What Happens When the Queen Dies? | 2141

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S04E41

The reality field produced by the British State will come crashing into contact with the State of Britain. 

Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2021/10/30/301-2141-what-happens-when-the-queen-dies/

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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo


What Happens When the Queen Dies?

So?

What does happen when the Queen dies?

There is a plan. There’s been a plan since the 1960s. It’s called Operation London Bridge.

The Guardian’s described it as being “arcane and highly specific”, “planned to the minute”.

To give you a sense of scope it involves: the Church of England, the London Met, the Armed Forces, the Media, the Royal Parks, TFL, and more. 

The Prime Minister will be contacted via secure line. Issued the phrase “London Bridge is down”. The plan 60 years in its making will be set in motion. It will ripple outward from Number 10 though society.

Flags will be flown at half mast, the stock exchange closed for a day, the media – specifically the BBC, will go into 12 days of mourning. 

If you want to know more, Google it. It’s going to be totally mental.

Then of course there’ll be the biggest global media event in human history.

The state funeral.

What articles about ‘What Happens When the Queen Dies?‘ never cover, is everything else though. What happens in society? What happens to culture? 

I’ve thought about it. So as your self appointed royal realist correspondent I’m going to tell you what I think is going to happen.

It’s going to be awful.

If you think the weaponisation of petty culture war bullshit is bad. Or thought the coverage of Brexit, IndieRef or Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party was bad. You ain’t seen nothing.

Tectonic plates that constitute British cultural identity are going to grind against one another. Usually, these realities co-exist, respectfully ignoring one another. But in the days and weeks after the Queen dies;

The reality field produced by the British State will come crashing into contact with the ‘State of Britain’. 

Prince Philip’s death in early 2021 was a glimpse of the consequences. 

The BBC’s coverage of that event was the most complained about event in British television history. The proles gave more shits about EastEnders and the MasterChef final being delayed than endless rolling coverage about the death of the Duke.

To which the BBC replied “the decisions made reflect the role the BBC plays as the national broadcaster during moments of national significance.”

Translated.

“We as members of the establishment will project the kind of reality and behaviour that we believe should be occurring onto the public realm.”

When The Queen dies, imagine this attitude but times a million. Hyping a deeply unpopular prince – now king. Constructing a national story. Imagine the think pieces! 😬.

Since the late 90’s, successive governments have tried to forge a British identity as a cultural project. Blair had Cool Britannia, Brown had British jobs for British workers. Cameron had strange British values essays, and since Britishness and Brexit have become tightly bound ideas.

The death of the Queen is going to challenge it all. Because the Queen for all my American listeners out there is not the Queen of England. She is, by the Grace of God, The Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, and Defender of the Faith.

Zooming out, the death of Elisabeth II will bookend the ‘End of Empire’. Had she been crowned just 5 years earlier, she would have been Empress of India.

The Queen is, to give her credit. The only head of state in recorded history to personally softland the break up of an Empire without widespread and prolonged violence. Her death closes the book on that soft landing and opens a new one on what happens next.

Much of Britain’s remaining geopolitical power (except for its Nukes) is tied up with The Crown as money handler for the global elite. See Episode 2120 for more detail on that

The Queen is currently the head of state of 16 countries or 12% of the world’s surface. Things however are changing. Barbados just elected its first president. As it becomes a republic it will remove the Crown as head of state. After her death others will follow. The only question is how many and how quickly

For the members of our establishment that grew up shagging flags and standing for the national anthem, the dissolution of the remaining British cultural superstructure is going to be as – if not more – traumatic than the Queen’s death.

The ‘non-statutory corporation sole’ known as The Crown and its entanglement with the state will continue as normal. The Queen is dead, long live The King as it were. As Charles immediately becomes King, it’ll be business as usual.

But for the establishment it’s going to be anything but. An abstract sense of cultural grief will saturate all discourse. 

As with geopolitical questions abroad, the same will happen at home. The integrity of the union is already in question. But how quickly, and when and who gets to say how soon is too soon will be central arguments.

Supercharged by Brexit, the crisis of British identity that will emerge immediately at the announcement of Operation London Bridge is going to be brutal. 

It should be a moment when the country grieves the loss of a Queen and finally processes Empire. A narrative break between the 20th Century and the 21st.

Instead I fear it’s going to be a period of deranged manufactured consent and statue discourse. Keep calm, and carry on amidst rising ​​fascism, supply chain crisis, empty shelves, channel drownings, rivers of shite, and rapid inflation.

When The Queen dies it’s going to be like ‘the Olympics, but for a funeral’.

Watch


The script above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the audio due to time constraints.

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5 responses to “What Happens When the Queen Dies? | 2141”

  1. steve avatar

    Love it Jay, its very close, an old song that is relevant

    1. Jay avatar

      Thanks Steve! I remember vibrating the first time I heard this track on the radio late at night in the car once!

  2. […] A couple of episodes ago, I talked about how successive governments have tried (and failed) to constitute a British identity as a cultural project. Just as the media confuse London for Westminster. So to do people who live in England confuse it for Britain. It was this confused English idea of Britain that fuelled the idea of Brexit for example. […]

  3. […] Last year I wrote about what was going to happen when the Queen died. I still stand by my prediction. […]

  4. […] it. We have neither been honest with ourselves nor the rest of the world. The Empire ended, the Queen’s dead, yet all the same people are still in […]

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