Queen of Hearts?

Yesterday, I had the mixed experience of watching The Diana Years. I say 'mixed' because although (as I have hinted previously) I am not a huge fan of the Royal Family, the programme documented an era of social history that I find fascinating, not least because I remember it.

Retrospective accounts of the decade often focus on Diana's death for obvious reasons: it was a tragedy that made international headlines and lead to an unprecedented show of public emotion in the UK. Personally, however, I think its significance is overplayed. For all the feeling that we were living through momentous times, nothing actually changed. The most significant (British) death of the decade has to be John Smith's.

Unlike Diana's, John Smith's death changed things. It is impossible to know what would have happened had things turned out differently, but it seems likely that Smith would have lead Labour to victory in the election that took place in 1997. He may well have had a smaller majority than Tony Blair was able to command; in this case, the Conservatives could have elected Michael Portillo as leader, something they weren't able to do in reality. The next election (the one that took place in June 2001) would have been contested by parties lead by Smith and Portillo. Would Prime Ministers Smith or Portillo have done anything different to the real-life Blair? Would they have been more reticent about, for example, invading Iraq? I don't know: that's the problem with this kind of counter-factual speculation.

The other question is what would have happened had Princess Diana not died. It's difficult to think that things would have been that different, but what of the huge outpouring of grief that followed her death. I felt at the time, cynic that I am, that it was totally out of proportion. Of course, people were sad, but a lot of people seemed to show more grief over the death of someone they had never met than they might over the death of a close friend or relative. I feel now that the grief was really about something else.

This was (in the 'real' world) only four months after the defeat of the Tories and in particular John Major, a man who seemed to epitomise a certain kind of old-fashioned Conservatism (if that's not a tautology). It seems likely that for many people the illusions of certainty and greatness that the Conservatives had relied on for seventeen years had been laid bare. Regardless of a person's opinions about these ideologies, it is understandable that many people felt disorientated and scared: Diana's death provided a focal point for these feelings. Where would these feeling have gone had Diana survived that crash?

Approximately ten months later, England were competing in the World Cup, an event that inevitably provokes an upsurge in (confused) nationalism. Predictably, they were knocked out; equally predictably, there was a scapegoat: David Beckham. Beckham became a pariah for a while. If the collective sense of grief had not found an outlet the previous September, imagine how much worse it would have been for him. It's not in the same league as the invasion of Iraq, but I'm aware that both these scenarios are nothing more than idle speculation.