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As I close a week discussing Disroyalty starring the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, here are a few more views about their plans as well as a summary of what went on at Sandringham on Monday, January 13, 2020.
Before I get to those, however, it is important to remember that other Royals will have to pick up the Sussexes’ slack, leaving 200 engagements per year to divide among them.
Key points about the Sandringham summit
Here’s what to know about the Sandringham summit on Monday.
The Daily Mail says that Harry arrived at 11:20 a.m.
By then, Prince Philip had already left and was driven elsewhere on the estate. He was reportedly furious last week:
Philip was reportedly ‘spitting blood’ with anger when he found out last Wednesday and yelled at his aides: ‘What the hell are they playing at?’
If he left, he wasn’t feeling any calmer.
Prince Charles had arrived the day before. Prince William showed up 15 minutes before the meeting began at 2:00 p.m.
The meeting was held in the Long Library, which used to be a bowling alley. Princes William and Harry spent much time there as children.
It is located away from other rooms where the Royals might have been overheard.
Meanwhile, the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, denied charges of racism (same link):
Ms Patel, speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, said: ‘I’m not in that category at all where I believe there’s racism at all.
‘I think we live in a great country, a great society, full of opportunity, where people of any background can get on in life.’
Asked if the media had been in any way racist, she replied: ‘I don’t think so, no… I certainly haven’t seen that through any debates or commentary or things of that nature.’
On January 14, the Mail reported that Prime Minister Boris Johnson wisely refused to be drawn in on the controversy:
In his first major TV interview since the election, Mr Johnson said: ‘I am a massive fan of the Queen and of the Royal Family…
‘I am absolutely confident that they are going to sort this out.’
I was happy to read that Harry’s early arrival ensured that he could have a lengthy one-on-one conversation with his grandmother.
Bolter
In 2018, a few months before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got married, Germaine Greer gave an interview to Australia’s 60 Minutes in which she said she thought the bride would end up leaving.
The Cut posted the story on April 16. Prescient (emphases mine):
During an interview with 60 Minutes Australia this weekend, outspoken and controversial feminist author Germaine Greer said she thinks Markle “will bolt” as soon as she gets a sense of what life in the British royal family (which Greer refers to as “the firm”) is really like.
“Let’s hope they’re in love. If they’re not it’s going to be totally unbearable,” Greer told journalist Tara Brown. “She will see vistas of boredom that are unbelievable. I think the pressure to escape from the firm is crushing.”
When Brown asked what she predicted for the couple’s future, Greer answered, “I think she’ll bolt.”
“She bolted before. She was out the door,” she said, referring to Markle’s 2013 divorce from Trevor Engelson. “I think she’ll bolt. I hope in a way that she’ll bolt but maybe she’ll take Harry with her.”
When asked why Markle, already a successful television star, would give up her career to marry into the royal family, Greer quipped: “Why would a girl born in poverty marry a man with 53 million quid? I can’t think of single reason.”
It seems Harry might be worth less than that — possibly £30m, but the point stands.
There is also the status involved.
Opportunism
The deputy political editor at the Daily Mail, John Stevens, had this to say about the Sussexes’ announcement last week:
In fact, that is quite possible.
Allegedly, Justin Trudeau knew of their plans before the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family. So did Elton John.
On January 11, the Daily Mail reported:
There was speculation last night that Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have given a cryptic Twitter clue about the crisis that was about to engulf the Royal Family.
When news emerged that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had turned their back on Royal tradition and flown to Canada for Christmas, their powerful friend was one of the first to welcome them on social media.
He wrote: ‘You’re among friends, and always welcome here.’
Just weeks later, the Royal couple were looking to test that ‘always’ by announcing their move to Canada.
And the tweet has done little to dampen gossip in Embassy circles that Mr Trudeau was more aware of the Sussexes’ emigration plans than even their closest family.
Diplomatic sources claim Mr Trudeau and his wife Sophie were consulted about the decision late last year, before members of the Royal family and even the Queen.
The Trudeaus are friends with the Sussexes:
Last night, the Canadian government did not respond when confronted about the claims, but sources close to the Sussexes denied they had discussed the move with Prime Minister Trudeau.
The Canadian First Couple and the Sussexes have been close friends, with Meghan and Sophie even sharing a stylist – Meghan’s best friend and sometime babysitter for Archie, Jessica Mulroney.
Prince Harry, 35, and Mr Trudeau, 48, are two of the younger fixtures on the world stage, with both men appearing to enjoy each other’s company at events such as Commonwealth commemorations.
The two have also encountered each other on multiple occasions through Prince Harry’s Invictus Games for disabled servicemen.
I wonder if the Sussexes are aware that, many years ago, Trudeau once attended a fancy dress party in blackface. He thought nothing of it at the time. Terrible.
Returning to John Stevens’s tweet, here are a few responses:
Money
Although, technically, what Prince Charles does with his income from the Duchy of Cornwall is his business, the British would be annoyed if he continued to finance Prince Harry:
This YouGov poll shows similar results:
This Briton tweeted about the video of Harry touting Meghan to Disney’s Bob Iver for voiceover work:
Naturally, some of the money she would earn from such work would go to charity. Of course:
Trudeau said that his country will pay for the Sussexes’ security detail. Canadians won’t be too happy about that:
Another Daily Mail report said that Canada would pay half the Sussexes’ £1m annual security detail cost. We shall see. On January 14, the Mail published an article quoting Trudeau, who said:
I think most Canadians are very supportive of having royals be here, but how that looks and what kind of costs are involved, there are still lots of discussions to have.
Family
The young Anglican priest who tweeted the following has mistakenly said that the Sussexes are on the Civil List. They are not.
However, the larger point about their role in the Royal Family is what is important:
The Revd Giles Fraser, formerly Canon at St Paul’s Cathedral and now Rector of St Mary, Newington in South London, wrote a considered article on the topic that the Revd Philip Murray raised. The Bishop of Dorking (Surrey) complimented him on it:
Do we still recognise moral obligations that exist prior to our having chosen them? That is, it seems to me, the question embedded within the whole Megxit scandal. It couldn’t have been better designed to drive a wedge between two very different ways of seeing the world …
But this isn’t just about monarchy. For the same tension exists within the very idea of a family — the Windsors being, as well as royal, the most famous family in the world. How does liberalism — of which Meghan Markle feels like a supreme representative — deal with that age-old sense of moral obligation towards those who have brought you into life and have raised and nurtured you, without you having chosen them for the task. Of course, some families fail in this very basic duty. And most of us parents only get it half right, at best.
Without this very basic idea that we are born into some fundamental unit of existential solidarity, something towards which we owe an allegiance long before we are able to choose it, human life is released from its moorings and we are all deeply lost. This is where liberalism flounders. For when it comes to the most important basis of human flourishing, family life, liberalism has nothing useful to say, other than to remind us that some families are destructive and dysfunctional and best escaped from. Be your own person, it advises. Break free. But this is to cut off the branch on which nests are built.
Sense of duty
A Theology graduate from Cambridge University has the ultimate analysis of the Duchess and her outlook on a sense of duty.
This is a must-read:
So true — especially the closing thought about helping minority Britons!
When they got married, I thought she might look forward to such a role. I was wrong.
Poll on the monarchy
Between Thursday and Friday, January 9 and 10, Deltapoll conducted a survey on the monarchy. This was after the Sussexes’ announcement.
The favourable results were lower than I’d expected:
A Pole responded to that tweet, encouraging us to keep the Royal Family:
Good or bad? It’s important. I come originally from Poland. I read Polish papers and #British monarchy issues make front page headlines there. The monarchy is #Britain‘s trademark, as it were, recognised worldwide. Try and lose it to see how good it actually is to have it.
I fully agree.
This is a breakdown of the question by age group:
I also agree with these replies:
I do not think that most of our Prime Ministers would have made great Presidents.
The Royal Family are good for Britain. Let’s not discard them because of the actions of a few bad apples.
Being a member of Britain’s Royal Family requires special personal characteristics which, when combined, are as rare as hen’s teeth:
– intestinal fortitude;
– a stiff upper lip;
– a perpetual sense of duty;
– the ability to keep one’s mouth shut;
– control over one’s personal life.
Many are called, but few are chosen — and even fewer succeed.
In recent memory, Sarah Ferguson didn’t make the mark. Nor did Princess Diana. Nor has the Duchess of Sussex. Nor has her husband, Prince Harry.
It is not easy, and it is a constant obligation.
The Royal Family is not called The Firm for nothing.
In fact, in reality, it carries with it more obligations than a corporation.
People see formal dress, tiaras and crowns in sumptuous palaces and castles. The flip side is that one’s life is never one’s own. One serves Queen and country under the unsparing eye of the media and the British public.
Being a British Royal is one of the world’s most difficult jobs imaginable.
For the most part, with the exception of those conferred at birth, one’s titles are on loan.
It is important not to assign oneself a title one does not possess. Case in point, with reference to the Duchess of Sussex:
To be clear, she is NOT a Princess (unless you consider a future Disney voiceover role as one). She is a Duchess, and that can just as easily be taken from her as it was given.
Another important point is not to show disloyalty. It’s bad enough offending the Queen, without casting shadows on the British public and expecting to get all the glory for no guts.
If you get a ‘sensitive content’ message about the second tweet, please ignore it and open it up. It’s a parody letter:
The publicity surrounding the Sussexes was positive for at least two years. Note the 2018 headlines from their engagement and wedding in the second tweet below. They reflected the national mood:
Many of the Sussexes’ pronouncements since then, including the secrecy surrounding their young son, made many members of the public feel as if they no longer wanted to be part of our nation.
It turns out we were not wrong.
An opinion piece on Spiked, a free-thinking, quasi-libertarian website, pulls no punches. This is from ‘A woke Wallis Simpson’ by Brendan O’Neill, a republican — not a monarchist. Yet, even he sees a problem with the Sussexes (emphases mine):
H&M, the most right-on royals in history, are breaking off so that they can foist even more woke bollocks on the plebs without having to worry about receiving a tutting phone-call from Her Maj’s press secretary reminding them that they’re royalty and not virtue-signalling Hollywood celebs.
Megxit, as this royal bombshell is wittily being called, is a striking sign of the times. What Harry and Meghan are doing is virtually unprecedented in the history of the royals. They are jacking in their jobs (I say jobs) as senior royals and pursuing a more ‘financially independent’ path that will allow them to earn, travel and – this is important – jabber on about their pet concerns and causes as much as they like.
This is also a major sticking point:
Even leaving aside the fact that they won’t actually be financially independent – they’ll still get wads of cash from the Duchy of Cornwall and will still stay in that Frogmore Cottage us British taxpayers just splashed 2.4million quid on – still their move is a startling and concerning one.
This is the difference between Meghan Markle and, say, Prince Charles:
What it fundamentally reveals is the incompatibility of the modern culture of narcissism with the values of duty, loyalty and self-negation traditionally associated with royal life. To someone like Meghan, who sprang from celebville, who sees herself as the embodiment of right-on goodness, and who loves nothing more than advertising her eco-virtue and performing her PC credentials, life in the British monarchy was never going to be a good fit.
Yes, the woke agenda Meghan expresses so well shares much in common with the old-world elitism of the monarchical system. Both obsess over inherited characteristics (the woke bang on about race and gender, the monarchy is all about bloodline). Both have a penchant for looking down their noses at the little people. And both have an instinctive loathing for modernity, from Charles’ longstanding conservationism to H&M’s humanity-bashing eco-hysteria.
But there’s one big, irreconcilable difference: where the woke value the self over everything else, senior royals are meant, ostensibly at least, to be selfless, to submerge the self into the crown. It looks like this is a deal-breaker for the younger, more celebrity-oriented royals, especially newcomer Meghan but also Harry, too. Their unprecedented ‘stepping back’, and the fury this has allegedly caused in the Palace, suggests the cult of the self that Meghan and other showily virtuous celebs embody and promote, does not work within an institution whose ideal is the Queen: opinion-free, emotions hidden, dutiful, unquestioning and in it for the long haul.
Correct!
But wait, there’s more. Their way of speaking about the Queen is also unprecedented:
Even more startling is the way they talk about the queen. They say they will ‘continue to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen’. Collaborate with? They sound more like Kendall Jenner talking about her adverts with Pepsi than individuals who are meant to devote themselves for life to royal duty and the preservation of the crown. I’m about as republican as it gets (abolish the monarchy is my view), but even I recognise that treating the queen as a kind of big business one temporarily ‘collaborates with’ is out of order. Meghan comes off like a woke Wallis Simpson, taking away a senior royal into a new life of PC globetrotting.
One of the readers’ comments (second one, no hyperlink available) describes the contrast between the Sussexes and the Queen’s parents during the Second World War:
The current situation should remind us all of the remarkable differences between generations. Winston Churchill was desperate to move the Royal family to Canada when hostilities commenced in WW2. The King refused and said that he wanted to stay with his people. In fact the Queen Mum said she was relieved when Buckingham Palace took a direct hit during the Blitz as she could then look the Eastenders in face thereafter. Princess Elizabeth herself served in the military as a mechanic and truck driver. The King, in fact, wanted to be part of the advanced landing parties on D-Day, fortunately he was talked out of it. The Royal family’s sense of duty inspired the British people to see the crisis through even though at the beginning of hostilities it was touch and go for Britain. Running away to safety was not an option for them.
Harry and Meghan find Royal duties tedious and boring. It’s not for them and they want to make lots of money instead. The Press have given them a hard time and some gutter types have written some nasty things about them. They would, it seems, prefer deference rather than criticism. The only option available to them is to escape to Canada.
Is it no small wonder that older people view the Millennials as mere snowflakes.
The first readers’ comment is about personal dynamics between the Sussexes. This is another danger, namely for the Duke:
I have the feeling it is Meghan manipulating Harry as I think she is quite narcissistic. And she knows Harry has a problem with British press re: his mother. She may be exploiting that. I also think their marriage will therefore be in shambles in the not too far future …
There is a good article on narcissism relating to this, ‘A Very Royal Narcissist — Part 9’, excerpts from which follow.
Is it possible that this is what has been going on behind the scenes for the past several months? Emphasis in the original:
-
- Smearing the family members (“They are trying to control you, I am just trying to help you see that.”)
- Exaggeration of Threat (“They do not want you to be happy, I do, that is why they see me as a threat.”)
- Projection (see the above comment).
- Pity Play (“Your family do not like me.” “This country has it in for me and I have tried so hard, you know, tried the stiff upper lip, but they just do not like me.”)
- Guilt (“If you loved me, you would move for me.”)
- Triangulation (“If we stay, it will end up the same for me as it was for your mother and you do not want that to happen do you?”)
- Use of The Victim´s Weaknesses Against Them …
- Promised Gain (“If we live there, we can do our own thing and both be happy, you want that for us don’t you?”)
Remember, the narcissist will do this through unconscious manipulations. The narcissist genuinely believes that they are doing the right thing and cannot see, because of their narcissism, that they are actually being manipulative.
Such manipulations will have been used in isolating Prince Harry from his father, brother, grandparents, friends and extended family (save those who are viewed as supportive and therefore no threat to the control) and thus choosing water over blood.
The article on narcissism goes on to speculate as to what possibly happened at Sandringham on Monday, January 13, and the aftermath.
Whatever the outcome, the article concludes:
In the short term, Miss Markle will exert control in some form and in her “world” she will be winning. Of course, there is much more that is yet to happen with this ongoing saga of a Very Royal Narcissist.
I hope that means that this awful saga comes to an end, in favour of the Royal Family.
Tomorrow I will close a week of disroyalty with two more views about the Royal Family and the Sussexes.
Sooner than expected, I am writing about the Sandringham summit, held on Monday, January 13, 2020, to provide a way forward for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in their disroyalty.
Present at Sandringham were the Queen and Princes Charles, William and Harry. Contrary to earlier reports, the Duchess, in Canada, did not participate via telephone. The Daily Mail reported that aides issued a brief statement to that effect:
The Sussexes decided that it wasn’t necessary for the duchess to join.
Afterwards, the Queen issued a statement:
That would seem the most sensible solution.
No commercialisation of the Sussex titles, either. (I don’t care what arrangements are in place at present.) The Queen issues titles, and they are not the property of recipients.
The Queen’s statement reads as follows (emphases mine):
Today my family had very constructive discussions on the future of my grandson and his family.
My family and I are entirely supportive of Harry and Meghan’s desire to create a new life as a young family. Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working Members of the Royal Family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family.
Harry and Meghan have made clear that they do not want to be reliant on public funds in their new lives.
It has therefore been agreed that there will be a period of transition in which the Sussexes will spend time in Canada and the UK.
These are complex matters for my family to resolve, and there is some more work to be done, but I have asked for final decisions to be reached in the coming days.
ENDS
Political pundit Guido Fawkes wrote, using a Brexit term (emphasis in the original):
Looks like an orderly transition to a Canada Plus model…
His readers, however, are sorely disappointed.
So am I.
However, the monarch is much wiser than her subjects. Her statement is probably not all it seems on the surface. She might want to take the venom out of events from the past week and let the wound begin to heal. She probably also wants to avoid a Princess Diana situation: different circumstances, granted, but the same reaction from certain quarters, which turned Prince Harry’s mother into a martyr figure.
Whilst journalist and television presenter Piers Morgan was as disappointed as I, a few of his readers think the Queen could be playing the long game:
On Monday, January 13, British GQ posted an interview with Piers Morgan:
In 2017, Morgan supported Prince Harry’s choice of future wife. He wrote an article for the Daily Mail: ‘PIERS MORGAN: Hearty congratulations, Harry, you picked a real keeper’.
Excerpts follow from the British GQ article (emphases in purple mine).
Contrary to what he thought in 2017 and 2018, Morgan believes the Duchess is a threat to the monarchy:
GQ: You have engaged in some very personal and sometimes vicious arguments over Meghan and Harry over the past few days. Did you feel passionately about this before the news about them broke or did it just get out of hand?
Piers Morgan: I’ve felt strongly about this for about 18 months, ever since I could see the way the wind was blowing. The truth about Meghan Markle is that she’s a social climbing piece of work and all the people rushing to her defence have not, I’ve noticed, had any personal dealings with her. The number of people she has used and then cut loose is long and illustrious and involves almost her entire family, most of her oldest friends, most of Harry’s best male friends and now she’s trying to extricate Harry from the royal family. I think she represents a clear and present danger to the future of the monarchy and I don’t say that lightly. If you are going to have two renegade celebrity part-time royals bestriding the globe cashing in on their royal status, I think that could accelerate an atmosphere of republicanism that can be very dangerous to the existence of the monarchy. There are very important issues here and I think it’s something people should be emotive about if they, like me, value the monarchy and the royal family.
He objects to the Sussexes wanting all the benefits of being Royals without having to put in any of the day-to-day duties:
I noticed you have focused on the Queen in these discussions.
The Queen’s a 93-year-old woman who has been on the throne for over six decades – she’s probably the most respected world leader of modern times. She’s recently had to put up with a scandal involving her middle son, whom she’s had to effectively fire; her husband is 98 and suffering serious health issues. So she’s got enough on her plate without these two upstarts deciding they’re going to rewrite the way the royal family conducts itself with their new agenda. Nobody wants a progressive royal family, nobody wants a woke royal family. This is entirely driven by Meghan Markle, who has turned Harry, I’m afraid, into a simpering doormat and the result is fairly cataclysmic. They want to leave the royal family on their terms where they get to keep all the good bits – the taxpayer-funded security and travel, the free mansion which was refurbished at our expense – but they don’t want to do the Wednesday duty at a community centre in Stoke. That’s not going to wash.
He explains why he changed his mind about the Duchess:
Do you think the mainstream media have been fair in their scrutiny of Meghan and Harry?
PM: Yes, I wrote a lot of very positive things about Meghan Markle. Then a number of stories began appearing about the way she had ghosted people. Look, I was a very minor ghosting. I thought we were good friends. She tweeted we were good friends – tweets she has now deleted. She was the one who reached out to me for media advice so I did and I thought we got on very well, but the moment she met Prince Harry, bang! And she’s done that to many people. She is a social climbing cut-and-runner. I fear what will happen to Harry.
He says that what the Sussexes are doing is not what the Royal Family is about:
How do you think the future royal relationships will pan out and could it help the royals in the long run?
You can’t be half royal and half not. You can’t take public money and flog your status off to commercial entities. I don’t see how this works. They are entitled to lead any life they want to lead, but they are not entitled to be a drain on the British taxpayer. Also, why is Meghan Markle a global star? It’s because she married into the British royal family and I think the public will take a very dim view of somebody coming into our royal family for three years and then buggering off and fleecing everything off the back of her royal status. You can’t be a part-time royal and not do the dirty work that goes with it. If they want to give up all their free stuff and pay for everything themselves then good luck to them, but even then if she makes tens of millions of dollars it won’t be because of her acting work, it will be because she married Prince Harry.
In his Daily Mail column published the same day, Morgan listed the reasons why he went off the Duchess.
However, going back further, he cites his column on the Sussexes’ wedding and reminds us of how much the British public looked forward to it (emphases mine):
From the moment Meghan Markle came on the royal scene, and it was revealed she was from a mixed-race background, she was welcomed with warm open tolerant arms by a wonderfully multi-cultural and diverse modern Britain that was thrilled to finally see a non-white member of the Royal Family.
She was showered with almost universal praise, especially when the engagement was announced.
The media, in particular, was unanimous in its verdict that this was a great thing for the country. In fact, I haven’t seen a press so united in joy for anything royal since Diana first became Charles’s girlfriend.
This extraordinary tidal wave of goodwill continued through to the big wedding in May 2018, which by common consent was a triumph.
As I wrote myself in the Daily Mail the following day, ‘it mixed the best of traditional British pomp and majesty with large dollops of Markle Sparkle and the result was a biracial, Hollywood-fused union of very different cultures that worked magnificently well.’
True! People were thrilled. Royal fans lined the streets of Windsor that day, even if they had little hope of seeing the new Royal couple.
He is criticising the Duchess — and the Duke — for the following:
… her erratic conduct – and Harry’s – since the wedding, which has been spectacularly ill-advised;
… hypocritical of Meghan to have a $500,000 celebrity-fuelled baby-shower party in New York, including a lift on George Clooney‘s jet, on the same day she and Harry tweeted a plea for people to think of the poor;
… they went to such ridiculous lengths to hide basic details of their baby Archie’s birth from the public that pays for much of their lavish lives;
… appalling when Meghan’s bodyguards stopped members of the same public taking her photo at Wimbledon;
… she refused to meet President Trump during his UK state visit, despite being the only American member of the Royal Family;
… dreadfully two-faced of her and Harry to preach about the need to watch every carbon-footprint, as they jumped on Sir Elton John’s private jet every ten minutes;
… she ended a tour of poverty-strewn parts of South Africa by moaning about her own ‘struggle’;
… their incessant war with the media, throwing hysterical abuse-laden warnings and lawsuits out like confetti, so pathetically thin-skinned and self-defeating given how much positive press they’ve also enjoyed;
… the way they’re treated the Queen so deplorable and cruel, given her age (93), the fact her 98-year-old husband Philip has been so ill, and the recent enormous stress she has suffered over having to fire her own son Andrew over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal …
He concludes, in part:
The reality is that Meghan and Harry have brought this ugly situation entirely on themselves …
Here is one more self-inflicted injury by the Sussexes:
The youngsters complaining about the media were too young to remember the press drubbing that the Duchess of Cambridge — Kate — received when she got engaged to Prince William. Her mother was also ridiculed for having been a former airline attendant. A few years ago, the Duchess and her mother were criticised for having young Prince George stay at the Middleton home now and then so that he could spend time with his maternal grandparents.
She got her media flak, but she rose above it. Now she can do no wrong:
As Morgan says:
That is definitely true.
Before then, there were Charles’s girlfriends from the early 1970s, all roundly sniped at in the press.
Princess Anne was similarly criticised during the same time period.
So did Princess Anne’s first husband. The media called him ‘Foggy’, not just once or twice but often. So often, in fact, that to this day, I do not remember his real name.
Before that, there was Princess Margaret — the Queen’s sister — who suffered a barrage of negative press during her adult life, from the 1950s to her death in 2002.
Conclusion: Meghan Markle is NOT the only Royal who has ever been criticised in the media. Others suffered far worse for no compelling reasons at all.
More tomorrow on other commentators’ reactions to the Sussexes.
In the meantime, for anyone compiling pub quiz stumpers, here’s one for you:
Q. What was Prince Harry’s last public engagement as a senior Royal?
A. The official draw at Buckingham Palace on January 16, 2020, for the Rugby League World Cup, which will be hosted in the UK in 2021.
Of course, that could well be subject to change in the years to come, but it’s good for the time being.
On Monday, January 13, the Queen, Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry held a family summit with their respective advisers on Harry and Meghan’s future:
I hope to have more on that at the end of the week.
For now, the British public’s reaction at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s disroyalty (not a real word) was largely one of disgust with the couple and supportive of the Queen. For proof, please read the readers’ comments in the tweets and articles below.
Many British journalists also oppose the Sussexes’ attempt to leave royal life and still get paid while showing great disrespect to the Queen.
Tim Stanley of The Telegraph is around Harry and Meghan’s age, but even he takes a dim view of their actions:
Stanley explained the situation (emphases mine):
It might seem counterintuitive, but the monarchy survives by appearing modest and the Windsors figured out long-ago that they reign not by the grace of God but the good will of the people – so going all “progressive”, cashing in and running off to Canada (“But I get to keep Frogmore Cottage, right?”) is not the behaviour of a 21st‑century royal.
“Who do you think you are, young man? A Kennedy?”
Like most Britons, he thinks the storm will pass:
The threat of a tell-all interview, termed ‘blackmail’ by many Britons, has not gone down well, either:
On Sunday, January 12, The Sun reported that the couple could give the interview to the queen of daytime television, Oprah Winfrey. Meghan is allegedly busy working on it:
Her American PR team is already in touch with major US networks and chat show queen Oprah Winfrey.
The couple could use the TV threat to try to secure a better deal at the Sandringham talks with the Queen, Prince Charles and Wills over their plans to step down from frontline royal duties.
A royal source said: “Harry and Meghan’s people have been reaching out to all the big US networks to explore the possibilities of a sit-down warts-and-all interview.
“Perhaps Harry and Meghan will use this as a negotiating tactic as there is no way the royals want their dirty laundry out in the open.
“Maybe they will get more money if they agree not to talk.”
It is believed Meghan’s team has been in contact with ABC, NBC and CBS and celebrity chat show hosts such as Oprah.
She was a surprise guest at Harry and Meghan’s wedding and is known to be in contact with them. Meg’s mum Doria has been pictured leaving Oprah’s home.
Harry has already worked with Oprah for an Apple TV series on mental health.
The source said the couple want to “tell their side of the story” — adding: “Meghan feels she’s been silenced and is no longer prepared to be muted.
“She and Harry feel the royals have been racist and sexist. Her people are actively exploring opportunities.”
I wonder if the Queen discussed this with her grandson at the Sandringham summit.
In 2019, Prince Harry succeeded his grandfather, Prince Philip, as Captain General of the Royal Marines.
On Monday, January 13, a retired officer in the Royal Marines told the Telegraph that, based on last week’s antics, he would not raise a toast to Harry if he attempts to cash in on his royal title:
The retired military chief urged the 35-year-old Duke to honour his pledge of allegiance to the Queen, while a decorated war hero described his decision to stand down from the Royal family as “disgusting”.
James Glancy, a former captain in the Special Boat Service, said he and many military colleagues would not raise a toast to the Duke if he tried to earn money from his royal position with commercial ventures.
His criticism came as a highly decorated Army figure told The Daily Telegraph: “Prince Harry has every right to want to balance his responsibilities between the Royal family and his wife and young family. But first and foremost Harry was a commissioned officer who pledged allegiance to the Queen and the Queen is his grandmother, so when push comes to shove, Queen and country come first.”
Speaking to Nigel Farage on LBC radio, Capt Glancy, who won the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross in 2012 for courage and leadership during three campaigns in Afghanistan, said: “Harry’s been a great public servant.
“He’s done two tours of Afghanistan. I was there for one of his tours … He’s done brilliant work in charity since he’s left the Armed Forces, especially with the Invictus Games, but his behaviour in the last year is not becoming of somebody that holds these important positions, these patronages, including that of the Captain General.”
Captain Glancy also told the following to Nigel Farage:
Insisting others in the Royal Marines and military were “very upset, if not disgusted by the disrespect to the Queen by not discussing this”, Capt Glancy added: “Everybody agrees that if he wants to leave these positions … he’s absolutely entitled to have another life, and he’s entitled to live overseas. But you can’t do this half and half. You’re either in or out … “
The Telegraph article went on to quote the father of one of the men who served alongside the Prince in Afghanistan who:
accused the Duke of “abandoning his Army family”.
Derek Hunt, whose son Nathan was mentioned in dispatches for neutralising Taliban bombs in Helmand province in 2008, said: “Nathan kept Prince Harry alive in Afghanistan. He’d have been blown up had my son not found those IEDs. After everything they went through together, I think it is terrible to see him turning his back on everyone.
“We all thought Harry really understood what life is like for veterans and their families, as if he was one of us and by our side – but he’s shattered that impression now. It’s like he’s lost his spark, like he’s not the same person.”
Tied in with Harry’s military service are the Invictus Games, a sports competition he helped to develop for disabled military veterans. I watched some of the first Invictus Games and they are very inspiring, indeed. They have given the participating veterans a new lease on life.
On Saturday, January 11, The Telegraph reported that the future of the Invictus Games could be in doubt following the Prince’s announcement to retire from public life:
Military backers of the games, which have brought together wounded servicemen and women since they first launched in London in 2014 are known to be concerned the event may fall into a “limbo”.
The Invictus Games have relied heavily on the Duke of Sussex as its public figurehead, and his close association with the event has guaranteed them a high profile to date.
It was at the Invictus Games in Toronto, in September 2017, that Harry and Meghan made their first official public appearance together.
But there are fears that if the Duke and Duchess withdraw from part of their public duties as part of their aim to “step back as senior royals”, then the Invictus Games could lose much of their purpose and drive.
One source familiar with the thinking of the Palace said: “There is a big question about the Invictus Games. Where does that stand? The military are pretty annoyed because he seemed totally disinterested at the last meeting.
“They were very worried and concerned. They are thinking ‘now what? It is in limbo. They don’t know where it sits.”
Another military snub has not gone unnoticed. On Friday, January 10, The Sun quoted one of their employees, veteran Royal photographer Arthur Edwards, who said:
I don’t think you can “pop in” for Trooping the Colour but not be there for Remembrance Sunday.
Arthur Edwards was speaking to Fox News about the Sussexes and had this to say about Meghan:
The veteran snapper said she had won over the British people and was “brilliant”.
He remembered how “the Prince of Wales walked her down the aisle, what a way to compliment.”
But added: “It seems that it’s not enough, it’s not enough for Meghan.”
As for Harry:
You couldn’t take your eyes off him because he was guaranteed to do the unexpected, like playing football with street kids, racing Usain Bolt or hugging a prime minister.
He was a joy to work with, a normal guy in the street who just happened to have a royal title. The whole world loved him.
But over the past two years his relationship with the media has not just turned sour — it has become toxic.
I haven’t seen him look really happy for a long time.
The Sussexes’ complaints about the Royal Family — if true — seem rather petty.
Before Christmas, the Queen posed for a photograph with three generations of her family, all in the top three places as heirs to the throne: Prince Charles, Prince William and young Prince George. The Sun reported:
It has been claimed that the succession photo was the last straw for Meghan and Harry.
Why on earth is that a problem? They are the immediate princes in line to succeed the Queen and each other. Harry is sixth in line.
Here’s another alleged complaint. Harry allegedly got upset with his older brother when he introduced him to Meghan. The Sun says that was the beginning of the rift between them:
Prince Harry fell out with Prince William when his older brother told him to “heed” Princess Diana’s warning not to “marry in haste”, it’s been claimed.
The Duke of Sussex, who has now quit the royal family, accused his once-close brother of trying to “wreck his relationship” with Meghan Markle.
William had told Harry to take his relationship with the former actress slowly after he was first introduced to her at Kensington Palace.
And he reiterated the warning after Harry and Meghan got engaged – this time using mum Diana’s advice to drive it home.
She had explained to William how she and Prince Charles “hardly knew each other” before marrying, the Daily Mail reports.
The comments sparked a rift between the two …
Well, who could be angry about that? That’s just common sense advice to avoid a problem marriage.
One accusation that both Princes Harry and William say is false is the claim that the latter bullied the former. On Monday, January 13, The Sun reported that the brothers issued a joint statement denouncing the story:
Prince Harry and Prince William have united to say they are “deeply, deeply unhappy” about claims the latter’s ‘bullying’ caused the royal split.
The Duke of Sussex was originally said by a royal source to have felt pushed out of the royal family by his big brother.
But he has spoken out with William today slamming the “offensive” claims ahead of crisis talks being held by the Queen at Sandringham.
Their statement read: “Despite clear denials, a false story ran in a UK newspaper today speculating about the relationship between The Duke of Sussex and The Duke of Cambridge.
“For brothers who care so deeply about the issues surrounding mental health, the use of inflammatory language in this way is offensive and potentially harmful.”
Meanwhile, the Sussexes have Elton John as a close confidant. Nothing wrong with that, except that they told him of their plans to withdraw from royal life before they told the Queen. On Sunday, January 12, The Sun reported on a story published in the Sunday People:
The Sunday People also revealed that Harry and Meghan have turned to Elton John after secretly telling him they were planning to quit royal life before they informed the Queen.
An insider said: “Sir Elton is constantly at the end of the phone for Harry and Meghan and speaks to them every day.
“He is an inspiration to them and has been an almost motherly figure to them throughout this process. They made their decision on their own but he has been a shoulder to lean on and listened to them as they spoke about their own plans.”
The public will stand by the Queen.
A few of her subjects, frustrated with the Sussexes, have suggested that Charles could demand that Harry take a DNA test. Yes, the paternity rumour mill has started again. However, it is said that red hair runs in the Spencer family, so he would have inherited it from his mother’s side.
I do hope everything works out well for all concerned. Whatever is decided upon will have far-reaching effects one way or another.
A few years ago, we all had high hopes for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Around the time of their wedding, it was thought that the Queen was going to make them Royal ‘ambassadors’ to the Commonwealth countries, which would have been splendid.
Now, their latest announcement on leaving the UK to live somewhere in North America — likely Canada — has divided admirers of the Royal Family, including the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
This looks like disloyalty — perhaps disroyalty. It is not a good look.
This move reminds many of us of Edward VIII’s abdication in 1936 in favour of the American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. Talk to any Briton who is over the age of 60 and, even if they were not alive at the time, they will tell you that abdication is a very big deal and destabilising for the Royal Family, even if only temporarily.
The former Ms Markle — real first name Rachel — is also a divorcée:
This is how the New York Post reported the story on Thursday, January 9:
Many of us hope that the Queen steps in and, along with Prince Charles, lays down the law to these two. They want to commercialise the Sussex titles. Yet, they are but temporary holders — renters — of them, not their perpetual owners. The Queen lent the Sussex titles to them. She can surely take them away.
Did the couple think this over carefully? One wonders. It will bring all sorts of issues:
Yes, things in future might not be all they seem at the moment.
The question of the public purse is also a valid one, mainly with regard to security, as they receive personal upkeep from Prince Charles (Duchy of Cornwall, 95%) and the Queen (Sovereign Grant, 5%):
The Queen had Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor estate refurbished for the Sussexes at the cost of £2.4m. She also threw a rightly lavish wedding for them, also costing millions. Now they want to split their time between the UK and Canada. This rankles:
This will be a hot topic in the months to come, even though the couple are not on the Civil List. The following is a reply to journalist and broadcaster Piers Morgan:
Then there are the family optics and dynamics involved. Views on these have been divided, especially with regard to the Queen and Prince Philip:
The Queen is our longest serving monarch and Britain’s Head of State. She is a national treasure. Does Harry owe her more allegiance than he does his own family? It is a sensitive subject with the public:
It has been reported that Prince Harry did not discuss his and the Duchess’s impending lifestyle change with the Queen, Prince Charles or Prince William. That has not gone down well with supporters of the Royal Family:
Some people say that Harry has an excuse for his behaviour because of the manner in which his mother died. However, as Piers Morgan points out, he is not the only person who lost a parent at an early age. Piers Morgan’s father died when he was a youngster, too:
People forget that Princess Diana was Prince William’s mother, too:
On now to the statement from the Sussexes, which they posted on their website and on Instagram:
January, 2020
“After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution. We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family, and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen. It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment. We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America, continuing to honour our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages. This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity. We look forward to sharing the full details of this exciting next step in due course, as we continue to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen, The Prince of Wales, The Duke of Cambridge, and all relevant parties. Until then, please accept our deepest thanks for your continued support.”
Their Royal Highnesses, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex
What about the carbon footprint??
Buckingham Palace issued this terse response:
Discussions with The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are at an early stage. We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through.
Morgan, writing for the Daily Mail, said on Thursday, January 9 (emphases mine):
Seriously?
I’ve seen some disgraceful royal antics in my time, but for pure arrogance, entitlement, greed, and wilful disrespect, nothing has ever quite matched the behaviour of the ‘Duke and Duchess of Sussex.’
I put inverted commas around those titles because I sincerely hope they won’t exist much longer.
Indeed, if I were Her Majesty the Queen, I would unceremoniously strip Harry and Meghan of all their titles with immediate effect and despatch them back into civilian life.
These two deluded clowns announced yesterday they were quitting life as senior royals.
In a series of staggeringly pompous statements on their gleaming new Hollywood-style website, they laid down the law to the Queen and to the rest of us about exactly how things are supposedly going to work from this moment on.
To summarise, they want to stop being ‘senior royals’ with all the tedious duty that entails.
And instead, they now want to be a ‘progressive’ force within ‘the institution’.
In other words, they want to be super-woke celebrities (with all the outrageous ‘Do as we say not as we do’ hectoring hypocrisy they’ve already brought to that status) who get to keep all the trappings of royal life without any of the hard, boring bits and the right to cash in on their status however they choose.
So, they want the glitz, the glamour, the splendour and the stupendous wealth….they just don’t want to have to actually earn it.
What a pathetic joke.
He was appalled that the Sussexes took this decision independently:
It was shocking enough that Harry and Meghan didn’t even have the courtesy to tell either Prince Charles, who they sponge off, or Prince William of their grandiose plans.
But it was absolutely appalling that they failed to notify the Queen.
This woman is not just Harry’s grandmother, she’s the Monarch for god’s sake.
She has spent the past six decades on the throne and by common consent has served her people with magnificent grace, commitment, respect and skill.
Elizabeth II will go down in history as one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, monarchs.
Yet now, at the age of 93, and with her 98-year-old husband Prince Philip suffering ill health, she’s had to suffer the repulsively rude indignity of being treated like a piece of insignificant dirt by her own spoiled brat grandson and his scheming, selfish D-list actress wife.
He discussed Edward VIII’s abdication:
Of course, and very ironically, she is only Queen because her own uncle, Edward VIII, also fell under the romantic clutches of another American woman, Wallis Simpson, and felt compelled to resign as King.
That led to his brother George VI taking over, and when he died, his eldest daughter Elizabeth was crowned Queen in her mid-20s.
Now, after surviving a number of royal crises including the death of Princess Diana in 1997, Her Majesty faces another that could cause potentially irreparable damage to the Monarchy.
Yes, coupled with Prince Andrew’s fall from grace last year, this development is very bad, indeed.
Timing is everything, it is said. This is excruciatingly poor timing.
When my generation were growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, our parents and teachers were appalled at our self-centredness. If I had a $1 for every time they said to us …
Me, me, me! That’s all you ever think about: self, self, self!
… I’d be writing this from Monaco.
Yet, this is what the Sussexes are doing: thinking about self, self, self!
Piers Morgan agrees:
Unfortunately — but quite rightly — the goodwill previously accorded to them is likely to vanish quickly.
This is what they are attempting to fob us off with:
This is closer to the stark reality of the situation:
January 9 happens to be the Duchess of Cambridge’s birthday:
It’s a shame this news overshadowed what should have been a happy day for her.
Self, self, self!
Boris Johnson issued a brief but rousing address to the nation on New Year’s Eve.
He looks forward to an ‘exhilarating decade’ ahead as we enter the 2020s:
People admire his enthusiasm, gumption and optimism, so lacking in the past few Prime Ministers — and Britain as a whole.
I wish him all the best as he attempts to unite the nation, particularly post-Brexit.
I am also pleased that protecting Christians is on his agenda, dating back to his days as Foreign Secretary under Theresa May. The following tweet is from last July, when the Conservative leadership race was going on:
He also mentioned the subject in his first Christmas address to the nation, which is more than the Archbishop of Canterbury managed in his New Year’s greeting.
May God bless our Prime Minister in 2020!
Happy New Year!
Happy new decade!
I enjoy, albeit with trepidation at times, looking back at the decades I’ve lived through and charting the change from beginning to end.
O tempora, o mores!
1960s
In 1960, growing up in the United States, I remember that things were still quite formal. Most people took care in the way they spoke and in their appearance. They were careful to conduct their households in a respectable manner. By the middle of the decade, that began to change but not too noticeably.
By 1968, a social revolution was underway, including sexually. What was once private became public. Attire reflected that. Women began wearing skirts above the knee. Men’s clothes became more form-fitting.
Sloppiness and drugs became fashionable with the advent of hippies. Even though they were a small minority, they received a lot of media coverage. A slogan connected with them — ‘If it feels good, do it’ — began to pervade society at large.
Cinema and television reflected this change.
At home, Americans moved from watching westerns to tuning into a zany comedy hour. In 1960, Gunsmoke was the most viewed programme. In 1969, it was Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Gunsmoke had moved to sixth place in the Nielsen ratings.
Film genres and themes also shifted. In 1960, the great epics were popular, with Spartacus the highest grossing film and Exodus coming third. Psycho was second. In 1969, while Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was in the top slot, Midnight Cowboy was at No. 3, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was No. 6 and an X-rated movie, I Am Curious (Yellow) was No. 12. It would have been unthinkable in 1960 that an urban drama about homosexuality, a movie about swingers and one that was pornographic would have been so popular nine years later.
1970s
The cultural shift continued in the 1970s. American magazines and newspapers devoted many column inches to social drop-outs experimenting with communal living. Swingers were becoming popular in suburbia. Again, those were two small sub-groups of society, but everyone — even the most respectable — knew about these two phenomena.
Pop music got bolder, more sexualised. I remember in high school that we talked a lot about sex and could hardly wait to start dating so that we could experiment. Our parents wondered what was wrong with us. The idea of sin and the forbidden went out the window. ‘If it feels good, do it’ had spread to the middle classes. Previously forbidden carnal acts were encouraged as being completely ‘natural’. This furthered the evolution of a shame-free society. Today, I read that some teenagers don’t kiss on a first date; instead they engage in oral sex.
Interestingly, one of the most suggestive singers of the decade, Eric Carmen of the Raspberries, laments where this has led today:
I remember neighbours of ours getting divorced. The wife said that she could earn her own living now, thank you very much. The husband was heartbroken. We felt sorry for their two children. Until then, my family and I personally did not know any couples who got divorced. It just didn’t happen to everyday individuals. However, divorce rates continued to rise and, these days, no one bats an eyelid.
More women started working. What began as a liberating elective would turn out to be a mandatory means of survival in marriage in the years that followed. Few of us knew that then, though.
Returning to music, it was a great decade for youngsters. FM radio produced rather excellent stations devoted to little known genres that never reached Top 40 AM stations. Through them, we discovered prog rock from Britain: Yes, Rick Wakeman, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, to name but three musical greats. There were many more, too numerous to mention here.
Near the end of the decade we had disco. Saturday Night Fever was a huge box office hit and propelled John Travolta from television (Welcome Back Kotter) to cinema fame.
The most popular television sitcoms, such as Welcome Back Kotter, were all set in metropolitan areas. In terms of television in general, The Waltons was probably the only show with a rural setting.
Halfway through the decade, I spent a year in France, which was much quieter than the US socially and still quite formal, even though the more leftist state university students were generally unkempt and unwashed. In many respects, the country was a bridge between the 1960s and the 1970s in the nicest possible way.
1980s
Leaving university, I recall that many of my friends latched onto the Reagan zeitgeist and became conservatives.
They turned into their parents and lost the fun-loving verve they once had. I stayed single the longest, so was more acutely aware of a shift into respectability and suburban living.
I lived in a major US city then, earning my own way in life. For relaxation, I used to go to matinees at the weekend. The price of admission was cheaper and the cinemas were nearly empty, giving me the impression I had the big screen all to myself.
I saw a lot of world films in the first part of that decade, some from Brazil and Australia but mostly Britain and France. French film became a passion. Even one of the UHF television channels showed French films from the 1950s. Bliss.
As far as music was concerned, my favourite FM station played British and European singles apart from reggae on Sunday afternoons. More bliss.
Then, around 1986, something began to change. Although my favourite radio station stayed the same, the movie theatres weren’t showing as many foreign films. Within a couple of years, they stopped showing them altogether. One of my lifelines had vanished, sadly. The American films that replaced them were not very good, either, so I stopped going to the cinema.
Everything became very one-dimensional. America, somehow, had lost the link with the zeitgeist of European culture, which it never recovered. It used to be that people in the 1960s and early 1970s made a two- or three-week trip to western Europe to see the historic sites they learned about in school. It was what we today would call a bucket list item.
Fortunately, by the end of the decade, employment events intervened — and further improved — for me.
1990s
Living in England, I realised that I had an insatiable appetite for history and politics. I learned a lot about both thanks to a gift subscription to The Spectator, which I had read about in English lit class in high school. It’s been around since 1828.
In 1990s, my in-laws told me that Margaret Thatcher’s time was up. She had become too full of herself. We had high hopes for John Major.
I remember the 1992 election, which Major won handily. I could not understand the rage of my female colleagues who expected Neil Kinnock to win. They stayed up all night drinking, waiting for a Labour government that never came. The next day, at work, they were hungover, tearful — and, above all, angry. Why did they think he stood a chance? Perhaps I had been reading too much of The Spectator, but I had no doubt that Major would continue as Prime Minister.
By 1997, most of us felt change was needed. The Conservative MPs on the front bench seemed like tired, bloated bureaucrats. None of them had an original idea. Most seemed to be lining their own pockets. I was most consterned by Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley, who started closing A&E (Accident and Emergency) services at local hospitals. What was she thinking?
When Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, nearly everyone I knew rejoiced. Change was coming.
And how …
2000s
The first few years of Labour were fine. I was enjoying my work too much to pay any attention.
By 2005, I longed for a Conservative government, especially when Gordon Brown became PM with no general election.
After that, Labour became unbearable, banging on about people’s personal lives and habits. The smoking ban came into force in the summer of 2007. Ministers assured us in television interviews that private members clubs and hotels would be exempt. No, not at all. It was a blanket ban everywhere.
It was during this decade that London elected its first mayor, Ken Livingstone. He served two terms and introduced the city-wide congestion charge for motor vehicles, which we called the Kengestion Charge. My colleagues at the time reminded me that, as head of the old GLA (Greater London Authority), he was known as Red Ken.
Boris Johnson succeeded him, also serving two terms. His administration made the streets tidy again and also lowered crime.
By 2006, I started looking more closely at the EU and the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels who seemed to rule our lives. I agreed with those disgruntled Britons who wanted a referendum on our membership.
Most of all, however, I was sick and tired of Labour, to the point of despair.
I also asked my far better half to cancel my gift subscription to the The Spectator, as it had changed its editorial line considerably after Boris Johnson left as editor. Although more people now read it, it is a former shadow of itself. I would not call it neither conservative nor traditional at all any more.
2010s
Hope came in the May 2010 general election.
The Conservatives had to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. It was the David Cameron and Nick Clegg Show, but at least Labour were out of the picture after 13 years.
David Cameron referred to himself as the ‘heir to Blair’. It took me some time to see it, but he was not wrong.
He set out to reform the Conservative Party and alienated older, faithful members in their local associations. CCHQ suddenly did not need their help.
On a broader level, Cameron will probably be best remembered for opening up marriage to same-sex couples and for offering us the EU referendum, billed by all parties as a ‘once in a lifetime’ choice which they all pledged to implement.
A number of televised debates took place in 2016. I watched them all. Some of my friends were less than convinced by the Leave proposition. The one clincher was Brexit The Movie, which is an hour-long eye-opener about the Brussels gravy train and better than any of the debates, no matter how good:
I stayed up until the early hours of the morning of Friday, June 24, 2016 to watch the result. When it was clear that Leave had won, I went to bed. The next day, my far better half and I woke up to Cameron resigning because he did not like the result. We had a celebratory lunch in London and went to a party that evening that had been planned months earlier. I remember the apprehension we both felt about sounding out the other party guests as to their views on the EU. We later discovered that were not alone. Finally, someone there broke the ice upon his arrival by exclaiming:
Is everybody HAPPY? I certainly am!
At that point, we were free to talk about Brexit.
Theresa May became Prime Minister later that summer.
Across the pond, another sea change was happening: Donald Trump’s candidacy. It was even more of a shock when he won. A startled nation awoke to find that Hillary Clinton was not their president.
The conflicts about Brexit and Trump continue today. Opponents to both have grown ever more vehement.
On September 20, 2019, the British website Spiked issued a thought-provoking documentary on Trump and Brexit. It’s 26-minutes long and well worth watching. To cover Brexit, their reporters interviewed residents of Southend-on-Sea in Essex. To cover the Trump phenomenon, they interviewed Pennsylvania journalist Salena Zito and residents of Erie, which was once a major industrial powerhouse in that state. It has fallen on very hard times, indeed:
The major theme running through both is, as they put it, ‘change’, which I believe they should have called ‘self determination’ and ‘recovering the aspirational dream’.
One thing that struck me was the interview with the owner of a gym in Erie. He said that his father raised seven children on a janitor’s salary:
You couldn’t do that now.
Too right. Both parents now have to work — unlike in the 1960s — and few households can support more than two or three children.
People in Britain and the United States want to work and save more of their hard-earned cash. They also want good job opportunities for their children.
A fisherman in Southend said that, because of EU rules, he is restricted to an ever-smaller part of waters in which to fish. The number of fishing boats has continued to decline, he added, and the number of fisherman has also dropped dramatically. That is why he, and many others in Southend, voted Leave in 2016.
The decade closed with Boris Johnson’s landslide victory on December 12. Historian David Starkey explores what this means for the nation in this 57-minute documentary from The Sun, ably conducted by a young reporter:
Starkey explores the evolution of Parliament since Victorian times, when it became the institution we know today. As many Northern constituencies flipped from Labour to Conservative, Starkey says that Boris’s pledge to revitalise the North will mean little unless he espouses their values of patriotism, which, he says, has been a dirty word for many years.
He says that Boris could well become a figure like Charles II, who restored the monarchy beginning in 1660. Many of their personality traits are similar, he notes, particularly their penchant for bringing a nation together and reforming it at the same time. It is well worth watching when you have the opportunity.
There is much more to Starkey’s interview than summarised here. He talks about the people of the North, Labour, Jeremy Corbyn, David Cameron, Tony Blair and, significantly, Benjamin Disraeli. Starkey hopes that the PM will study his Victorian predecessor’s successes closely.
With that, I must close for now. There are many developments over the past 60 years that I have not mentioned. This is merely to give an idea about the direction that Western society took as the decades rolled on.
Welcome to 2020. Let’s hope it brings many good tidings. I wish all of us the very best.
This year, Boris Johnson spent his Christmas as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.
On Christmas Eve, the Conservative Party released this entertaining video of Boris and his father Stanley making mince pies. Boris explains how mince pies are a perfect metaphor for Brexit. There’s nothing ‘sensitive’ about this video. In fact, ‘Mince pies (with Boris)’ is great fun. Watch:
Boris has a lot of support:
Shortly before Christmas, the Prime Minister spent a day in Estonia and served a festive lunch to British troops stationed there. The Express reported:
The Prime Minister dished out turkey and Yorkshire puddings to servicemen at the Tapa military base near the capital Tallinn on a one-day trip to the Baltic state.
The base is home to 850 British troops from the Queen’s Royal Hussars who lead the Nato battlegroup along with personnel from Estonia, France and Denmark.
He said the troops were the “most vivid and powerful possible symbol and expression” of Britain’s commitment to the security and stability of the whole of Europe.
He said: “It’s an incredible thing for me to come to Estonia because when I was a kid – when I was your age – Estonia was part of the Soviet Union and we’re now here helping to protect Estonia’s security.
On Christmas Eve, Boris issued a Christmas message that only he could deliver in such a natural way, partly humorous and partly serious. This is another must-see, especially as he made a firm point about opposing the persecution of Christians (subtitled version here):
He said (emphases mine):
Today of all days, I want us to remember those Christians around the world who are facing persecution.
For them, Christmas Day will be marked in private, in secret, perhaps even in a prison cell.
As Prime Minister, that’s something I want to change. We stand with Christians everywhere, in solidarity, and will defend your right to practise your faith.
On Christmas Eve, The Express explained:
A source from No 10 said the Prime Minister wishes to “look at how we can lead on the issue around the world”.
They revealed: “It’s something he came across a lot when he was foreign secretary.
“It has been an issue he has taken seriously personally since he left [the Foreign and Commonwealth Office].”
In May, a report from the former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt found that the persecution of Christians in some parts of the world was a near “genocide” levels.
The review was led by the Bishop of Truro, the Right Reverend Philip Mounstephen.
It is estimated that one in three people suffered from religious persecution, with Christians being the most persecuted group.
According to the review, Christianity faced being “wiped out” from regions of the Middle East.
Figures show that Christians in Palestine represent less than 1.5 percent of the population.
These figures drop even more critically in Iraq where numbers have fallen from 1.5 million in 2003, to less than 120,000.
The Prime Minister thanked NHS staff, police and other first responders for being on the front lines during the Christmas period, sacrificing time with family and friends.
On a lighter note, he began his video with this:
Hi folks, Boris Johnson here, taking a moment to wish you all a merry little Christmas.
He ended with this:
Mr Johnson signed off breezily, urging people to enjoy the next few days, adding: “Try not to have too many arguments with the in-laws – or anyone else.”
Brilliant!
The Express reported that Boris and serious girlfriend Carrie Symonds spent Christmas at No. 10 with their Welsh rescue dog Dilyn. The article says that, according to The Times, the couple will be jetting off to Mustique for the New Year as guests of the Von Bismarck family who have a home there.
The Queen’s Chrismas Day message to the nation was as thought-provoking as ever:
The Express has a transcript. Note that the Queen says that 2020 is the start of a new decade — not 2021, as pedants say (emphases mine):
as we all look forward to the start of a new decade, it’s worth remembering that it is often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change.
The new decade, beginning in a few days’ time, is further confirmed on Twitter:
Contrary to what the media has reported this month, she kept family issues out of the speech.
On Christmas Eve, the Mail‘s Richard Kay wrote:
After so many broadcasts the Queen, of course, is comfortably familiar in front of the camera, but even so this year she will quite possibly deliver her most difficult, her most painful and perhaps, from the monarchy’s point of view, her most crucial Christmas message ever.
Sure.
In reality, the Queen focussed on the notable anniversaries in 2019:
As a child, I never imagined that one day a man would walk on the moon. Yet this year we marked the 50th anniversary of the famous Apollo 11 mission.
As those historic pictures were beamed back to Earth, millions of us sat transfixed to our television screens, as we watched Neil Armstrong taking a small step for man and a giant leap for mankind – and, indeed, for womankind. It’s a reminder for us all that giant leaps often start with small steps.
This year we marked another important anniversary: D-Day. On 6th June 1944, some 156,000 British, Canadian and American forces landed in northern France. It was the largest ever seaborne invasion and was delayed due to bad weather …
Since the end of the Second World War, many charities, groups and organisations have worked to promote peace and unity around the world, bringing together those who have been on opposing sides.
On that subject, The Express reported her words and what lay behind them:
“It was the largest ever seabourne invasion and was delayed due to bad weather.
“I well remember the look of concern on my father’s face.
“He knew the secret D-Day plans but could of course share that burden with no one.”
This subtle nod to her father also seems to reflect on the burden of loneliness which wearing the crown can entail at times.
Mentions of family were happy ones:
Two hundred years on from the birth of my great, great grandmother, Queen Victoria, Prince Philip and I have been delighted to welcome our eighth great-grandchild into our family.
The broadcast included a clip of Prince George stirring up Christmas pudding:
As Defender of the Faith in the United Kingdom, the Queen always mentions the Reason for the Season, dispensing pragmatic wisdom when speaking of our Lord:
Of course, at the heart of the Christmas story lies the birth of a child: a seemingly small and insignificant step overlooked by many in Bethlehem.
But in time, through his teaching and by his example, Jesus Christ would show the world how small steps taken in faith and in hope can overcome long-held differences and deep-seated divisions to bring harmony and understanding.
Many of us already try to follow in his footsteps. The path, of course, is not always smooth, and may at times this year have felt quite bumpy, but small steps can make a world of difference.
As Christmas dawned, church congregations around the world joined in singing It Came Upon The Midnight Clear. Like many timeless carols, it speaks not just of the coming of Jesus Christ into a divided world, many years ago, but also of the relevance, even today, of the angel’s message of peace and goodwill.
It’s a timely reminder of what positive things can be achieved when people set aside past differences and come together in the spirit of friendship and reconciliation. And, as we all look forward to the start of a new decade, it’s worth remembering that it is often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change.
And so, I wish you all a very happy Christmas.
The broadcast, which airs at 3 p.m. GMT every year, closed with the choir at Windsor Castle singing the famous carol, accompanied by a military band.
I wonder if outgoing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn saw the speech, which he said was broadcast in the morning:
On Christmas Day at Sandringham in Norfolk, the Royal Family look forward to a church service and family lunch.
Normally, the Royal children do not attend the service. However, Princess Charlotte and Prince George made their first appearance this year (top photo on the left in the second tweet):
I hope that the Queen’s cousin, Princess Alexandra, had a very happy birthday:
This year’s Christmas speech by the Queen proved the media wrong once again. Why do we lean on their every word?
Instead, let us heed her words about small steps being significant in creating great transformation.
