 After a weekend in which all political interviews and political campaigning was canceled and where radio stations were only allowed to play slow songs and where co-ops could only play bazookie music, the House of Commons has scheduled in seven and a half hours for tributes to Prince Philip. Mr Speaker it is fitting that on Saturday his Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh will be conveyed to his final resting place in a land rover which Prince Philip designed himself with a long wheelbase and capacious rear cabin because that vehicle's unique and idiosyncratic silhouette reminds the world that he was above all a practical man who could take something very traditional whether a machine or indeed a great national institution and find a way by his own ingenuity to improve it to adapt it for the 20th and the 21st century. Now this is a meme I've heard so much over the past four days which is to say oh one of the great things about Prince Philip was he was able to bring the royal family into the 21st century. I mean on a very literal sense he did that because he became the Duke of Edinburgh in the 50s and he's still the Duke of Edinburgh in the 21st century but the only evidence I see for doing this in any more material way is he took a video camera to Balmoral. Everyone says oh he brought them into the 21st century by making this video in the 1960s of their one holiday. Fine maybe it was a good video I don't know really was it a shocking feat of of engineering. Anyway no more complaints about that speech let's take a look at what Keir Starmer had to say. Britain will not be the same in his absence for most of us there's never been a time when the Duke of Edinburgh was not present at every stage of our national story for the last seven decades he's been there a symbol of the nation we hope to be at our best a source of stability a rock. Her Majesty once said grief is the price we pay for love the Duke loved this country and Britain loved him in return that is why we grieve today. I don't know is it bad to laugh at that I just you know as I say as I said you know on Friday I went on sky on Sunday I said the same thing it's always sad when someone dies I'm not here to sort of say haha I'm glad you know it's it's sad if someone dies and especially if someone has lived with them for over 70 years but this is ridiculous he's a he's a symbol of the nation we want to be this is a man who was born into privilege who was offensive to ethnic minorities and is the father of an alleged pedo I mean is that the nation we want to be I mean we can't all be born into privilege that would then privilege wouldn't exist that the whole point of status which is what the royal family is about is some people have to be below you we can't all be royal otherwise royalty wouldn't exist so you know there's a there's a contradiction there. Keir Starmer also claimed in his speech that the monarchy was the one institution for which the faith of the British people has never faltered which suggests he doesn't know his history because he actually made that claim a mere few feet away from a statue of Oliver Cromwell who led the revolution which overthrew the monarchy including the execution of Charles the first anyway truth goes out the window I think when it comes to situations like this one more speech I want to show you this was from Harriet Harman currently a labor backbencher she went down what I thought was a surprising route although now it seems to be well trodden everyone is is bringing out this trope this weekend suggesting that Prince Philip was a feminist so his decision to give up what would have been a glittering career in the navy and make his duty to support his wife in her role took him into uncharted territory and left him exposed for if he was not the head of the family what did that make him there was no reassuring recognition that he was no less of a man for what he did in putting her first and putting himself second of course mr. Speaker it takes a remarkable man to be a leader but it takes an even more remarkable man to support a woman leader and that's what Prince Philip did when we hear the queen speak we know that she always weighs her words carefully and what she said at their golden wedding anniversary in 1997 was that Prince Philip had quite simply been my strength and stay all these years so what a loss it is for her to lose that husband that partner her leech man of life and limb we're rightly paying tribute to his work on the environment for young people are armed forces and much else besides he did his work but above all he enabled the queen to do hers and for that he deserves our recognition and gratitude he served this country by serving his queen Ash I need your take on this is the new vision of 21st century feminism that a good feminist man marries a queen yes like a literal queen that's what you call allyship Michael I mean look it's completely fucking embarrassing it's completely fucking embarrassing that we've got to a state in our national politics where republicanism which was once a point of view which was happily articulated even in the comments by labour MPs who would say I'm a republican is now considered so completely beyond the pale that anybody who wishes to be taken seriously in politics and not assassinated has to say I pledge my allegiance to this completely outdated way of running a country and in order to maintain this delusion that this is a good way to run a country where you've got the belief maintained at the centre of power that there is such thing as a superior bloodline and they should inherit power from generation to generation in order to maintain this fiction you have this dreadful sight of supposedly progressive MPs trying to drape the business of feudalism in liberal and forward-looking clothing Prince Philip is not the first male consort for a British monarch there was of course Prince Albert this isn't something which is new to us William and Mary of Orange the claim to the throne came from Mary and not William although there were joint monarchs on the throne Queen Anne as well there was a male consort I believe so this isn't something which is unusual in in British history but what is unusual is having to justify it in modern and even you know quasi-democratic terms because otherwise if you call it what it is which is a cartel based on the delusion that they've received some authority from God thousands and thousands of years ago what then maybe you would start asking uncomfortable questions what this is from Labour MPs I think is utter cowardice and that's not to say that there's not a loss an intense feeling of loss for the Queen and their children you know this is a 73-year marriage that's not something which you see every day and imagine that this loss particularly playing out in such a public way is deeply painful for what it also is this moment of loss is an opportunity to redraw the boundaries of polite opinion because when you start seeing everybody from you know the conservatives all the way through Labour being compelled to participate in an act of mandatory mourning well what that does is that shores up the Royals position in turn in the public eye it's an opportunity to launder uh reputations to manufacture consent and it's quite cynical in lots of ways it's not just a organic outpouring of grief it's cynical it's also at times quite sinister and I think no more so than the phenomenon we've seen this weekend where billboards across Britain cities are converted into being quite crass memorials for for Prince Philip um I want to thank you for some of them we showed you I think one on Friday but there have been more that have appeared that I think you just have to see these are all um in Birmingham um so you can see there Prince Philip on various shopping centres in car parks and bridges all very very dreary British image um the most dystopian one is is this one I love this let's take a look at um you're driving down the motorway going into central London I think that's going under the black wall tunnel and you can see there these huge images of of Prince Philip lit up on both sides of the road and then the next one is probably actually peak peak children of men this is Prince Philip um turning on the top of the BT Tower one of that one of the highest buildings in London they say HRH Prince Philip 1921 to 2021 and then his his face um in in lights very very odd now the question this raised for me is how did this happen was this was this billboards commandeered by the state did they force the billboard companies to show all of these images of Prince Philip and what would happen to the original advertisers what if Nike had already paid to advertise on the top of the BT Tower now I haven't seen anyone write a definitive article on this but the person who I think had the most persuasive argument was someone called J. Owens on on Twitter who's a researcher of subway stations um so he suggested that Clear Channel Global the other firms who own the billboards probably made the decision and that would probably have been because one demand is low at the moment for billboards not many people are buying stuff not many people are are out and about because most people are in their homes so there's lots of you know the cost of of changing what you're going to advertise isn't huge but also the biggest customer at the moment for all of these billboard companies is the government with public health ads etc so this is almost them sucking up to their biggest customer who is um the government so there's a quite a simple explanation but ash I mean it all to me looked pretty dystopian but everything's just so gray gray written gray motorway and then you've got like enforced on you mourning for you know a hereditary royal but that's the thing is that it is enforced and it is so top down when Princess Diana died there wasn't outpouring of grief and look I think that outpouring of grief was outsized disproportionate and it's because of the place that royalty and even xhr h's like Princess Diana have in our public imagination but it was bottom up it was something that people felt compelled to do leaving the flowers outside Buckingham Palace uh you know the sites of people crying and you know really feeling quite wounded by the loss with Prince Phillip one there's a very sophisticated media operation operation fourth bridge which goes into place as soon as um you know the news broke of him dying there's one for every member every senior member of the royal family and then two what you've got is I think an attempt to an attempt to hold at bay an increasingly aggressive and deranged right-wing press where if you fail to display significant uh you know what they deem a suitable amount of grief and mourning but they will come for you they will aggressively come for you um I found myself in the Daily Express for having um made what I think a true observation which is that DMX was a better rapper than Prince Phillip and lo and behold I found myself being attacked for it in a right-wing tabloid it's because there is I think um alongside this desire to impose grief and to to manage a public act of mourning which creates buy-in for a deeply unequal society which has at the top of it the monarchy you've got almost a sense of blood thirstiness for those who are seen to step outside of those boundaries and so that's the really dystopian thing about um you know the billboards or the national rail turning their web their website into grayscale um it's because they're afraid they're afraid that if they don't do these things this performative grieving that they'll be torn apart for it um let's take a look at the gray website first of all if you ever been on national rail um to book a train you'll know that the color scheme is I think it's normally red and blue but here it's all all black and white all gray scale and that was um as a a memorial I suppose to to Prince Phillip um anyway um someone complained about this on twitter or asked why is it all in gray and we're going to show you an interaction um on twitter which was quite striking so first of all in response to that query whoever's running the national rail twitter account says hi the website has been set to gray while we are in the morning period of Prince Philip the person replies cheers is there a way to change it back to normal as a user as all gray I struggle with and then the person working for national rail says unfortunately I do not believe there is currently I will leave a note for someone to look at it on Monday to see if there is as I too have been struggling to read while it is colored differently now I wouldn't have realized this um if if I worked at national rail and someone said to me can we change it all to gray I would have said well it's ridiculous so probably not but actually a better argument as why you should not do that is because there are many people for whom reading something in low contrast which is is gray scale is very difficult he's asking is there any way I as a user can put the colors back so I can read so and then the person who literally works with national rail says I don't know because I can't read it either right this is bananas what are they doing what are they doing um and yeah I was I think today it has changed which is why that first tweet was deleted because it looks like originally the plan was to have it gray scale throughout the whole morning period which was eight days actually they've changed it back now because I think you know those accessibility issues are pretty pretty overwhelming I want to go on to the the public backlash there was a bit of a backlash there it's about accessibility issues there were when it came to the media though many people who do seem to be finding this all fairly ridiculous or at least rather dull um we talked about on on friday how the bbc had gone for a simul cast which meant that they put put out the same show on bbc bbc2 and bbc news ultimately that was for 24 hours where you couldn't choose to watch anything else on bbc bbc4 was just taken off air out of respect very very bizarre anyway um viewers did not respond particularly well to this um so jake cantar is international editor at showbiz magazine deadline and he crunched the numbers so he tweeted the verdict is in wall-to-wall tv coverage of prince philip's death was a turnoff for brits with major channels losing prime time so that's 7 p.m to 11 p.m viewers compared with friday april second so that the previous friday now the bbc one was down six percent so six percent less people watched bbc one than they did the week before itv was down 60 60 less people watched itv than the week before bbc2 was down 65 percent and channel four was down 8.5 percent now channel four was one of the few channels that didn't devote all of their output to prince philip some of it was not all of it and in fact the the show which got the highest ratings on friday was google box so as we talked about on friday all of those news stations have been prepping for literally decades for the moment when a royal family member dies so they can have the perfect output so everything's in the right place at the right time you know they've been planning for literally decades people just want to watch google box because why would you want to watch the same show on every channel which is not a particularly critical or interesting analysis of someone's life but this absolute thawning this thawning of this person which is really really fake the second sign of the backlash wasn't just people turning off their tv's it was them complaining about what was on their tv's um so there was uh so many complaints of the bbc about all of the channels showing the same thing about prince philip and that they set up a dedicated complaints form so you could type in your email address and that would automatically make a complaint about the overwhelming coverage of the duke of edin bruh apparently that's standard practice when the volumes of complaints are so large instead of getting all these different individual emails that they have to catalog they just put up a form but um that wasn't enough to stop it enraging certain conservatives so conservatives who were enraged by the existence of this form including the bow group which is britain's oldest conservative think tank they argued the form encouraged people to complain who otherwise wouldn't have um this is a tweet from them the bbc is prompting a response in publicizing a complaint form regarding prince philip and they're doing so in a way they don't do with far more controversial coverage that promotes left-wing views or figures the question has to be asked why um i think they were annoyed about um actually that was on itb wasn't it the black lives matter dance in any case there aren't many events when you have the same thing on every channel i can't think of another one the bbc ultimately took down the form on sunday whether that was responding to um this pressure from the right or whether it was just that they normally take down forms once complaints have peaked maybe we'll never know the bbc say it was um the latter do you think this has backfired do you think in their you know post game review they're maybe going to say maybe we did ram this down too many people's throats and actually this is going to undermine the monarchy instead of reinforcing it no because i don't think it does undermine the monarchy that's the thing i think people turned off by it but not because they're thinking oh well enough of you know this old you know non-aging area and who none of us care about that's not what people are thinking i think what they are thinking is well this isn't what i go to television for anymore the way in which people consume their news has changed a lot since say princess diana died so when it comes to a breaking news story um if especially if you're younger you're probably going to hear it from like a push notification or you've read it online or somebody's whatsapp to you it's not necessarily that you've got the tv on and you're going to be watching it watching it watching it um and then the news comes on people are i think expecting um news not to take up such an outsized portion of broadcasting time particular when you think about um entertainment only subscription channels that people turn to as well it means that public service broadcasters i think are in a bit of a tricky position in terms of how do they fulfill the requirements of their public service remit when consuming habits have changed a lot so i think that's why people turned off it wasn't necessarily an expression of their feelings towards the monarchy i think was an expression of their feelings towards broadcast media now if i'm uh you know the director general of the bbc and i'm looking at a government which is relying on right right wing papers to be uh you know anti bbc attack dogs i will think well maybe on balance it's better for me to be seen to be more in alignment with the government in leading this you know enforced and performative grieving than it is to turn off for a temporary amount of time some of my viewers