One of the few useful things the royal family do is to support their favourite charities. In the absence of anything else to do, involving themselves in the third sector is at the very least better than nothing. It shows they are interested in how ordinary people live their lives. But one such event this week was just about the clunkiest thing I have ever seen from a royal, any royal, ever. Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton visited a food bank in Windsor.
Windsor, where your actual Windsor Castle stands? Where the current Conservative MP Adam Friyie holds a majority of over 20,000 over the Lib Dems, with Labour in a distant third position with just 15.2% of the vote? Yes, apparently that Windsor. Before I got involved in food banks (sorry to mention it yet again), I had no idea that food poverty might extend into wealthy areas like Windsor, but I was soon proven wrong. Of course, the numbers using food banks in rich towns won’t be anything like those in inner-city areas but you might be surprised at how going without food is spreading to areas you might not dream of. So William and Kate went along to help. That was good, right?
In simple terms, it was a good thing because they have illustrated the need for food banks even in the unlikeliest places. However, as I saw the TV footage of Ms Middleton examining some cans of food in a manner that suggested she had never seen such things before, I found it first embarrassing and cringe-inducing. They were trying to do something right but it seemed oh so wrong.
I could not get it out of my head that here were members of an exclusive, fantastically rich family who will never want for anything entering in a dystopian world of hunger and poverty, a world that is far more real than theirs. If you think I’m being unduly harsh here, then fair enough. You may think it’s great that at least they are doing something to help, to draw attention to a massive wrong that has dragged millions of people in to it and I couldn’t fault that, but the last thing I’d want to see at our food bank (there I go again) is a celebrity visitor or visitors.
At least from the photos I have seen, they don’t seem to have been in direct contact with food bank users, which is something. My limited experience of food banks is that when people have next to nothing, the last thing they probably want presented to them is people who have it all, no matter their intentions, in this case obviously noble.
Indeed, the store cupboard in the Windsor food bank appears to be bigger than our entire food bank and the availability of large boxes of fresh food suggests ample storage facilities, like fridges. Perhaps they had use of some of the fridges donated to food banks by William’s father, King Charles? Fridges would be of no use to us since we have no space to put them and so nowhere to store all that lovely fresh food, but good luck to the poverty-stricken people of Windsor. Maybe it’s something to do with a much wealthier area having a more upwardly mobile food bank? Either way, going without food is going without food wherever you live. I wish them well.
But as for William and Kate, well, hmm. We will never know whether they decided themselves to visit the food bank or they were guided by their PR team, the same one presumably who suggested their disastrous tour of Jamaica was a good idea? Either way – and it could be just me – I found their food bank visit to be deeply cringeworthy for the reasons I have given.
A food bank user said to me this week that they really wished the facilities didn’t have to exist but without ours they’d have gone hungry this week. You could be generous and say that at least the young royals were drawing attention to it. You could also say, as I do, that as PR blunders go this was right up there with the worst. I wouldn’t want them arriving at mine anymore than I want to see actual tax dodgers like Rishi Sunak’s wife and all round wrong ‘un Nadhim Zahawi.
