On state visits

The Queen begins her historic state visit to Ireland today and I can't help but feel annoyed by it. When president McAleese says it's, 'absolutely the right moment,' for the Queen to visit she can't have been thinking about the economy. There's plenty of republican blood flowing through my veins, from the Irish side of my family, yet I'm not violently opposed to the monarchy here in Britain. I'm happy to ignore them as long as they don't insist on rubbing salt in our wounds - like the recent royal wedding. We're facing a tory government (I'd call them the coalition, but I think Clegg and his cronies leave their liberal and democratic credentials at the door when they turn up to cabinet) who are imposing a diet of strict economic cuts on the nation and they choose to hold an elaborate wedding ceremony with a security bill that costs us more than G20. By all accounts Will's wedding dwarfed the cost of Charles' and all this in a supposed age of austerity.

No the Queen's visit to Ireland is surely both expensive and inappropriate and it reminds me of the popes visit to England last year, which cost UK taxpayers up to 12 million - with the national secular society claiming that hidden security costs, like extra policing, could have seen us paying up to 100 million. I was baptised a Roman Catholic, but I can imagine that particularly grating with all the C of E lot. The 2001 census showed only 9% of the UK population are Catholic and Henry VIIIth got rid of the pope ages ago, the Act of Union in 1707 cemented that. He's just not relevant in England, so then why did we invite him for an expensive state visit?

I can only think that our current government are fans of pomp and circumstance, they want these over blown state occasions and state visits as a tribute to traditional power centres and a spur to some misplaced sense of nationalism. I can imagine them salivating now over the royal photo-ops at next years olympics. I suppose it is marginally better than Maggie Thatcher casting herself as Queen in welcoming back 'our boys' from the folly of the falklands.

So why are the Irish playing along? By all accounts the Queen's visit is costing them equivalent to £6.2 million, add to that the state visit by Obama later this year and you've got the Irish police force worrying their entire annual budget is going to be eaten up by two parasitic sightseers. Everyone understands when the Queen goes to visit somewhere like New Zealand - where, I've been told, the Maori chiefs wrote a letter to the queen asking her to become sovereign... obviously that's a very rose-tinted over simplification of events, but once New Zealand was opened up to the world (by Captain Cook - a Brit) it's leaders decided British rule was preferable to lawless traders and settlers. Nonetheless, there are many members and former members of Britain's once great empire who have fond memories of Britain and monarchy; in Ireland the history is bitter, don't mention Oliver Cromwell, don't ask how many good potatoe crops got exported to England during the potato famine that killed so many, don't mention Bloody Sunday or internment (and I could go on and on).

I do have a theory though, everyone in England must remember the headlines late last year when Britain made out it was single-handedly (alongside the rest of the EU and the IMF) rescuing the Irish economy. You can imagine Osborne insisting on an humiliating Royal visit as part of the deal, particularily if I'm right about this governments desire to make us all more nationalistic. People put up with a lot of shit when they're patriots, just look at all those guys coming back in body bags or with limbs missing from the 'war against terror'. I think that's what Cameron is really after when he talks about the 'big society', he wants us all to muck in together like it's WWII, so he can reinforce the old guard elites of the tory heartland and roll us back to the 80's (or worse) in terms of the welfare system, education and the NHS with a minimum of 'unpatriotic' complainers.

As for Obama visiting, his motivation is clear - state visits to Ireland are good for Irish American votes back home and he's trying to make sure he gets re-elected. US Presidents have been playing this card for years and it's apparently quite effective, presumably it's good in some way for Ireland too, perhaps their American cousins remember to send some business back home or maybe there's no perhaps and this flattery comes with more concrete long term financial incentives. The Obama administration are going to have to get a lot of leg work in before the election, for even the gory glory of Osama Bin Laden's final capture, oh, sorry... execution; hasn't seemed to rub off enough on the presidency. Perhaps he should have relented and published photos of the dead dissident with a bullet in the head. I guess all the votes at home he would have gained would have paled to the potential international outcry... Bin Laden, dead without trial, unarmed and shot in the eye by special forces acting in Pakistan without permission. Sounds like a war crime to me, so where was that outcry?