I’m almost feeling nostalgic for the good old days of last week, when time stood still and people mourned for the Queen. Yes, the TV and radio stations were stuffed with end-to-end waffle about not very much, but it was the kinder, gentler world I’ve been pining for since Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson turned Great Britain to Little Britain. Now, it’s as if no one died, least of all the most famous woman in the world, as we set about tearing what’s left of this broken country apart.
I didn’t enjoy the wall-to-wall waffle across TV and radio stations, but at least it was mostly well-intentioned. We were reminded that the Queen was a quiet, unifying figure who was always there in times of crisis. “We will meet again,” she said as Covid ripped through our country. This tiny woman was a giant compared to pygmies like Liz Truss, whose answer to the cost of living crisis is to make the rich even richer while the poor go to hell. On Friday, filthy rich bankers will become even more filthy rich, big companies will pay less in Corporation tax than they otherwise would and the better off will benefit most from a cut in National Insurance. How to build on the Queen’s legacy by setting fire to it.
The headlines, kept below the surface during the period of mourning, are grim indeed. Vladimir Putin threatens nuclear war, adding he’s “not bluffing”. The killer of Olivia Pratt-Korbel remains at large. There’s a grim story about 14 year old Molly Russell who took her own life. Religious wars go on in Leicester. All the pomp and ceremony has gone away now. The Daily Mail has turned from kind, compassionate reporter of royal events to the hate rag it always was. And now the Queen is dead and buried, the culture wars will resume, too. A united country is of no use to the hate-mongers. The aforementioned Farage and Johnson learned that long ago and along with the feral red tops we even have new TV stations whose function is to make us hate each other.
Yet I’m only writing this three days after the Queens’ coffin was moved next to that of her husband. Even those of us with republican tendencies felt the sadness at that. The resumption of a country at war with itself is surely not what she would have wanted.
