. Both made for lovely family homes, even though somebody really should have told the policemen downstairs that it was mean to snigger at the resident’s son whenever he turned up with a girlfriend.
Given that he has a family home in north London, I suppose I can just about understand David Miliband’s reluctance to move into Carlton Gardens. But couldn’t Des Browne use the extra space? Wouldn’t Jacqui Smith like to live somewhere with safer streets?
The trials of Messrs Prescott and Blunkett, no doubt, have something to do with their reluctance. Still, what a ludicrously Brownite solution, to leave them all standing empty. Honestly, if somebody actually asked our Prime Minister to sit on a fence, I suspect he wouldn’t have the gumption. He’d just squat above it, gurning, and wait for it to go away. If the days of such perks are over, they should be sold, or reassigned as offices. If not, somebody should live in them. Get a grip.
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