Royal Ascot isn’t what it used to be

The great racing venue has changed since a few decades ago and certainly since the time of Queen Anne. That otherwise ineffectual monarch willed Royal Ascot into existence and it has become one of the highlights of England’s social calendar.

All subsequent monarchs, including the reigning one, have always graced the Royal Enclosure with their presence, conferring an aura of dignity on the proceedings. By royal decree the racecourse has always been open to the public, and the public flocked in.

Champagne was sipped, cigars smoked, bets placed, and ladies and gentlemen would cheer the thoroughbreds, some of them their own, some belonging to their social superiors.

And then, step by step, Britain showed the Bolsheviks how to make their cherished dream come true. There was no need to shoot the ladies and gentlemen. It was sufficient to marginalise them for the proletariat to emerge victorious.

Enough has been written about the demographic catastrophe England has suffered in the last few decades. Yet the parallel social and cultural catastrophe is largely ignored, mainly because it’s no longer possible to resist the creeping proletarianisation. It’s best to keep silent in the hope of avoiding chastisement and re-education.

I’m not using the word ‘proletarian’ in the Marxist sense of factory or manual worker. We have precious few of them left, and those still extant don’t necessarily display the cultural symptoms of déclassé anomie.

Such anomie is the sub-cultural property of the mob, whose members may nowadays hold any job at all, from taxi driver to lawyer, from salesman to fund manager, from advertising executive to cardiologist. Prole anomie has become a badge of honour, proudly worn by all who strive to belong.

Those who don’t belong had better be good at subterfuge or, if they’re not, at least keep their mouths shut. The mob may forgive a meek outsider, but it’ll pounce on a fierce critic.

Step by step, the mob has succeeded at either vulgarising or destroying every institution through which some checks on it could be applied. The House of Lords is the most conspicuous casualty, having fallen victim to the mob’s idea of ‘democracy’. No thought is ever given to the ancient constitution of the realm, which they don’t understand, and those few bits they do understand they hate.

The less eye-catching losses may be less lethal, but they rankle as much. Just look at a newsreel of the crowd at a football match some 60 years ago. See those working class chaps wearing their Sunday best, cheering their team enthusiastically but with hallmark English restraint?

Now compare them to the savage tattooed mob of today, screaming obscenities at the top of their voices, waiting to pick a fight with their counterparts rooting for the other team. See the difference?

Or listen to disgusting, anti-musical prole din blaring in public places, making it impossible to have a quiet meal in any restaurant where one doesn’t have to pay a fortune. Look at the vomit-inducing and vomiting throng tumbling out of pubs at night, scan the newspapers the morning after a public holiday for the photographs of revolting public displays in every city centre – listen to the way people talk on buses, listen to they way their children talk.

It would be unrealistic to hope that an ancient institution like Royal Ascot would be spared the effluvial flood. Indeed it hasn’t been.

At first the mob began to use it for their pathetic attempts at jumped-up gentility. For one day in a year those feral accountants and sales supervisors, accompanied by their wives or girlfriends, would don their pseudo-toff garments and try to impersonate aristos.

In parallel, the aristos, including the younger members of the royal family, were avidly adopting the manners and mores of the proles. At some point the two tectonic plates clapped together in the middle, and Ascot was turned into a Walpurgisnacht, and, which is worse, a pretentious one at that.

Yesterday provided evidence for this observation. All those savages, some fathers of multiple children, some stock brokers, all equally barbaric, staged a mass brawl, with tables flying, fences tumbling, chairs used for their ballistic properties. Welcome to Royal Ascot, ladies and gentlemen.

That being Ladies’ Day, the ladies weren’t far behind. They too brawled, their tasteless slag dresses slipping off their loose, milk-white, often tattooed flesh.

Today’s papers are jammed full of photographs preserving this mobfest for posterity. Drunk men trying to kill one another. Slags passed out pissed. Couples with their tongues stuck down each other’s throats. Middle-aged women in ridiculous slapper outfits cheering on. Welcome to Royal Ascot, ladies and gentlemen.

People who say they love England really don’t. They love the memory of what England was, the greatest and most civilised land on earth. Well, that England is gone, stamped in the dirt by the rampaging victorious mob.

5 thoughts on “Royal Ascot isn’t what it used to be”

  1. A very bad day at the office for one and all. So Hogarthian, it makes the mosh pit of yore seem like the mythical vicar’s tea party in comparison. At least after Hogarth we sobered up, beat the French and established the now despised British Empire.

  2. During the Second World War American troops deploying to England were all issued a handbook describing English life and what to expect. English sports fans called the BEST ij the world, the most sportsman-like. NOW the soccer hooligans rule. Probably just one example of many. Over seventy years is a long time and I guess change is always present but sometimes you wish it was not.

  3. I think Margaret Thatcher encouraged a lot of arrivistes because she thought so many toffs were ineffectual. The Spectator had a popular advice column for the ‘up and comers’ so that they could ape the manners and customs of those who had already arrived. For the more enthusiastic what better model was there than the Bullingdon Boys? They had very strict barriers to entry but wild parties, food fights and trashing furniture came naturally to them.

  4. All of Tocqueville’s fears regarding democracy have been realized to the nines. Uniformity of (bad) manners, speech, the impotence of the individual, empowerment only by mob association, etc…..

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