Respect

I am sorry if you think I am rather labouring the point, but can anyone tell me why the subject of Kwasi Kwarteng’s disrespectful and disgraceful behaviour at the Queen’s funeral has received minimal media coverage? I don’t buy some of the tosh I have seen on social media where some are saying it was nothing and the likes of me are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. No. Kwarteng was literally laughing his head off in the pews, behind all the country’s former prime ministers, and later was swaying around, sweating profusely and mopping his brow during the period of silence. It was not normal behaviour for anyone at a funeral, never mind the Queen’s funeral. So, how come he’s getting away with it?

Several years ago, the then Labour leader Ed Miliband was photographed grappling with a bacon sarnie. The gist was this: how can he bit fit to to run the country when he can’t even eat a sandwich properly? Nonsense and fluff, of course, but the right wing gutter press, like the Sun and Mail, never miss a trick in hammering Labour. Why then are they not hammering Kwarteng?

But then, no one else is. The dear old BBC, for all its enduring brilliance, doesn’t even try to provide political balance on its news and current events shows. Despite Kwarteng’s bizarre behaviour appearing on its main channel, there was no reference to it.

I cannot help but think that what if this was Keir Starmer, having a right old laugh at the Queen’s funeral, he’d be political toast. No doubt about it, and he would deserve to be. No matter how you feel about the royals – and Kwarteng presents himself as a royalist – there is a time and a place for having a laugh and the Queen’s funeral wasn’t one of them.

Perhaps it’s because he, like so many other Tories, is an Old Etonian who progressed to Cambridge university. No man of the people is Kwarteng, He must think that because of where he was educated and who he is, he can do literally anything he wants. Disrespect the Queen? Yeah, why not? Don’t you know who I am?

This minor blogger is not letting it go. We know why the media isn’t covering his behaviour because of his politics, which is shared by the illiberal elite. Their considered opinion must be that if they just keep quiet it will all go away. It probably will, too, because I don’t think many people care.

I care and I’m a borderline republican. But I admired and respected the Queen and had I been at her funeral I’d have been as respectful as I was at all the other funerals I’ve been to. Kwarteng wasn’t respectful – far from it – but no one is asking him why. That’s as bad as his actual behaviour. And I honestly believe that Liz Truss should have sacked him. Instead, she set him loose to launch what is nothing short of class war on our society.

The latest so called journalist to not engage Kwarteng was Tory Laura Kuenssberg in her tame new political show on BBC One. Maybe I am so old and out of touch, I haven’t noticed that the world has moved on and that people think it’s perfectly fine for a senior politician to behave like he did. Either way, I thought Kwarteng was bang out of order. Never forget and all that.