In these post-Brexit referendum days it is suggested that Britannia, the royal yacht, should be recommissioned. The Last Night of the Proms is not enough, it seems, for some nationalists. The waters of anxiety rise throughout Europe, and their response is: we’re going to need a bigger boat. It was only a matter of time until such dreams wound through the body politic. There must be a cheery upside to assaults on migrants and a fear of the other.
Britannia was always a wisp of denial because, essentially, she sailed through imperial decline. Her power was cosmetic. She floated on nostalgia, and with her 220 yachtsman scrubbing the decks with sea water each dawn she invoked everything that is thoughtless about Britain: its tendency to lapse into hierarchy; its principle that there is always money for some things but not others, especially if those others have little to begin with; its willingness to succumb to the power of nationalism.
Four years ago, a new state boat - do we call it that? - was suggested. Lord Ashcroft, that gruesome libeller of pigs, promised £5m towards its £80m cost – a low estimate, I think, for a boat that would have been a floating university, a marketing device for UK trade, and a party boat for VIPs and other acronyms. Politicians of all parties supported it, including Ed Miliband. Even so, we were close enough to the now forgotten progress of the Blair years to laugh at it. If the Queen wept when Britannia was decommissioned in 1997, no one then would pay to dry her eyes. The new boat’s proposed name, UK Flagship, didn’t help. It stank of focus groups and bad carpets. It sounded like the Scientology vessel Freewinds, and an illustration in the Daily Mail which included a drawing of a whale, for scale, did not help its cause. I thought it should be called HMS Austerity, with its supporting vessels Tax Cuts and Benefit Cuts. But the boat foundered, which I suspect was of lasting regret to only Prince Andrew.
The old Britannia is moored at the port of Leith, next to a branch of Debenhams. It is a ghostly museum, a mausoleum with a teashop. I went there once and learned the following: if a yachtsman saw a member of the royal family he would stand flush to the wall, and not meet the royal eyes, because that is how Britain was – and, to new Britannia lovers – should be. There is a photograph of Charles and Diana in the honeymoon suite, by a clock.
Today there is no talk of a floating university manned by sea cadets, for that is not a dreamland. If it is built, or recommissioned, the new Britannia will be, explicitly, a royal boat.
The central argument from the former foreign secretary William Hague is: foreigners are impressed by Britannia, as they are by Madame Tussauds (this comparison is mine). Plutocrats and diplomats will fly on private jets through storms to kiss royal hands and buy British goods.
To illustrate his point, he told a story about a dinner on Britannia at which Margaret Thatcher told a host of South American diplomats that “the trouble with all of you was that you were not colonised by the British”. He did not relate their response, for they were cowed into silence, but he interpreted the void generously, possibly delusionally.
His theoretical plutocrats and dignitaries, if they exist, are fools if they seek to be welcomed to a royal boat by royal dolls. And we will be fools for colluding. Children like monarchies, parties, cakes and toys. Adults should seek something more substantial.
Responsible politicians should not respond to the troubles of parliamentary democracy – and all sides assault it – by increasing the prestige of monarchy, even if it comforts them.
Perhaps parliamentary democracy should have a boat of its own. It could be called HMS Lost Cause.
