A Liverpool ceremony falls victim to soul-crushing corporate marketing

The glare of Sir Keir’s pristine white shirt illuminated the heart of the city from the giant video screen over the department store aptly called “Next”. It might as well have been called “Change”.

As far as election ads go, this one was overkill. Liverpool is already a fiercely Labour city, even if its reputation isn’t quite for that version of Labour now manifesting itself in white rolled-up shirt sleeves. There is, however, enough of a moderate Labour presence up here to mean it also offers a glimpse of the future. It recently re-elected Steve Rotherham as the mayor of the Liverpool City Region (slightly different to Liverpool itself but not worth dwelling on the difference). Alongside Manchester’s Andy Burnham, Rotherham has come to dominate North West politics. The two of them making a cogent and increasingly valid case for a decentralised Britain, with more power devolved to local government. It’s perhaps why the region has a renewed sense of optimism in the face of a broader dissatisfaction with the direction that the country is going. 

And that dissatisfaction… Well, first we need to talk about a ship. 

Cunard’s new luxury liner, the Queen Anne, was in Liverpool this week. Moored off Pier Head, opposite the famous Liver Building and slightly less famous Cunard Building, the ship was there for its official naming ceremony but with a few differences. By the end of the day, I would be left wondering why Liverpool had been chosen, or if I would ever shake the feeling that the example it had set said something rather sad about the state of the country.

At 113,000 tonnes, the Queen Anne is now the second biggest liner (after the Queen Mary 2) in the Cunard fleet, and its arrival in Liverpool was meant to be a spiritual homecoming. Cunard was founded in 1839 to operate paddle steamers between Liverpool, Halifax and Boston, and the city would be the fleet’s home port until 1919 when the line moved to Southampton to better serve customers in London.

And better service for its passengers continues to be the mantra. Or so we were constantly reminded throughout the corporate gig. The people of Liverpool were kept well back except for the few who had paid for a trip on the liner. Punters sat at the front where the enthusiasms were highest, not least among the two hosts who came bounding onto the stage at 4.30 pm. 

Emma and Matt Willis (no, me neither) are apparently (checks notes) a popular presenter and a former member of the boy band “Busted”. It was every bit as… is “exciting” the word I’m looking for? They had internalised that TV-land patois so it sounds almost normal. Imagine them as loud. Big teeth. Perfect hair. Happy and clappy and “Hello Liverpool” and “Is everybody having a great time?”. They tried to encourage a crowd who were not buying into whatever they were selling, which was 50 per cent ITV camp and 50 per cent corporate copy about commitment to luxury and first-class service. 

It was gratifying to witness such indifference in a crowd. And then a confetti canon went off early and a woman screamed, given she was almost sitting on top of it. The crowd erupted into a cheer. Nothing livens up a crowd quite like the thought of a health and safety violation.

And speaking of health and safety violations: we then had the national anthem, performed on an electric guitar which wasn’t plugged in until it was plugged in. Then we all got to sing “God Save The King” except for about 30 per cent of the crowd who still sang about the late Queen.

This was followed by the introduction of the “icons” of Liverpool, being five women whose spirits define the city. One of them was one of the Spice Girls. You know the one. The only one people still like. She’s one of the Mels.

Not that many got to see her. They kept her off the stage, so only paying punters got to see her. Everybody else could look at the big screen, which made a change from the small screen we normally get to see her on. Nor did we see twice world heptathlon champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson, and musician and founder of the Cream nightclubs, Jayne Casey (from the punk band Big in Japan). Joining them were Natalie Haywood, a local entrepreneur and founder of LEAF (“Where there’s tea there’s hope”), and Ngunan Adamu who is “a seasoned producer, presenter, and international multimedia trainer with over fifteen years of experience at the BBC”.

The mixture was odd, as actual achievements and self-aggrandisement met in this muddy place where Alan Partridge would not have looked out of place suddenly mentioning “Bannon’s the Butchers, the housewife’s choice for bulk-buying meat…”. Fittingly, a cardboard Terry Wogan looked out from a nearby office. At times it felt like I was lucid dreaming about Eurovision. 

Then we had the speeches. Katie McAlister, the president of Cunard, spoke of Liverpool being the liner’s “spiritual home” in case we hadn’t picked it up the first dozen times. Then there were a few words from Captain Inger Klein Olsen, who became the company’s first female commander in 2010 and, well, she might have mentioned something about somewhere being the ship’s “spiritual home”. I was too busy being buzzed by a drone flying over the crowd.  

But then it was time for the moment most of us had travelled to see… No, not the naming of the ship, but a performance by Andrea Bocelli, the world-famous tenor who sings that song. You know the one. Though he sang two. The first was obviously meant to make us wonder if he’d sing the other one. Which he then did, and got the biggest roar of the day, which was justified. He’s world-famous for a reason.

The naming of the ship was itself not worth dwelling upon. Somewhere out in the Mersey, a bottle smashed against the hull of the ship, triggered we’re told by the five “icons” operating a ship’s old-style throttle on the stage. It made you long for the days of a royal dodging champagne and splintered glass, because this would normally have been an event attended by a royal. Except a royal naming a ship appears to be another norm lost in this broken nation of ours. We appear to be running out of royals, which means that no major public figure would christen the ship. That was down to the people of Liverpool to shout “We name this ship Queen Anne” which was greeted with little more enthusiasm than had gone into singing the anthem to the King/late Queen.

And if that sounds lacklustre and just a bit of deflating, well, yes it was. But that’s not specific to either Cunard, who to their credit made this one of the better events in Liverpool, or even to the city which generally knows how to put on a big event (see Eurovision last year). This was about the entire country and a ceremony didn’t so much elevate the city or the ship – which did look magnificent – as much as it became an example of that corporate dislocation that has occurred over the past ten years and is an underlying theme in this general election.

A veneer of competence and good organisation betrays normal human instincts, in the same way as there’s little nourishment in hearing that “you know her from Coronation Street” or a water company promising “we’re here to help you” before handing you over to its AI assistant.

If Britain can change (and if only we could get to choose how we change), it would be welcome if we become something more than a nation where people come to exploit a name and history, but a place where that history was going to be made in the future. A ship built in Italy, captained by a Faroe Islander, and catering to European cruises was just a reminder of how little we have to celebrate. We need to do more than just be.

And we are certainly capable of doing. The coda to this story is that amid all the soul-crushing corporate marketing and the perfunctory celebrification was something else. Around the event were signs of a city that still has the capacity to surprise. People were having fun in the face of the enforced “are we all having fun” quasi-bullying. An Elton John lookalike rode up and down the waterfront on an electric-powered tiny grand piano whilst singing a selection of Elton John hits. Even my own hatred of Elton John, which cannot be fully expressed except through a sock filled with manure, thought his routine, complete with painted-on gap-toothed smile, was the funniest and silliest thing I’ve ever seen.

Then there was the music. Beyond the “star” attraction of “DJ” Craig Charles, we got a chance to remember that the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra can make a fantastic sound, and the talents of each of the members of the orchestra give something more to the world than their anonymity suggests. Elsewhere, the Katumba drumming group complete with bright/scantily clad dancers, had livened up the crowd, whilst in front of the Liverpool Museum, The Big Bubble Man spent the day creating bubbles.

And what bubbles they were! His bubbles seemed to follow me back into the city centre where they gleamed in the impeccable whiteness being cast by Sir Keir’s shirt. And maybe that could be the future. The country needs more bubbles. More Elton John lookalikes playing Rocket Man on their tiny electric-powered hover pianos. More drumming groups appropriating Rio’s colour. They are far greater symbols of what this country can become than providing a backdrop to a distanced photo opportunity and a fly-in opera superstar who, no doubt, will be performing tomorrow at another big corporate event where he’ll sing two songs, including, you know… that one he’s famous for.

@DavidWaywell

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