IN THE LINE OF DUTY

Fifty years after her accession, the Queen's life is governed by her dedication to the constitution, and she knows more about statecraft than Mr Blair Simon Heifer on the real character of Her Majesty

THE Queen's golden jubilee threatens to be an occasion on which to do nothing so predictable. unoriginal and downright vulgar as celebrate the life and work of Her Majesty. In a style too tiresomely typical of our country, it is an excuse for an almost vindictive brand of introspection. It is an opportunity to execrate the royal family and, indeed, the Queen herself. It is time to remind ourselves what a bad mother she has been, and how her dysfunctional family is entirely down to her. It is time to remind ourselves how singularly she fails to chime with the classless, levelled, lowest-commondenominator society we appear to have chosen. It is time, above all, to confront the sheer bloody absurdity of a head of state chosen by hereditary accident, and to ask whether the whole concept of monarchy, courtiers, bowing, scraping, sirring and ma'aming isn't just too preposterous at the start of the 21st century.

Isn't it?

No, it isn't. It might be time to say to those who see the jubilee as a spur for a debate on the monarchy in general and the Queen in particular that, actually, we don't want one. A small, vocal and unrepresentative minority has been conducting such a debate, in an aggressively self-serving fashion, for years. They have had their occasional triumphs, assisted too often by the self-inflicted wounds some members of the royal family have become so adept at acquiring. They have been helped by a mass media that sees its role towards the monarchy as that of the praying mantis, and that selects various members of the royal family on a rotational basis for pillorying in a manner reminiscent of the nastiest sort of playground. The catastrophist school of anti-monarchists seemed to reach a new nadir in the militantly biased documentary shown on Channel 4 on New Year's Day and ludicrously entitled The Real Queen. Yet opinion polls show that most people are quite content with the monarchy and with the monarch, and like it and her far more than politics and politicians, and even journalists.

The greatest change in our perception of the monarchy since February 1952 has been the invention of the House of Windsor as a soap opera. It is hard to overstate how much this has harmed and impeded the constitutional role of the monarch. We have not so much, as Bagehot put it, let daylight in upon the magic, as turned on a few million megawatts of floodlights. What the old constitutionalist called the 'dignified' part of the constitution has been left with about as much dignity as a crippled and incontinent old lady lying for days on a trolley in a noisy, unheated corridor of one of Mr Alan Milburn's magnificent hospitals. To perform the delicate and demanding role of hereditary head of state while one's character, motives and capabilities — and those of one's family — are continually exposed, ridiculed and misrepresented takes extraordinary will and presence of mind. It is not the least of the Queen's accomplishments that she does this so resolutely. As a Labour politician, unconvinced about the monarchy, put it, 'You have to admit that in the context of her public duties she has never cocked up.'

To understand why, we need, in the best red-top fashion, to intrude on her real character. One label recurs in the descriptions of her given by friends, and by those politicians whom she has met in the line of business: 'delightful'. It is, admittedly, just as easy to find those who say that she can be dour, but this can be confused with a natural reticence. She has the precise manners taken for granted among women of her class and generation and which can make her seem remote or cold to those used to the easy familiarity and instant insincerity that distinguish contemporary social intercourse. Inevitably, a conversation with her, even in the most relaxed of circumstances, cannot be quite like one with any other elderly lady landowner. Politics and religion are out of bounds, though one or two in the innermost circle have occasionally claimed that the first of those subjects has been touched upon. The sovereign was, it was rumoured at the time, concerned about the Maastricht Treaty. This was not for any party-political reason, but because of its potential effect on the undertaking she had given in her Coronation oath to govern her people in accordance with their laws and customs. If true, this in itself was a measure of the absolute seriousness with which she takes her responsibilities.

A friend who has known her for 40 years paints her, in some respects, as a remarkably normal human being. 'She has the most wonderful laugh. It lights up a room. But to be Queen is not to fall about like a barrel of laughs every five minutes. She preserves the dignity of her position at all times.' He adds that, despite the length of time he has known her, 'I am still intimidated by her position. She is the Queen, for Christ's sake; she is my head of state. She has awesome responsibilities. She can be quite forbidding, but when things are appalling she's steady; it's the little things that get her down.'

We remember her sangfroid when Windsor Castle was so badly damaged by fire in the annus horribilis a decade ago, but also the accusations that there was a surfeit of 'steadiness' when Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in 1997. 'It's absolute nonsense to say that she behaved badly at that time,' argues another friend. 'Her first concern was for her grandchildren, whom she was determined to comfort and protect at a horrific time in their lives, and with her son. It wasn't that she was out of touch. It was that, like most bereaved people in such a situation, she had a family to worry about.' Another says that the 'hysteria' of millions of people was simply incomprehensible to the Queen, as it was to many others, of course. 'Their own grief was so self-indulgent that they simply chose to forget about hers.'

Such thoughts lead on naturally to the great charge against the Queen: that she and Prince Philip failed as parents. One who has worked with the Queen describes the relationship with her children as 'Hanoverian'. Of their four children, all of whom are in or approaching middle age, three have been divorced, which makes the Windsors not so much unique in contemporary Britain as sadly typical of it. 'It is an absolute perversion of the truth to say they were bad parents,' says one who saw the royal children growing up. 'The simple fact is you can't be Queen and be like everybody else,' Another observes, 'Her duties always came first, not because she was a bad mother but because of the peculiar calling of being monarch,' It was true that the children were left behind for long periods while the Queen undertook Commonwealth tours, but they were 'not just in the care of devoted nannies, but also an adoring grandmother. Why do you think Prince Charles especially is so close to Queen Elizabeth?' It was not a question of neglect. 'The Queen wanted her children to have routine and security. That is precisely what they did have. And they have grown up devoted to their mother and father. And their mother and father are devoted to them.' Friends speak of the obvious affection between children and parents, and say that the Queen is impressed by the diversity of what her heir has achieved. Any lingering coldness towards Mrs Parker Bowles is partly out of respect for Queen Elizabeth's view of such things — though this does not prevent that close relationship between the Queen Mother and her grandson — and out of residual horror at the whole Diana episode.

If there were three people in the Prince of Wales's ill-starred marriage, there have been three in the Queen's too — the third being the British constitution, or rather her place at its apex. Her Coronation oath, which, as we have seen, she continues to take desperately seriously, is the embodiment of this role, her job description. It makes her unlike any other wife or mother in the country: there is always something that takes precedence, and that something is the state of which the Queen is head. She takes her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England immensely seriously too, and probably has deeper religious convictions, borne of a simple faith, than many of her bishops. At the same time as she was trying to cope with her vast range of public engagements, and the sheer weight of business in her dispatch boxes — no ex-minister I have spoken to even suggests that she copes with it other than meticulously — she had her family to bring up. As they became older and the deferential society came to an end, there was the change in the media's, and therefore the public's, treatment of her and her family.

The watershed was the Royal Family film of 1969, about which opinion continues to be divided. It gave the media the excuse for which they had been waiting, not just to intrude into the Queen's life, but also into the lives of her children. It was also, however, the original self-inflicted wound. 'She would have been damned if she did, and damned if she didn't,' a friend observes: yet he concludes that she had no choice. *The Queen has always been very good at change.' he says, and no one can really blame her, except with hindsight, for letting that particular genie out of its bottle. Another friend argues that she has been more than equal to behaving in a manner necessary to maintain public confidence in the institution of monarchy. 'She has immense strength of character, willpower and devotion to duty. That is what has kept her going.' It is also what has kept the institution going.

There is also her dry sense of humour, and her genuine interest in what other people think and do, which help her to cope with what many would regard as the ineffable tedium of much of her job. A Tory MP attending a garden party some years ago found her quizzing him on the subject of Mrs Thatcher, Socialist local-government worthies, committed republicans until the Queen arrives for a visit to their borough, have found themselves converted on the spot. She is brilliant at putting people at their ease, provided they give her the benefit of the doubt. She knows most people are overawed at meeting the monarch. She has no great need or, these days, expectation of routine formality. Although she is the least self-referential of people, she seems to manage subliminally to convince sceptics that she didn't ask for the job she has, but nonetheless does it better and with more commitment than anyone else could.

The death of her daughter-in-law probably came closer than anything to sending her off the map. 'The palace just didn't have a clue what to do publicly,' says a friend. 'She knew what had to be done with the family, but the public reaction was unprecedented.' It was in those circum stances that the Prime Minister and the New Labour machine stole a march on her and the court — as some courtiers now freely, and ruefully, admit. Some of those in the Queen's circle think that she was, in the words of one of them, 'extremely irri tated' by Mr Blair in his early days as Prime Minister. 'She was still reeling from all the Diana business, and he frankly didn't know how to behave.' The Golden Wedding walkabout less than three months after the Princess's death is still cited by some close to the Queen as an object-les

son in how a prime minister should not behave. 'Insolent-, says one of them, refer

ring to the way in which the occasion became a walkabout for the Blairs as much as for the Mountbatten-Windsors. 'I don't think she gives a damn that Cherie doesn't curtsy to her,' says another, 'I imagine she just thinks it's frightfully funny.'

Mr Blair, like most of her prime ministers for the last 20 or 30 years, has been at some thing of a disadvantage regarding her. She knows far more about statecraft than he, or any other prime minister, could hope to know. She has shared the deepest confi dences of state with every great politician since Churchill. The minutes and telegrams that come across her desk are read with highly professional interest and astuteness. 'She is very, very wise, and a good judge of character,' says one who has had profession al dealings with her. If her position has recovered since the dark days of late 1997 — and it has — it is not least because she has used her enormous experience to get the measure of her prime minister.

Her way of dealing with politicians has been honed by years of practice. One for mer minister describes her style as 'pene trating, intelligent, properly detached, but without austerity'. He adds, 'She has seen it all before, but makes it clear that she has no sense of boredom or ennui; she wants to see it all again because that's her role — to be there while governments come and go.'

Another contrasts her with the politicians who form her governments: 'She fully understands that there can be no achieve ment for her except in keeping things going. Hence her interest in politicians and what makes them tick — but she maintains this interest in a way that transcends higher gossip. She knows that those who take part in statecraft with her are the constitutional clockwork. She's professionally fascinated by the nature of politicians.' Although she has always been 'good at change' where the monarchy is concerned — understanding, as some see it. that her veto over alterations to the way the Firm' does business could have fatal consequences if taken too far — she does not, as a rule, apply this to the political arena. She has a fine sense of what is "our constitution" and knows that its rhythms must be observed and tempered,' says an ex-minister. 'Yet she also understands that it must be conserved. She radiates the impression that it is not her role to innovate or do things.'

There are some, though. who wonder whether she could have been more confrontational. Judging by what ex-ministers say, the Queen has been Bagehotian to the letter, accepting advice tendered by her prime ministers. If she exercises the prerogative Bagehot designed for her — of warning — she does it obliquely. The episode recorded in Tony Benn's diaries — her overruling his desire, when he was postmaster-general, to take her head off commemorative postage stamps — is an object-lesson in this. It seems to consist — if that episode is anything to go by — of her private secretary making it clear to the prime minister that such-and-such a thing isn't really worth fussing about. And, indeed, it seems that such interventions are made only when that happens to be true.

However objectionable and unfair some things are, she will do them if she is told she has to. Many thought that the decision by John Major to make her pay tax was an unnecessary concession to uninformed opinion. This was not because it was felt that she should have a free ride, but because the remission she had already made of revenues from the Crown Estates meant that she made a disproportionately large contribution to the Treasury as it was. Nonetheless — and this is what they mean when they say she is good at change — she accepted that it was needed for reasons of image. Similarly, while the undignified parts of the constitution engage in orgies of self-aggrandisement at the taxpayers' expense, with ever-expanding teams of flunkeys, spin doctors, and pointless foreign travel, the Queen (again for reasons of 'image') is constantly pressed to scale down, cut back and trim.

It has almost reached the point where the Prime Minister is more royal than the Queen, which, we are led to believe, is also a source of wry amusement to Her Majesty. When the Queen issued the injunction some months ago that the jubilee should not prompt extravagance, she was demonstrating the self-effacing, modest propriety that those who know her recognise as her hallmark. Most prime ministers would have demurred, given the exceptional nature of the occasion and of its subject, but not this one. Indeed, the government's general failure to enter into the spirit of the event confirms the impression that some ministers feel they are in competition with the monarch for good headlines and public approbation.

It must be easy for prime ministers of a certain cast of mind to think that they can have the Queen do whatever they want. She is not, ironically, especially grand. 'She's a countrywoman at heart — that's where she's happiest,' says an old friend. Her horses, her dogs, being outdoors: that's what she likes best.' Her dogs are a corgi-dachshund cross, and she gives tea parties at Sandringham for other `dorgi' owners in the neighbourhood, where they all natter about their pets. She is very happily married, and an element of Darby and Joan is creeping in. 'It's brilliant how she handles him,' a friend says of her relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh, in which, like many wives of her generation, she seems often to be almost deferential. She is thoughtful to her staff and generous in repaying loyalty and long service. All such traits are not so much queenly as typical, again, of her class and generation; as, indeed, is the glacial stare when something inappropriate is suggested, or someone is overfamiliar or impinges in some way on what must, even in these times, be the regal nature of the monarch.

Should the Queen live as long as her mother, we shall yet have a diamond and a platinum jubilee. Perhaps by the time those events come around we shall have woken up not just to their temporal remarkableness, but to the astonishing record of the Queen herself. There are too many signs, especially at the top of our country, that what she is and what she does are lamentably taken for granted. No elected head of state would survive, or tolerate, the constant scrutiny, the sheer offensiveness, the irrational prejudice, the decade upon decade of demands, responsibility, pressure. We should be grateful that for these 50 years God has saved the Queen; and be a damned sight more thankful for it, and her, in the years that we hope remain to her.