HERE we go again. Well, at least this time there hasn’t been the interminable 12 never-ending days of wall-to-wall, no-escape, sycophantic coverage as there was last September following the previous monarch’s demise.

Nevertheless, the fake smiles and public-persona masks of the medal-festooned royals will get another airing amongst their diminishing devotees.

And this time an extra treat: we will be honoured with a glimpse of the bejewelled crown itself, estimated to be valued at around £5 billion.

Much has happened since last September. The lower orders have had a lot of things to focus on other than the spectator sport of royal-watching. The cost-of-living crisis has continued to escalate, foodbanks are running out of stock, and picket lines of striking workers are no longer a novelty.

Public services, starved of resources, are barely functioning, and the people’s crown jewel — the NHS — is on life support. The atmosphere is grim.

But that won’t stop the opulent pageantry of the tiny section of society that owns most of the wealth and resources — not just of this benighted country, but of the entire world.
They will parade their ugly rapacity to anyone still willing to play along, but those numbers are on a rapid downward trajectory, and the rich and powerful know it.

Last September, some prototype draconian laws were given a trial run when a brave few, peaceful protesters, stood up amid the royal proceedings to convey their opposition and to speak up for freedom of thought, speech, and assembly.

Some were detained by police simply for holding up blank sheets of paper in protest at being silenced, others for simply calling out “not my king.”

Those prototype laws are now ready for wider implementation. Over the last few days, the Metropolitan Police have made it known that they intend to take full advantage of the new Public Order Bill which received royal assent on May 2, just in time for the coronation.

The Met wasted no time and immediately sent out intimidatory letters to protest groups, including to Republic who campaign to abolish the monarchy, and for an elected head of state. The Met’s letter informed such groups of the new laws and of police intention to crack down on protesters who contravene them.

The Met has also made it known that they intend to use mass live facial recognition (LFR) technology during the coronation. This technology scans the faces in crowds and instantly matches them against a database held by the police.

This technology has already been used against protesters in the recent past, but this is the first time it will be implemented in such a mass operation. The consequences are dystopian in the extreme.

Liberty, the British human rights organisation, has said that LFR dilutes all the rights and liberties of all citizens and that it has already been used against anti-arms-trade campaigners and, ironically, against “kill the Bill” protesters who marched against the introduction of these new draconian laws.

In a statement, the Met said that LFR will only be used to identify known criminals or terrorists, but they have also made contradictory statements indicating that police tolerance for any disruption of coronation gatherings, “whether through protest or otherwise will be low, and dealt with robustly.”

But while the circus trundles on, the heightened fear of society’s elite wealth hoarders is becoming glaringly obvious as poll after poll shows plummeting public support and a growing intolerance for the monarchy, its hangers-on, and its archaic placement in a beleaguered modern Britain.

This public intolerance was recently further ignited by the silly Pythonesque suggestion by the Archbishop of Canterbury that the viewing public should join in swearing an oath of allegiance to the new king.

Social media has had a field day with this. Anti-monarchy memes and jokes have gone into overdrive and gleefully vie with one another to produce ever more contemptuous images and representations of the current monarch, who is historically known to have a fragile ego and self-entitled attitude.

It was not perhaps surprising then that reports that filtered out from the king’s inner circle (denied by the Archbishop) suggested that the king had thrown a bit of a hissy-fit at the Archbishop, causing him to backpedal speedily and publicly clarify that he had only ever meant it to be an invitation to the viewing public to swear an oath of allegiance, not a command or expectation.

But as entertaining as all this is, behind such satire lies a deep frustration and desperate anguish as the grotesque spectacle of pomp and arrogance serve only to highlight the pain of ordinary people as our country continues to creak and groan under the weight of the austerity being deliberately inflicted in order that those who are the haves can continue to prosper at the expense of the growing number of have-nots.

There will always be some in the ranks of ordinary people who will enjoy feeling part of such glitz and glamour if only by osmosis and as servile observers, perhaps gaining some kind of soothing sense of security from the display of opulence and historic tradition. But they are daily becoming fewer in number.

When the bunting is finally put away and the souvenir mugs and plates are stored, when the royals and their privileged entourage have once again slithered back to their shadowy, pampered lives, hidden from the public gaze, reality will inevitably reappear.

And it will not be opulent, enjoyable, or entertaining, and maybe enough rose-tinted spectacles will fall from star-struck eyes for most people to finally recognise that, in the words of the late Tony Benn, “the existence of a hereditary monarchy helps to prop up all the privilege and patronage that corrupts our society.”