Mark Steel: She's royal. And she's English... so vote Zara!

Zara bloody Phillips. What a pathetic nation. We don't deserve the Ashes or the World Cup. And the United Nations should remove our place on the Security Council, stating: "We were willing to forgive Britain's role in supporting an illegal and disastrous war, but cannot tolerate a permanent member that subverts the cause of humanity by voting for Zara bloody Phillips."

Maybe she is good with horses, but that's not why people voted for her. They voted for her because she's 11th in line to the throne. They'd have voted for the Queen if she'd been nominated for beating Prince Philip at snap. Then these idiots would have justified it, saying: "She held her nerve wonderfully to shout first on the two sevens when there was a big pile during the crucial second leg."

You could only watch Zara's tournament on a special interactive station, so few of those who voted for her even saw her ride. But none of this matters because she's royal and English and won. And at a sport that by definition keeps the riff-raff out. Because there's no chance of it being taken up by many working-class kids, who will start by riding alsatians round their estate and trying to get them to jump over abandoned cars. And they probably don't get rowdy supporters yelling at the opposition: "One's shit - and one knows one is."

So she was a perfect candidate for people with gravelly drives in Berkshire, with symmetrical gardens and a neatly folded Daily Mail who write to thank Cliff Richard and meet in the café every morning after dropping the kids at nursery to sip mochas and moan about their cleaners, and spend a week composing an article for the parish newsletter complaining about a teenager who went past the church on roller skates, and are police inspectors or run a building firm but moved away from the city because it's full of those sort of people only you're not supposed to say these days, and we all claim to know Michael Parkinson because we sat near him one year at the annual charity cricket match and it's a lovely community and no one mentions the unfortunate court case involving the vicar and the teenage boy in a public toilet.

These people have no interest in sport, except as a means to cheer on neat, white, well-bred English people. They're probably aiming to get ship launching introduced as an Olympic sport for the 2012 Games. Tony Gubba will have to take it seriously, whispering: "Oo what a surprise, she's gone for the jeroboam, that's certainly going to put the Sultan of Brunei under pressure."

And whereas medieval royalists would have been happy to accept the monarchy was God's envoy, now they seek evidence that the royals really are superior. It's a bit like fundamentalist Christians who suggest there's scientific proof for the resurrection or the flood. For example, we still hear that the Queen Mother was a wonderful dancer, a fabulous host, or a good mimic, and I expect soon someone will claim she invented the candle and once scored 87 not out in 43 balls against Somerset at Taunton. But they don't have to be good at anything, they're royal because they're born royal. Even the most ardent royalist couldn't say: "Hasn't Elizabeth done well? Who'd have thought she'd end up as Queen, when she was born a humble princess?"

So when a royal actually wins something, albeit something no one else does, it's like a sign from God. If Zara hadn't won, they'd have honoured Pinochet by assassinating Darren Clarke and appointing her anyway.

Yet the truth about royal superiority was punctured when Zara made her speech, in which she said "It's, like, amazing" four times in a few seconds. If you translated this from posh to inner-city youth, she said: "This is well sick init, well sick you get me, ah like well sick, well sick." But if any 25-year-old boxer or footballer had said that, they'd have been pilloried as a disgrace and a symbol of why we lost the empire.

In response there will probably be a campaign set up by liberals demanding that in future the vote should be decided by proportional representation. And there'll be a conspiracy theory, claiming Steve Redgrave is working for the Secret Service, and that an unidentified car disappeared with thousands of votes while the cameras were switched off.

But we probably have to accept the democratic vote. We laugh at places like North Korea, for believing the Great Leader is a record-breaking swimmer and always gets a hole in one, and it's true that the Sports Personality of the Year Show in North Korea is probably even more pointless than it is here. And Zara did genuinely win. But people are deluding themselves that this makes her the year's sporting personality. So it's the same process, and if left unchecked in a few years we'll all be lining the streets chanting: "O great Prince Michael of Kent, glorious be your victory in the Embassy Snooker Championship, in which you scored a break of 171 by finding an extra three reds no one had ever noticed before."

And at least in North Korea they're ordered to think like that. Here we do it voluntarily. So next year we need to be prepared for the way this vote has become a referendum on royalist values. And all get behind either a hoody, for breaking the joyriding lap record of the Swindon one-way system in a knocked-off Nissan, or an asylum-seeker for winning a gold medal in the archery, by firing six arrows into the middle of one of the Queen's swans at the immigrant Olympics.

More from Mark Steel