Diana’s death changed nothing

After the tears came the rise of a cynical, coarse and sentimental society, says matthew carr

It is 10 years since New Labour's landslide victory was followed by Princess Diana's death. The two events have always been connected, as a result of the 'People's Princess' speech, in which Tony Blair demonstrated his talent for amateur dramatics for the first time - and his skill at political manipulation.

For a few strange and still largely incomprehensible days, large sections of the population gave themselves over to a collective outpouring of emotion that might have appeared in Charles Mackay's nineteenth century classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness of Crowds.

For those few days it was impossible to escape the mountains of flowers, the media-orchestrated 'grief' and Elton John's mawkish dirge. Even normally intelligent commentators lost their bearings in this rarefied atmosphere.

It was impossible to escape the mountains of flowers, the media-orchestrated ‘grief’ and Elton John’s mawkish dirge

Some spoke of a republican 'floral revolution' against the monarchy. Others celebrated the fact that a population known for its reserve had discovered its feminine side and learned to cry. There was talk of a kinder, softer England, symbolised by Diana's pieta-like smile and also by Blair himself.

Much of this was arrant nonsense. Even then there was an alarming conformity about the response to Princess Diana's death that made one think that much of the population had been taken over by alien seed pods. As the hapless royal family discovered to its cost, such a response not only expected but frequently demanded emulation.

Indifference to Diana's death earned the kind of hostile attention that Meursault received in Albert Camus' The Outsider for not crying at his mother's funeral. Even people who had never mentioned, and perhaps had never even thought about, Diana in their lives looked aghast and even angry at any suggestion that she was perhaps not a particularly exemplary or admirable