The British poverty mindset was shown in full force this week through the Twitter storm over what is perceived to be excessive spending on the recent state banquet for French President Macron and the First Lady at Windsor Castle. The banquet, attended by approximately 160 guests including King Charles and Queen Camilla, alongside the French head of state, Prince William and Princess Catherine, and celebrity guests such as Elton John and Mick Jagger, was estimated to cost in excess of £300,000.
Many members of the public and political commentators were up in arms about this, including Isabel Oakeshott, a critic of needless spending since she, er, fled to Dubai to avoid increased educational costs as a result of the private school tax raid, rather than send her children to a state school. Oakeshott criticised the banquet, calling it “disgusting” that so much money would be spent entertaining the “puffed-up little pipsqueak of a president who clearly hates Britain”. At least he is in Britain, though.
These days, £300,000 is a drop in the ocean compared to the unrestrained government spending of the current Labour government, where foreign national households are claiming £1 billion a month in benefits, immigrants are housed in hotels at a cost of over £15 billion, and an NHS which rattles through more than the cost of this banquet every minute.
This banquet, the first state visit by the French President in seventeen years, was an exercise in diplomacy, an investment in the British soft power that Keir Starmer is so keen to rely on. The two nations have maintained a close and important relationship for many years now; the late Queen Elizabeth II made a state visit to France in 2004 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the entente cordiale. Macron himself is deeply Anglophilic, making a statement on the Queen’s passing which stated “To you, she was your Queen. To us, she was THE Queen.”
The ruling of a nation should be filled with pomp and circumstance
Even the menu at this week’s state banquet emphasised the close ties between the United Kingdom and France, with wines being picked specifically for their symbolism of this special relationship, which naturally contributed to the cost of the event. Rather than toasting with champagne, an English sparkling wine was selected for the banquet, notably Domaine Evremond’s Classic Cuvée “Edition 1”, made in Kent. This wine is special, as it is the first sparkling wine produced in England as a result of direct investment by a French champagne house, in this case Taittinger.
After dinner drinks included Taylor’s port from 1977, the year of Macron’s birth, and a cognac from 1948, the year of the King’s birth. Taylor’s, notably, was founded by Englishman Job Bearsley in 1692, while the particular cognac at the event was imported from France by Berry Bros. & Rudd, the renowned English wine and spirits merchant founded in the same decade as Taylor’s.
Wines of this calibre and rarity are not cheap. That particular vintage of port currently costs an average of £152 per bottle at time of writing, exclusive of tax, while a bottle of the cognac can fetch between £330–£520 at auction. For around nine servings per bottle, assuming half of people went for port and half went for cognac, this would work out at over £5,000, solely on after dinner drinks. This is, of course, a large sum of money, but for some of the most sought after wines and spirits on the market, with symbolism as important as these had, for guests as distinguished as heads of state and members of the Royal Family, it is a price worth paying.
Many people will lament this kind of spending as unnecessary, but the ruling of a nation should be filled with pomp and circumstance when appropriate, to celebrate its existence and commemorate its past. Would you rather Britain carried out its diplomatic relations exclusively through the medium of Zoom calls, or perhaps increase the spending to host a finger-food buffet in a function room of a Crowne Plaza hotel? It would be ridiculous. An extravagant state banquet is the only sensible and sufficient option for such a meeting.
In reality, state banquets have drastically shrunk in their extravagance over the past century, especially in those between Britain and France. This week’s banquet was a reciprocation of an event held by Macron for King Charles in 2023 at the Palace of Versailles, which cost more than the British banquet but was still pared down compared to banquets past, consisting of only three dishes and lasting for a “relatively short” time, according to one attendee. In comparison, when King George V made an official state visit to France in 1913, he was treated to twelve courses. When the entente cordiale was first marked in 1904, King Edward VII enjoyed an eighteen-course meal courtesy of French President Emile Loubet.
The number of courses and cost incurred do not really matter, for the purpose of the event is not really about these things. Public spending should always be scrutinised, but there are for more wasteful ways the government insists on spending money than a one-off event to celebrate the relationship with one of our closest allies, even if they could do more to help solve our issues, like giving more care to stopping small boat crossings.
The United Kingdom is losing a lot of its beauty, history, and tradition, through wilful ignorance of its problems and a commitment to stagnation. We don’t even make security fences beautiful any more. In a nation that seems to be simply giving up, I am joyed to see that the tradition of extravagant state banquets has continued, at least, for now. We may enjoy it while it lasts, for if the current trend of this once-great country is anything to go by, it may soon be the end of service.
