Over the years, I have slowly shifted from a grudging admiration for Britain’s royal family to one of distaste for most of its members. When you meet him off-set, for example, Prince Philip is an unconscionably rude man with an ill-deserved sense of superiority. For much of his married life, his morals have been less than exemplary. His son Andrew is made of the same stuff – anti-free speech bordering on neoliberal Nazi. Edward is a self-pitying prat and Charles – while years ahead of is time in some respects – is going to be a disaster if he ever makes it to King. His grubby deal with Camerlot about gagging orders on Royal peccadillo scandals was a new low in abuse of privilege.
Three members of the Windsor Firm are its troika of potential salvation: the Queen herself, who if nothing else works hard and knows her stuff; Princess Anne, who has consistently shown herself over five decades to be a genuine egalitarian; and Prince William, who has both a serious and common-touch air about him.
When it comes to abolishing the royal family, however, I would make three simple points:
1. President Blair, President Cameron, and President Clegg
2. Don’t chuck out the baby with the bathwater: the Royals could – if less exposed to tabloid sanctimony – become a major money-earner for Britain abroad…and no, I don’t mean sleazy export deals à l’Andrew, I mean via subtle tourism marketing
3. Murdoch wants to destroy the royal family. This is reason enough to hang onto them until such time as the Pope is no longer a Catholic.
I end with that clincher because the Aussie Toff has been at it again. The Sun yesterday ran this truly base, pernicious and utterly false bit of Turdochism about the Royals “being taught” the Nazi salute in 1933.
What the kids are doing in this clip is mocking Hitler and his silly Führerprinzip throwback bollocks. Although the (mercifully abdicated) Edward VIII thought Dolfie a thoroughly good bloke – and was a thorn in Churchill’s side throughout the Second World War – Bertie Windsor (later George VI) and his wife the late Queen Mother were implacably anti-Nazi.
Rupert Murdoch and the backside-output he attracts as hacks have devoted their sadly twisted and bitter lives to the misuse of erroneous facts about Britain. Roop’s father was an even bigger liar than his molly-coddled, privileged and privately educated dingo of a son (his treatise on Gallipoli dissembled on an industrial scale) while Merdeschlock Jr has traded nationalities (and wives) in his boundless pursuit of the sort of power that he feels might compensate for the tepid vacuum at his rotten core.
So here is another reason why having a monarch in the UK is – at least for the time being – a crackerjack idea. The Queen is a mediaeval hangover from the days before Citizen sovereignty. She finds herself working with a Prime Minister keen to tear up Magna Carta and replace it with a Carta Album for the munneeed.
She meets the PM once a week, and it’s a meeting Dave can’t refuse. This is how I’d like the meeting to start next Wednesday evening:
HMTQ: Ah Mr Cameron, delightful to see you again. I’d like if I may to stick to one issue this week: why do you surround yourself with the ghastly accolytes of Mr Murdoch, and are you merely venal and stupid like your late father, or actively setting out to insult the Monarch?
PM: Ah, er, um…
HMTQ: That’s all very well Prime Minister, but I’ve been studying some extant Constitutional gobbets with various historians less ignorant than yourself, and it seems that I have a sound basis for committing you to the Tower for treason.
PM: Hahhaahaha, very droll mum…but hahaha I think…
HMTQ: So you do occasionally think then Mr Cameron? Well think on this – you are my eighteenth Prime Minister, and trust me…when it comes to f**k-you politics, I am not Alexis Tsipras and you are not Mario Draghi.
PM: Your Majesty, I…..
HMTQ: …you Prime Minister are here to serve my People, not a shower of oiks who peddle lies. I shall expect to see a Page 1 retraction by The Sun regarding the insult to my father and mother. Tell me, did you want to stay for dinner?
PM: Regrettably mum, I have a previous engagement.
HMTQ: Good, as you are not invited anyway. Now get out of my sight.
I somehow doubt this is how it will go. But we can dream, can’t we?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Risking the belief among Sloggers that I may finally have lost all my prized merps* collection, I announce tonight that I am 4-square behind Jeremy Corbyn’s candidature for the Lady Lierbership.
Mr Corbyn and I share almost no political views, but that matters nought when the issue is one of A Proper Opposition. The Ed Miller Band opposed neoliberal Toryism in the style of the Polish cavalry’s resistance to the Nazi invasion in 1939…minus only the valour. Every sound and functional democracy needs an Opposition prepared to call out amorality regardless of the electoral consequences. At every level, Corbyn fits that brief.
Other reasons for supporting him include:
1. He is incorruptible, & the lowest expenses user in the Commons
2. The Labour Big Beasts are terrified of him
3. He has the right ethical equipment to bring the young back to politics
4. Under the current electoral stitch-up system he stands as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as Percy & Pamela Pigeon here at Sloggers’ Roost
5. I strongly suspect he will reveal the Prime Minister as the empty space he is
6. Tribalist he may be, I’ve read what he says; my hunch is that he could unite a radical anti-privilege Opposition to the point of it becoming The Resistance. I don’t think he could form a sensible Government to save his life…but he might just save British liberty and democracy.
On that last point, here is a young woman with whom I think he could form a crucial alliance:
Whatever else happens of an unpredictable nature, Mhaire Black is going to be a massive influence on post-globalist governance. She embodies all the good things about caring Britain with none of the fluffy bollocks. And above all – at the tender age of 20 – she has more wisdom than a thousand spin doctors.
In the above maiden speech, she bowls a two-wicket maiden over, while extending a magnanimous hand to defeated Scottish Labour. She has certainly bowled me over. She will do the same for many others currently suspicious of politicians. Seven cheers for her.
*Effete southerners may not be familiar with the word ‘merps’, but in my grim Northern youth it was the argot of choice for marbles. For example, Geordie phrase for inadvertant loss of colourful glas spheres circa 1958: “Way-aye, worve lost oor merps doon the drinny”.
The Slog 