Feedback | 3 April 2004

The lone defender

From Stuart Millson

I was disappointed to read that the government’s programme of creeping republicanism — the removal of the Crown from Treasury notepaper, the police force dropping its oath of allegiance to the Queen etc. — is just going through Parliament on the nod (‘The Queen fights back’, 27 March). Apart from Mr Johnson going to see Chris Moncrieff in the press lobby, in a lone effort to denounce it all, we can only wonder what the rest of HM Opposition is doing all day. When did we last hear Mr Howard, Mr Letwin, Dr Fox or Mr Bercow stick up for the ‘old Britain’ so robustly defended by the MP for Henley-on-Thames? Even with the prospect of Giscard d’Estaing’s European constitution swallowing us all up, and opponents of the EU being detained under the new European arrest warrant into the bargain, Michael Howard pledges nothing stronger than a desire to ‘unpick’ this measure.