A distinguished commentator's brilliant analysis of what the New Year has in store: Our longest serving monarch? Meltdown for the ruling class? Historian and author SIR ROY STRONG says: Roll on, 2015!

 

The Queen will become Britain's longest-serving monarch on September 9, surpassing the reign of her great-great grandmother Queen Victoria

 

Next year sees a milestone in British history. On September 9, our present monarch will have reigned longer than her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, making her the longest serving in our history. 

 

Like Victoria, Elizabeth II has come in old age to be a hugely venerated figure. The majority of the population cannot remember a time without her. Indeed, most Britons will have been born during her reign.

 

And yet there remains the fact that we are at the close of the second Elizabethan age. Students of history will tell you that the final years of any era are characterised by uncertainty. 

 

Certainly, the modus operandi of the House of Windsor – a style that was set by Edward VII and has continued pretty much unaltered ever since – will eventually have to change to meet the challenges of a new generation and a new century.

 

We are unlikely to witness that change in 2015, because we are fortunate in having a monarch who seems set for more years of being both happy and glorious. But putting that piece of good news to one side, few people will deny that there is a general malaise in society, a feeling of unease, dissatisfaction and disillusionment.

 

I don’t think that in all my 80 years (I will be that age next August) I have registered such an all-pervading sense of the lack of direction. Who are we and where are we going? We no longer seem to know.

 

In my lifetime there was the clear and optimistic post-war vision of the 1940s and 1950s in the Welfare State after the deprivation of the war. It gave the population free healthcare and access to the talented, by means of grants and scholarships, to higher education.

 

Then came the ‘you’ve never had it so good’ era of Harold Macmillan, which lifted the material living standards of the average citizen to undreamed of heights. After the ghastly, turbulent blip of the 1970s came the Thatcherite vision of a free enterprise society, rewarding energy and hard work by banishing the chains of state ownership and bureaucracy.

 

Yet David Cameron’s initial concept of the ‘Big Society’ vanished down the tubes pretty quickly, to be followed by his somewhat dispiriting ‘We’re all in this together’. And indeed so we are, but it seems with no sign of ever getting out of it.

 

The General Election in May is certainly going to be one of, if not the, landmark elections since 1945.

 

Until now, the various parties presented visions as to where we were heading, ones which the different constituent parts of the island could share – whether urban or rural, north or south. Alas, with the advent of the campaign for Scottish independence, any hope of such united aspirations is vanishing fast.

 

The irony is that the initial loss of the vote for independence, which was thought to be the last word on the topic, has in fact turned out to be the exact reverse. In many ways it has intensified the campaign and brought retribution on the Labour Party north of the border.

 

We forget that the Union is only 300 years old and wasn’t popular then. Scotland has a separate legal system and national church among a litany of other institutions that spell separation rather than togetherness.

 

And then where does the monarchy fit into this new scheme of things? Strictly speaking, the Queen is Elizabeth I of Scotland and II of England; an adjustment to her formal title should have been made in 1998, the year of devolution. We seem to have forgotten that the monarchy, seen from afar, is to the majority of the Scots a remote, south of England institution.

 

If the end result of the devolution vote is that the Scottish Labour Party goes under, it will only add to a scenario of the dissolution of the existing political configurations.

 

In the case of the somewhat goofy Ed Miliband, he will discover it really is true (as one commentator wrote recently) that his party now represents a section of society that no longer exists.

 

In the case of the Conservatives, there will be losses to Ukip and who knows what fissures in the case of the Liberal Democrats. But do not worry. British history tells us that every so often there’s a meltdown to meet the needs of a new era – 2015 could be one of those moments. Roll on, I say.

 

What all of this also reflects is the public’s total disillusionment with the political class. They are seen as a self-perpetuating oligarchy who make politics their career and who rarely have any experience of a workshop floor. They are now cast as a self-seeking, righteous clique whose last desire is to reform itself.

 

The so-called reform of the House of Lords remains an unresolved constitutional mess. No one either has achieved the redrawing of the constituency boundaries, which is another scandal. And all of that we owe to political in-fighting with never a thought for the wider public, which ostensibly our MPs serve.

 

And where, one may ask, are the giants of vision and oratory? Gone, gone, seemingly for ever. What we listen to most of the time are ventriloquists’ dummies articulating what the last focus group told them to say. We live in the golden age of box-ticking and don’t forget it. Whatever else is taught at Eton it cannot include the art of oratory.

 

Just to add to the fun of the fair, there’s another anniversary in 2015 – the battle of Waterloo, the heroic moment when the Duke of Wellington led the pan-European forces not far from Brussels and in the aftermath of the Duchess of Richmond’s famous ball to a glorious victory over the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. Will we celebrate this? Or will we, as happened on the 300th anniversary of the Union of England and Scotland in 2007, sweep it under the carpet in the interests of togetherness and ever-closer union?

 

On the horizon in 2017, if the Conservatives return to power, is a referendum as to whether we stay part of the European Union. What is striking, looking back to 1973 when we joined it, is that the longer we are part of the Union, the more unhappy and uneasy we seem to become.

 

We were certainly part of the Roman Empire but not the Holy Roman Empire or the one of Napoleon. Indeed, the whole of our history has been in the opposite direction, with the defeat of the Spanish Armada, of the armies of both Louis XIV and the French Emperor, not to mention a German Emperor and Hitler.

 

The polls show a nation divided as to whether to be in or out. Both legislation and decision-making in Brussels seem increasingly to impinge on what has set us apart. Globalisation also threatens the island in another way.

 

Much that is brewing for the luckless voters next May to think about stems – I suspect – from facts that government knows about, but which we don’t. David Cameron’s sudden concern with immigration and a desire to reach some kind of curbing on the influx would suggest that the true figures of that influx are way in excess of what we are told.

 

What it spells out to me is that the Government has done a forward projection in what that huge explosion in our population on a tiny island will mean in terms of social provision, education, welfare and benefits as the century progresses.

 

They have to be added to the cost of providing for an ageing population. We are still up to our eyes in debt and it is taken for granted by all parties that whoever comes to power must cut yet again. None of that bodes well.

 

There are other divisions which could also fester. It is clear to me that sorting out a resentful England may in the long run be more of a nightmare than sorting out Scotland. Living, as I do, in the shires, I am more than conscious that rural England counts for nothing in the eyes of the political class. 

 

The Countryside Alliance’s march on London was the biggest demonstration that the city has ever seen since the Chartists in the Victorian period. And yet their demands were ignored. There has been a huge revival of local loyalties in the last couple of decades and a strong revulsion against the dominance of London the city state. 

 

In the past, when both Lords and Commons was made up of people who came from and had been born and worked in the counties, there was constant interplay. The old hereditary Lords had their hands in the soil of their locality. All gone. When I go to London now I enter a different world aware, on any bus ride, that I am one of the few who speaks English.

 

How ironic that 2015 also sees the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the Great Charter of 1215 that limited the power of an autocratic and unpopular monarch, marked the beginning of the idea that the people should be consulted and, in the long term, led to parliamentary democracy. I’ve no doubt the anniversary will be marked by an outburst of self-congratulation by our MPs. They should be ones of mourning as to how far they’ve dragged the institution down into disrepute.

 

Its most famous clause reads: ‘No freeman shall be arrested, or kept in prison… or banished, or in any way brought to ruin… unless by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.’ Try telling that to British citizens held without trial as part of the so-called War on Terror.

 

So 2015 is not going to be an easy year. There’s an absence of ‘bread and circuses’ to take the public’s minds and eyes away from what might be cruel realities. There’s no Royal jubilee, only a second child for the Duchess of Cambridge to cheer us on our way.

 

Nor is there an equivalent of the Olympics with its apotheosis of our Health Service, which appears to be on its last legs. One bonus is that we are officially at peace after two disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which we could afford. Long may that peace last.

 

Looking back, we are right to feel aggrieved by the political class. They have, in fact, betrayed us. They have perpetually promised things that they could not deliver. When I think of them, a line from the old Book of Common Prayer confession comes to mind: ‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done. And we have done those things which we ought not to have done and there is no health in us.’

 

One of their worst crimes has been to spend money which we haven’t got in a perpetual quest to stay in office. I am of the generation that will not have to pay the price for that wanton prodigality. My heart goes out to the next two generations who will have to suffer and meet the bill. That, sadly, will be the story of Britain in the 21st Century.

 

This disillusionment with politicians and the whole political system has already bred a desire to look elsewhere for leadership. Sooner or later there will be a vacuum to be filled. The figure that fills that space at the moment is the one unfaltering human being who alone has remained true to the oath she swore at her Coronation – the Queen.

 

As she stands on the threshold of becoming the longest reigning monarch in a thousand years of British history, it is safe to say that she has steadfastly served her people with an old-fashioned sense of duty, service and patriotism which should remain a source of inspiration for each and every one of us – not least our discredited politicians. Long may she reign!