It has long been known that the endurance of
constitutional monarchy at the head of the British legislative system
rests on the sacred principle of never, ever, ever pissing about with
Royal Ascot and and never before has it been more gravely tested.
Not once in the broad sweep of sixty five long years
of British history has Her Majesty the Queen come close to compromising
the fundamental constitutional tenet of political neutrality of the
monarchy, but tell her she might not make it in time for the Jersey
Stakes at half two and do not, frankly, be surprised if the response you
get is “Whatever you say, but one will not be wearing one’s crown on
one’s head, one will be wearing a massive EU flag-hat instead.”
Was it an accident, this nakedly pro-Brussels bonnet?
One suspects we will never know the truth, but given one commenter on
the Daily Mail website was sufficiently enraged to describe the Queen
herself as a “left liberal luvvie traitor!!!” we probably do not need
to.
How peculiar it must have been, for that peculiar
band of around nine individuals across the entire country, who voted to
leave the European Union over grave concerns over “sovereignty”, to see
the return on their democratic investment, there on their television
screens, in the form of the sovereign herself, wearing not the sovereign
crown but a whacking great big blue hat decked out with a full
circumference of bright yellow buttons.
It was the palace, after all, that had insisted on a
“dress-down” “low key” state opening, placing severe restrictions on the
numbers of Maltravers Herald Extraordinaries and Rouge Dragon
Pursuivants who usually accompany the big hat made of diamonds on its
customary journey from one palace to another, or its wearer on her
customary journey from a third palace to the second.
That there were large number of empty seats in the
Upper Chamber was unfortunate, given the House of Lords has
approximately six times as many members as actual seats, but the Queen
wasn’t the only one with a diary clash. We can only assume, on the
hottest June day since 1976, not to mention the #DayofRage protests, a
number of noble lords decided they had more enjoyable things to do, be
it repose at their leisure at their country seats, or more likely, don
their V for Vendetta masks and smash up the local HSBC.
One such chap who had no such luck was Prince
Charles. Not only was it dress down day but bring your child to work
day, with the nation’s favourite perma-heir enlisted to replace his
unwell father, and looking never more like an angry nine year old,
dragged into daddy’s accountancy firm for the day while everyone else is
out in the sunshine playing Pokemon Go.
It is customary, on such occasions, for the members
of Her Majesty’s press corps to look down upon the Upper House from the
gallery, searching for the old familiar faces, then divert to Wikipedia
to reacquaint oneself with the weird and wonderful tales of venality,
greed, corruption and criminality that have propelled so many of its
members to their elevated realm at the head of British society, but
there was simply no time this time.
Her Majesty was over and done in scarcely five
minutes. The dementia tax gone, the return of grammar schools gone, the
free vote on fox hunting vanished, the free school meals axe left
unwielded. All that remained was the vague outline of a Brexit that, in
the blazing heat, had gone from hard to decidedly mushy.
The Queen was out the door in a flash, and off
putting the Royal in Royal Ascot with a full half an hour to spare
before the first race, the EU blue hat exchanged for another in EU
yellow.
The history books offer no precedent for an ageing,
powerless leader, deciding finally sending out coded messages to the
people via daring headwear choices, but it is 2017, the single worst
thing to happen since 2016 - so anything is possible. We can only hope
there is more to come.
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