The royal family’s PR operation is in danger of becoming too successful
Is anyone else sick of the love-fest between the modern royal family and the press? That might sound churlish, even unpatriotic, especially when everybody is preparing for next month’s Diamond Jubilee jamboree. But to me the House of Windsor looks less and less like a monarchy, more and more like a PR operation.
In the last few weeks we have seen a number of royal publicity stunts, orchestrated to endear the Windsors to us, the drooling masses. There’s Prince Charles presenting the weather on TV; there’s Prince Harry sprinting with Usain Bolt; and there, everywhere, is Catherine Windsor, née Middleton, swinging a stick in front of the Olympic hockey team or attending some charity polo bash. Isn’t she lovely? Yes, she is. But do we need to be reminded every day?
There’s nothing new about royal PR, you might say. Monarchy has always been a propaganda exercise of sorts, and the Windsors have spent decades trying to give themselves a better press. The difference today is that they — or rather their media handlers — appear to have mastered the art of spin. The royal family now has a press outfit that’s at least as effective as New Labour’s under Tony Blair: they can defuse a bad story as quickly as they can generate a positive one. Royal correspondents are granted ‘unprecedented access’ in exchange for agreeable coverage, while lesser reporters are invited to a palace occasionally for a sweetening glass of champagne. The press seems eager to co-operate, royal schlock being one of the few things that still sells newspapers. In a strange way, too, the good PR has itself become the good PR: journalists often talk about how the royal family has modernised and reinvented its image.
One of the key figures in this rebranding process has been Paddy Harverson, the communications secretary at Clarence House. Harverson used to be director of communications at Manchester United, a role that presumably entailed keeping nasty stories about footballers out of the papers. Since 2003, he has done a similar job for the royals. Last year, PR Week magazine named him ‘professional of the year’ for making the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William ‘the global PR event of the year’. Media experts praised his handling of the press and his innovative use of social media. Alastair Campbell said he was a ‘worthy and popular winner’.
Royalists seem particularly thrilled at all the munificent publicity surrounding the Windsors. They reckon that good spin is the only way to preserve the idea of monarchy in these fiercely democratic times. But you don’t have to be a republican to think that all the gushy PR might be counter-productive. Last month, for the first anniversary of Kate & Wills, the media indulged in a frenzy of vulgar adulation. Serious newspapers produced glossy Hello!-style supplements. ITV aired William and Kate – The First Year, a revolting programme in which talking heads told us about Kate’s ‘flawless’ appearances on the public stage, about how clever she is to wear affordable clothing, and about how even Hollywood legends are star-struck when confronted by the young royal couple.
We can’t blame the Windsors: we crave and consume all this guff. But the royal family’s aides are now playing the media’s game as never before. ‘Narratives’ are being put together for the press to follow. Take, for instance, the transformation of Prince Harry in the public eye. Not long ago, he was presented in the papers as an obnoxious drunk, stumbling out of nightclubs, dressing as a Nazi. After serving with the armed forces in Afghanistan, however, he has been recast as a ‘soldier prince’ and a national treasure. His deployment was initially subject to a ‘media blackout’, you may recall — although British news agencies were allowed to film and interview him in exchange for their discretion. It would be wrong to suggest that the whole of Harry’s tour of duty was a convoluted publicity stunt. He must have wanted to serve his country. Yet there can be no denying that, after a German newspaper spilt the story, the ‘Harry the Hero’ headlines that followed – not to mention the handy footage of him at war — were brilliantly spun to improve his reputation.
In March, as part of the Jubilee, Prince Harry embarked on a visit of the Caribbean, his first solo tour as a representative of the crown. The media were quick to call it a triumph. The young prince had come of age; his easygoing manner was a diplomatic asset. ‘Prince Harry charms Jamaicans with Bob Marley quote,’ we were told, after Harry told an audience that ‘every liddle ting’s gonna be alright’. Last week he flew to Washington to accept the Atlantic Council’s 2012 award for distinguished humanitarian leadership.
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The royal press machine has tried similarly to rehabilitate the Duchess of Cornwall. After Princess Diana’s death, the British showed little inclination to accept Camilla as their future queen. She was seen as a marriage wrecker. Prince Charles hired Mark Bolland, a media man who was at the time director of the Press Complaints Commission, to soften their images and facilitate their emergence as a public couple. Bolland arranged friendly photo-ops with Nelson Mandela and the Spice Girls. He eventually overreached himself — he reportedly leaked bad news about other royals to make Charles and Camilla look good — and was pushed out.
But the Duchess of Cornwall’s image is still being well looked after. Today, the papers often run spoon-fed reports about, say, Camilla tickling a piglet during a visit to a charity farm, or how she bickers in a winningly domestic way with her husband about when to put on the heating. Last year, she even made a cameo appearance on The Archers.
It is easy to be too cynical. The Queen’s popularity is by no means a smoke-and-mirrors PR illusion. She is well-liked because she is a dignified woman who does her job with a minimum of fuss. The younger royals seem a decent bunch, too, with or without the stream of soi-disant insiders telling us how normal and down-to-earth they are.
The problem, perhaps, is that in the midst of all this positive spin, the reality is being lost. The promotion of the royal image has been outsourced to PR men, who are desperate to make the monarchy seem less aristocratic and ‘out of touch’. But don’t we secretly want our royalty to be aloof and superior? The more piglets Camilla tickles, the more she and Prince Charles allow themselves to be portrayed as a regular middle-aged couple, the less interesting they become. If Charles succeeds his mother, he and Camilla will probably be seen as more decorative than useful, like those continental monarchies in Spain or Monaco.
The younger royals, meanwhile, appear to be sliding further downmarket. Whereas Prince Charles was interviewed by a fawning Jonathan Dimbleby, Princes Harry and William were questioned by a gobsmacked Fearne Cotton. Harry, William and his charming wife now seem more like pop stars than anything else. And we all know what happens to fashionable celebrities in the end, no matter how well they are handled. We build them up to knock them down.