Even the Queen can be the target of bullying

The events of this week show that many people feel that the old ways of doing things are still excluding them

First, a note of caution. Please, please, let us not turn this most human of women into a graven image. I am sure that she would not, in her better moments, desire that; and no flesh and blood should have to bear the burden of other people's desires. The graven image represents what we each want it to be, and we risk debasing her legacy if we simply pin our own causes on her memory. She was too catholic in her appeal to be possessed by any one group. Attention has been drawn several times to the number of black and Asian Britons who have turned out to join the queues at the Royal Palaces; to some extent this is a reflection of the traditions of those minorities - public mourning is, broadly speaking only embarrassing among Anglo-Saxons - but it also highlights the fact that this was a Princess whose attentions embraced people of all backgrounds.

There is no evidence that race as an issue figured in her thoughts. But her actions spoke volumes. She cuddled black babies with Aids; she committed herself to charities supporting women who were victims of domestic violence, many from minorities; she identified with young black women who found themselves with children and no partner. When she finally decided to speak publicly on Panorama, she bypassed the BBC's premier division and the Dimblebys-in-Waiting to give the opportunity to a little-known black reporter (which he used brilliantly). And of course, she, apparently found romance with an Egyptian.

In many ways, she herself was the Great Outsider. It should not surprise us that those Britons marginalised by race and ethnicity should have found a heroine in this Princess. She embraced the modern, multicultural, multiracial Britain without any apparent hesitation. But those claiming to be her champions may not be of the same mettle.

Things are being said and done in her name that the Diana that we came to admire would have hated. For example, she famously disliked hunting; yet this week has been marred by the cruel pursuit of a woman she admired and respected, both publicly and privately. The Queen is what she is; it may be that the nation has moved on and our ageing monarch, once the symbol of our Britishness, has somehow lost the plot. But how does the hounding of a 71-year-old woman for not falling in with today's fashion for public displays of grief commemorate Diana's great gift - the capacity for empathy and compassion for those outside the mainstream of our society? In the first days after her death we all promised to learn from her humanity. Yet the one thing we appear not to have embraced is the idea that different kinds of people may express their feelings in different ways.

Yet this week's mourning, for example, is of a kind familiar to Caribbean people - public, garish, loud and prolonged. I grew up with people pointing disapproving fingers at what they considered the undignified and uncivilised behaviour of my relatives in such situations. Those who now bullyingly demand weeping and wailing on TV are the very people who, a generation ago, would have been shrieking at how alien it all was.

It could still turn ugly. If even the Queen can be a target for a bullying majority, who is safe? I don't condemn the tabloids; they are doing what they do best, largely following public sentiment, rather than leading it. The Sun even went so far as to praise Prince Charles for standing up to his parents and demanding changes to protocol in order to meet the criticisms of the Royal Family. But public sentiment can be the tool of bullies, and can easily turn into mob rule, in which the views and feelings of minorities are crushed underfoot. The Prime Minister has resisted the temptation to play to the gallery; however, with his unerring touch for the right words and the right moment - even the right clothes - he has seemed a living reproach to the Royal Family. It is not his intention, I think, but even his attempt to defend the Royal Family makes him seem to be a statesmanlike, unifying figure, somehow above politics. Number Ten's newly presidential style may even reassure wavering republicans that, as the old regime reveals itself to be out of touch with the people, there is a ready-made political alternative to speak for and to bring the nation together. However in touch Blair may be, that is not his place; he is a politician, not a part of the constitution.

There may be a temptation, of course, for the politicians to make a platform to push the defeating of social exclusion higher up the public agenda. That would be a valuable consequence, and would no doubt be welcomed by the new Cabinet Committee on Social Exclusion. Yet the Government should draw an important lesson about who needs to be helped. Today, we will see the Princess's charities given pride of place at Westminster Abbey. However, it would be a mistake for us to imagine that only the poor and disadvantaged shared her sense of being alienated from the centres of power in our society. There is a powerful warning in the number of evidently well-off families who lined the streets and brought flowers this week. They feel that the political class has ignored them.

There is a message in the emotional reaction of the young women, many of them probably successful professionals who clearly identified with the Princess; they are the people who are every day confronted with the reality of the glass ceiling at work. And there is a sign for the whole political establishment in the speed with which the resentment of traditional forms took hold around the country. The events of this week show that there are far too many people who now feel that the old ways of doing things are still excluding them; not from money, but from the right to have an influence on the course of important events. Exclusion is not just about economics - it is also about democracy. The reaction of many is perhaps the most dangerous of all - not anger, but weariness and indifference.

By contrast, the enthusiasm for the dead Princess hints at what may await the monarchy and the political class that supports it unless they wake up. People no longer care enough about the old order to quarrel about keeping them in place. The danger to the monarchy is not a republican revolution, but the absence of affection. The old regime may not go with a bang, but with a sigh of indifference.