Emotional scenes at home this week, as it transpired we needed to break the news to our seven-year-old that it was unlikely – although, as I was eventually forced to concede, not entirely impossible – that the Queen will attend his school’s Jubilee Celebrations.
Yes, even though he’s made a special crown, and they’re baking a class cake. Crestfallen doesn’t even begin to cover it, although he is definitely still hoping she will swoop in at the last minute, like a superhero, to save his day.
My boy’s fully in the grips of the new variant that’s infecting the nation – Jubilee Fever. No-one, it appears, is immune.
And so, every business still in business is trying to cash in on it – Subway’s making a seven-metre sandwich “fit for a Queen”, Greene King Brewery’s launched a Jubilee ale, “a pint fit for a Queen,” Beaverbrooks is selling a “sparkling jewellery set fit for a Queen”.
It’s not often our country is truly united, but it feels like we all want to get involved, mark the occasion, pay tribute to Elizabeth II.
And it’s the least we could do really, what with her having devoted her life to the nation. She’s led the UK through a reign which has seen much change and turmoil, not to mention 14 different Prime Ministers. That’s why it’s literally a shame there’s a horrible fly in the ointment, a dark cloud looming over the spirit of celebration, an elephant in the room. Our current Prime Minister is certainly not fit for the Queen.
In 2019 Johnson had to apologise to Her Majesty for lying after the Supreme Court ruled his decision to prorogue Parliament was unlawful.
A suitcase of wine was wheeled into a Downing Street party the night before she stuck to Covid rules and attended her husband’s funeral poignantly alone.
Johnson is the first sitting Prime Minister to have been found to have broken the law, and to have received a police fine in office. And Downing Street has become the address with the most Covid breaches in the UK, while on every other street in the country, law-abiding people’s loved ones died tragic, lonely deaths.
The Queen’s whole life has been about duty and sacrifice.
Johnson’s existence couldn’t be more self-serving if he tried, which he definitely will.
She has never caused a single scandal in her seven decades on the throne, he seems to have had a new one to try and worm his way out of every week of his three years in office.
She has the word honour running through her like a stick of rock. He doesn’t know the meaning of it.
No wonder the Queen swerved the State Opening of Parliament this year. Many presumed she was too frail to attend, but she rocked up to the Royal Windsor Horse Show and Chelsea Flower Show just a few days later. Make of that what one will.
And so, as we gear up to show our longest serving monarch just how much she means to us, it feels quite bittersweet.
The one present she really deserves is apparently something we just can’t give her.
A Prime Minister, and government, really fit for a Queen.
