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Britain has always been a nation capable of telling itself a good story It has rarely mattered whether that story was true The story itself is usually enough: to bring the troops to the beaches, to quiet the servants in the cellar, to quell the coloniser’s unease, to ward off the threat of uprising, to clinch the referendum vote   And on a sunny day in May, the story Britain told itself was one of inclusivity and progress, eked out in gentle doses, in the form of a biracial divorced millionaire American bride for the brother of the future king Revellers camped out on the streets of Windsor, in sleeping bags not unlike those of the homeless who sleep there every night, though the former slept more soundly, without the threat of evacuation And while the nation cheered for the international couple, who had been quietly fast-tracked through Britain’s punishing immigration process, tens of thousands of UK-foreign couples denied spousal visas under the Conservatives’ draconian immigration laws will have watched the wedding on separate continents, if they could bear to watch at all While 2,640 members of the public were invited by the Royals to stand outside of St George’s Chapel, roughly the same number of men and women sat in mostly windowless cells, at Britain’s nine immigration detention centres And across Westminster, Home Office officials likely clinked champagne flutes with relief, as the nation turned its eyes away from the ongoing disgrace of the Windrush scandal to glimpse a television actress’s first wedding dress of the day: a pure white garment of double-bonded silk, held together by minute stitches, invisible, the way the workings of power always hope to be   The Modern Royals! declared fawning international magazine covers in the days and weeks that followed, seemingly unaware of the contradiction in terms For the first time since Brexit or Grenfell, the eyes of the world were on Britain, and the nation delighted in the pretty, self-flattering image the wedding conveyed If you squinted, and didn’t think too hard, Britain appeared on that day to be a nation proud to be inclusive,