Politics

There’s a sombre mood in parliament today as MPs gather to pay tribute to the Queen. Over the following days, they will swear allegiance to the new King and share their memories and recollections of Elizabeth II. Prime Minister Liz Truss opened the proceedings in parliament, telling the House that the late monarch was one of ‘the greatest leaders the world has ever known. She was the rock on which modern Britain was built.’ Sir Keir Starmer quoted Philip Larkin and told members that ‘she did not simply reign over us, she lived alongside us.’ Then it was the turn of the Father of the House, Sir Peter Bottomley, followed

The Queen’s death has prompted an outpouring of mourning around the globe. But that sense of loss apparently doesn’t extend to the newsroom of the New York Times, where tragedy was inevitably greeted as an invitation for clickbait. Having previously hired the services of Russia Today’s Jonathan Pie to castigate Britain, the world’s worst newspaper has now blundered again, publishing an opinion piece on its homepage that most would regard as insensitive at best. The piece was by Harvard academic Maya Jasanoff, titled ‘Mourn the Queen, Not Her Empire’ – a command which, er, scarcely needs saying given HM’s love of the Commonwealth. Indeed, on her watch, Britain shed its

I am a republican, always have been, and yet I now feel a great sense of loss. And not only because a 96-year-old mother, grandmother and great-grandmother has died, which is always an occasion for sadness, whether the deceased was a monarch or an ‘ordinary’ member of the public. No, also because Elizabeth II represented something incredibly important. She embodied values that are at risk of extinction. She represented history in an era of anti-historical hysteria, forbearance in a time of narcissism, and public service in an era of self-worship and self-regard. That was the great irony of Elizabeth II: she was the pinnacle of the establishment and yet she