When we cheer the royals, democracy suffers. What a retrograde moment

A friend texts from the US: “Is the monarchy safe for another 100 years now?” Yes, I tell him, I think it is. Saturday was a sunny day and we were brought a vision of ourselves as open, inclusive, free of politicians, full of celebs and horses; this was balm itself. The two people at the centre of it all radiated love, there was a gospel choir and a preacher, and a single mother sitting all alone with immense dignity. I was happy for them.

Meghan is a self–declared feminist, while Harry is a besotted prince. Thus the institution renews itself and there is a mood of self-congratulation. Look at us! We are not a mean-spirited, racist country, because we have let a little bit of the “other” into our theme-park monarchy. This is symbolically important: a woman does not have to be white to get her prince. The fairytale opens the door and in slips the wondrous Meghan.

Will the door stay ajar? Will she be assimilated into the firm? Her life will be absolutely controlled from now on.

Harry’s mother did not declare herself a feminist, but she tore up the script that said Charles could have a mistress; that her children would be sent away; that she must not complain; that she was simply to breed in captivity. Diana’s self–dramatising made her disruptive, a genuine agent of change. Meghan is an actor and a social justice warrior and how she plays these roles is crucial as we face the prospect of an old and unpopular king inheriting the throne. The Daily Mail is already warning her to remain “politically neutral”, ie don’t say anything too challenging. Kate Middleton is middle England’s blandprincess and Meghan will be expected to be just as compliant.

The euphemism for her dual heritage is “modern”. Somehow, in a country that is riven with discord about who should and should not be here, blackness gets reconfigured as modernity, rather than being recognised as part of our history.

As the homeless were cleared off the streets of Windsor to make way for the well-wishers – who then listened to a sermon about making poverty history – one has to ask for whom interracial marriage is a big deal. It is the establishment and the liberal middle classes who continually lecture the working classes on racism and yet it is at the bottom of society, not the top, that interracial relationships are so common as to not be remarked upon. It is the establishment that locks out black people. David Lammy called it “social apartheid” when discussing the astonishing fact that 13 Oxford colleges did not make a single offer to black A-level applicants over a six-year period.

The assimilation of Meghan will be worth watching. If Broken Britain looked mended for a day – patched together by pageantry and a kiss – there has to be acknowledgement that the narrative around identity, sovereignty and nationhood is a place of conflict. The writer and critic Raymond Williams spoke of how new cultural meanings and practices emerge and thus the dominant culture changes. Everything is in flux, except around the monarchy, whose meaning Williams rightly called archaic, for this is a feudal affair. Its role is to show us the limits of capitalist democracy.

So this is not about whether Meghan is great or not (she seems pretty great) or whether the wedding was nice or not (it was). It is about whether this symbolic moment can sustain itself, whether emergent oppositional meanings around feminism or diversity can solidify. She brings modernity to the firm and they benefit enormously. They suddenly appear to be in a class of their own, superior to the dreary politicians.

When we cheer them for welcoming this extraordinary woman, we are also cheering the opposite of the system that provides us so few moments of happiness: democracy.

I wish her well but, my God, what an unreal, retrograde place to be.

The vote to repeal the eighth is on a knife edge

There are moving stories at the moment of Irish people travelling back to Ireland to vote to repeal the eighth. Stories of women who had to leave the country for a termination and are determined this won’t happen to others; men who are going to support their sisters. This is a huge and important moment and the polls are narrowing. None of this is about whether women will or will not have abortions – they will – but where they have them.

A lot that has remained unspoken in Irish culture is finally being said. Up until now, abortion was simply exported and much of Irish society was content to live with this hypocrisy. No more.

Dublin will vote yes, but Ireland isn’t just Dublin, it is also the small towns and rural areas that campaigners know they must win. Huge amounts of money have poured into Ireland from US anti-choice campaigners. Like Jacob Rees-Mogg, they do not believe in the right to terminate a pregnancy, even in cases of rape. These are fundamentalists and, like all fundamentalists, their battlefield is the female body. Their posters talk of men protecting children – women are simply incubators who sometimes have to die. Ireland lives with its dead women – Ann Lovett, Savita Halappanavar – and the silent weeping of those forced to carry dead babies to term.

To watch the Irish diaspora travel home from New York, Berlin and Paris to vote, some flying halfway around the world to say yes to women and their rights, is something I never thought I would see. I fear the closeness of this vote now. But change is coming. I know it is.

Asia Argento struck at the heart of the business

Words matter. Standing up to power matters. For all the #MeToo black dresses on red carpets, nothing has been as direct as Asia Argento’s speech at the closing ceremony of Cannes. She told the audience that, when she was 21, she was raped at the festival by Harvey Weinstein and that Cannes was his hunting ground. “Even tonight, sitting among you, there are those who have still to be held accountable for their conduct against women,” she said. She looked strained but defiant as she struck at the heart of the business. Weinstein denies all the allegations of non-consensual sex that have been made against him. The audience shifted uncomfortably in their seats. She was magnificent.