4
NEWS
Can you
put a price
on the
Platinum
Jubilee
party?
jump in trade, according to research by
UKHospitality and three other trade
bodies. Pubs and restaurants are
forecast to earn about £400 million
more than they would during a normal
Thursday to Sunday.
People are likely to spend that money
away from their homes: according to
Visit Britain, 8.6 million adults had
“definitely planned” a holiday in
England.
Not everyone will be celebrating,
however. Peter Collie runs the
Horseshoe Inn near London Bridge, a
pub reliant on office workers. “The four-
day weekend will completely ruin our
trade,” he said. “Normally we’d have 150
to 200 bookings, but we’re looking at- I don’t not like the Queen, but it’s
almost pointless decorating.”
In previous jubilees, however, there
has been a “bounce-back” effect the
month after, as businesses increase
production to meet delivery deadlines.
PRICE OF HAPPINESS
Yet does counting the cost somewhat
miss the point? “Wellbeing benefits are
not captured in our approach,” the
government’s assessment admits. “Good
economics should be about people’s
happiness, not just pounds and pence,”
Jessop said. “We do not usually think of
leisure time as a negative, or fret that we
are not earning anything when we are
on holiday. It is hard to put a monetary
value on the boost to wellbeing.
“If another country had a major
national celebration that reduced its
GDP, would we really look at them in
pity, and say they were worse off as a
result?” So close the economics
textbook, have another pint, and don’t
worry about the £2.4 billion — we’ll get
most of it back later.
@TomHCalverIn 1977, Britain was broke. The year
before, James Callaghan, the prime
minister, had been forced to borrow
$3.9 billion (about £2.2 billion then)
from the International Monetary
Fund to stabilise the pound. By the time
of the Silver Jubilee in June, consumer
price inflation was at 16.1 per cent.
Reading the economic pulse of the
nation, it was the Queen’s “express
wish” that there should be “no undue
expenditure” on jubilee celebrations,
according to Callaghan.
Money would be spent within
“existing expenditure limits”. A big
party alone would not have bankrupted
Britain, yet ministers feared it would
send the wrong message when so many
were out of work.
This year’s Platinum Jubilee comes at
a time when inflation threatens to return
to double digits. Households are
struggling to pay energy bills and fill up
cars, caused once again by an overseas
war. How much will the pomp,
ceremony, cake and beer cost Britain —
and will we think it’s worth it?
STATE COFFERS
This time the government is directly
funding a chunk of the jubilee directly.
In the 2021 budget, Rishi Sunak set aside
£28 million to deliver “a major
celebration for the UK”. This helps pay
for things like the Queen’s birthday
parade on Thursday, and Saturday’s
Platinum Party.
The sum works out at about £1 perTOM
CALVERData Projects Editorhousehold. You could use that sum to
run the NHS for about two hours.
Then there are policing costs, which
for the wedding of the Duke and
Duchess of Cambridge in 2011 were
about £7 million. The Metropolitan
Police said the final bill would not be
known until after the event, but that
managing large events was part of its
“core” policing remit.CHIPPING IN
Much of the party will not be billed to
the taxpayer anyway. The crown jewel of
the weekend, Sunday’s Jubilee Pageant,
will feature Sir Elton John, Ed Sheeran
and thousands of street performers.
Thanks to “the latest in digital
technology”, the Queen’s golden state
carriage will lead the parade evoking the
“excitement and majesty of her journey
to be crowned 70 years ago”.
If it sounds expensive, fear not: the
event, which is expected to cost
£15 million, is being organised by The
Platinum Jubilee Pageant Ltd, which has
been “fundraising to deliver the pageant
at no cost to the taxpayer”. British
brands such as Burberry, Lloyds Bank
and Jaguar are sponsoring the event,
alongside the multinationals Meta —
Facebook’s parent company — and
Goldman Sachs. “Generous individuals”
will also chip in, according to its website.
Elsewhere, the National Lottery has
agreed to provide £22 million to fund
activities to “bring people together”
during the jubilee period, although only
a small proportion of that will be spent
on events happening over the weekend.THE GREAT BANK HOLIDAY
DEBATE
The cost of putting on the main eventwill be barely noticed on the public
balance sheet. What does make an
impact, however, is the country not
working for two extra days.
Last year the government published a
28-page impact assessment on the
economic effect of an extra bank
holiday, weighing up the costs — mainly
business closures — against the benefits:
national pride, consumer spending and
tourism. Based on research from the
past two jubilee celebrations, it
concluded that the day might cost the
economy about £2.4 billion in lost
output. “This is likely to be enough to
ensure that UK GDP falls in the second
quarter as a whole, encouraging more
talk of ‘recession’,” said Julian Jessop, an
economist.
This amount would be more, were it
not for the money we spend on “platty
joobs” (as some social media users have
called the festivities), which boost
certain parts of the economy. About a
fifth of us planned to join a street party
over the weekend, for example, and will
be buying more cake, bunting and beer
than usual.
Bunting Warehouse in Loughborough
is selling five times as much as in a
typical June. “We’re working 12-hour
days,” said Liam Martin, 25, who had
been making sales right up until
Wednesday afternoon. “About 80 per
cent of the bunting we sell is made here
in Britain, so it’s a boost all round.”
Hospitality is set for a 22 per cent£28m
Amount of money Rishi Sunak put
aside to fund jubilee celebrationsJoining the celebrations were, clockwise from above, Joy
Stephen, six months, at Balmoral, the Queen’s barge,
Gloriana, on the Thames at Windsor, well-wishers on The
Mall, and a boy and a street party in High Peak, Derbyshire
JUBILEE
Clumsy
bear joins
the Queen
for tea
sketch. There was an interest
in the filming and animation
process, and the opportunity
to invite a famous bear to tea
was just too much fun to
miss.
“While the Queen may not
be attending the concert, she
was very keen that people
understood how much it
meant to her and that those
watching had a great time.”
Rosie Alison, of Heyday
Films, which produced thetwo Paddington films and is
making a third this year, said:
“Filming Her Majesty’s tea
party with Paddington Bear
was such an emotional day
for the entire crew. All of us
were in awe of the Queen’s
wit, warmth and radiant aura
as she patiently engaged with
a polite, clumsy but very
well-intentioned bear. Of
course, she shone, and put all
of us at ease.”
Mark Sidaway, executive
producer of the BBC’s
Platinum Party at the Palace,
said: “We were thrilled and
honoured when we learnt
Her Majesty had agreed to
run with this touching yet
joyful idea the team had
come up with — although it
was slightly nerve-racking
ensuring it all blended
seamlessly with the live
performance from Queen.”
@RoyaNikkhah→Continued from page 1in decades for which she had
not been out on The Mall in
London, because her usual
companion was not well
enough to brave it. She
estimated that she had spent
12 nights in total, camping out
by the palace.
“How can I even put it into
words?” she said. “I’m a
royalist. A Great Britainist.
We need the royals, because
what else brings us together
like this? There wouldn’t be a
gathering like this if we were
celebrating... I don’t evenreminder of monarchy’s core
appeal. Amid economic
malaise and political
dysfunction, the pageantry
and permanence of the royal
family — the Queen in
particular — is a soothing
balm. In a divided nation, it is
really only the monarch who
can act as a much-needed
glue, at least for the
majority who believe in the
institution.
While criss-crossing the
country attending street, boat
and garden parties, most of
the people I spoke to about
the Queen struggled to
express what her reign meant
to them. For many it is an
intangible feeling, some
combination of belonging,
pride and nostalgia.
For Shirley Messinger, 75,
attending the New Milton
Lions Club jubilee party, this
was the first royal landmarkA carnival
of niceness
and gentle
patriotism
together,” said Rebecca Cain.
“The flags, the effort, it’s just
lovely really.”
How will the historians
remember this jubilee
moment?
They will recall that Britain
was in a state of anxiety and
disrepair, edging uncertainly
out of a ruinous pandemic
that killed nearly 180,
people and wrecked its
economy.
They will remember a tired
government led by an
increasingly unpopular
prime minister, blundering
and bludgeoning its way out
of Europe, teetering on the
brink of disunion and arming
a war-ravaged Ukraine.
They will doubtless draw
parallels to the penury and
inflation of the Silver Jubilee
year, 1977.
Yet it is the very turbulence
of the times that serves as abanks of the Thames was a
home counties fantasia:
families and neighbours in
their gardens getting mildly
sloshed on rosé and cider;
barbecue smoke wafting over
the water; labradors nosing
for scraps. It was a carnival of
niceness and gentle
patriotism.
“Everyone has been so
hacked off lately, but this
really brings people
→Continued from page 1
know what. What would you
celebrate?”
New Milton, just outside
Christchurch in Hampshire,
is the second most royalist
part of the country, according
to a recent survey, and its
jubilee party claimed to be
the largest get-together in the
southwest.
Like many such events, it
was a conscious attempt to
reach back deep into the
British past, linking this
unique moment with our
long island history.
A fire beacon was lit, one
of 3,500 all over the country,
connecting us to the previous
Elizabethan age, when
warning fires dotted the
coastline to warn of the
incoming Spanish Armada.
Contortionists twisted, a
bagpipe skirled and an RAF
Spitfire flew overhead,
sparking a ripple of applause.But for the mobility scooters
and flashing fairground
lights, one might have been
celebrating George III’s
Golden Jubilee in 1809, the
roast beef of old England now
a well-flipped cheeseburger.
“I think we all needed a
proper dose of normality and
a bit of a party,” said
Messinger, while grinning at
the hard-fought dog show.
Britain has had its royal
party, leaving no one in any
doubt of the admiration and
respect with which it views its
longest-serving monarch.
If this is indeed the last
jubilee for many years to
come, the nation will have a
deep store of buoyant,
boozy, patriotic memories to
draw upon. Whenever
anyone recalls Elizabeth II’s
matchless milestone, we
will be able to say: “I was
there.”We all needed
a bit of a party