The Problem of English Identity
The week I saw Jerusalem, the West End revival of Jez Butterworth’s extraordinary 2009 play, London was still cleaning up after a days-long ruckus celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, the 70th anniversary of her reign. In my neighborhood, tattered bunting clung weakly to lampposts and gathered dirt under car tires at the side of the road. I picked bits of plastic flags and ice-cream wrappers out from my window boxes. In Chelsea, where the jubilee celebrations coincided with the annual flower show, retail stores and brands had created green installations on the street honoring totems of supposed Britishness: teapots made of daisies, a Union Jack formed from roses and hydrangeas, a larger-than-life crimson-stock Welsh Guard with a chrysanthemum corgi by his side. The effect was similarly striking and insincere, more advertorial than actual tribute—pomp and circumstance designed for Instagram.
That same week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson a vote of no confidence by his own party after months of revelations about his office’s conduct while Britain was on national by Johnson’s staff—including wine smuggled into Downing Street in suitcases, vomiting attendees, spilled red wine left for cleaning staff to mop up, two raucous parties held the evening before the Queen attended her husband’s funeral—was, , extraordinarily damaging for Johnson’s repute. (Johnson, who was fined for attending his own birthday party, has apologized, but “it did not occur to him” that the gathering was prohibited.) Entering St. Paul’s Cathedral for a Jubilee service honoring the Queen, he was booed by the assembled crowds. In context: For a conservative prime minister to have lost the favor of even the most ardent royalists during a momentous national celebration is about as bad as it gets.
