What has struck me in the last 24 hours is not the embarrassment of Philip Mountbatten, that’s nothing new of course, but the embarrassment caused by my fellow citizens. Serious people in the media and in our parliament, falling over themselves to praise the man who turns 90 today.
The problem is that the platitudes don’t fit with the evidence, Philip is not an inspiring figure and he is certainly not the “most exceptional man of his generation” as Nicholas Soames MP put it the other day. We all know that he served in the Navy during the war and for that, as with all veterans, he should be commended. But that’s not what he is being celebrated for, it is his 60-odd years as husband of the Queen that is being talked about in terms that beggar belief.
I don’t want to dwell so much on Philip himself, but it is worth quoting briefly from Johann Hari’s excellent
article in today’s Independent:
Today, you are being encouraged to celebrate a man who merrily visited a genocidal dictator and used the occasion to sneer at British democracy. A man whose political interventions even prompted complaints from the far-right Enoch Powell. A man who, at the height of mass unemployment, mocked the unemployed, while complaining his own family of multi-millionaires was financially deprived. A man who has shot countless examples of endangered species – and then sought praise for his protection of wildlife.
He is not a man to admire or be inspired by. Yet the national embarrassment isn’t so much Philip, it is all those commentators and politicians falling over themselves to tell the world how marvellous this man is. They desperately look for virtue where there is none and, more seriously, in an effort to build up this ordinary man the consequence is that they pull down everyone else. To suggest he is the greatest ambassador – despite his history of causing offence – is to suggest he is better than more talented people who can truly represent us well; to say he’s a towering figure of his generation is to dismiss and belittle all the Nobel laureates, artists, politicians, architects, soldiers and campaigners from his generation who have truly excelled. Not to mention all the millions of ordinary men and women who have lived to 90, who had to do so struggling to make ends meet, dealing with recession, worries about employment and raising children, and who did so without fanfare or thanks.
So perhaps next year we can stop embarrassing ourselves and instead of celebrating people who have done little and achieved less we can spend a long weekend celebrating those who really have done great deeds. Instead of celebrating a friend of despots let’s celebrate life-long human rights activists, instead of fawning over someone who enjoys killing for sport let’s recognise the work of conservationists, rather than looking hard for virtue in one man let’s celebrate the real achievers of this country. Then we can end this national embarrassment and have something to celebrate we can really be proud of.
