Don't use the Queen as a political weapon
OPINION: Ministers fearful of taking on the SNP shouldn't ask the monarch to do their jobs for them.
There can be advantages to ruling over your own realm but having to do politicians' jobs for them is not one of them.
The Mail on Sunday reports that the Queen will 'lead a Royal charm offensive to help persuade Scots to reject independence'. The newspaper calls it 'Operation Save the Union' and says the monarch will be assisted by the Earl and Countess of Strathearn.
The strategy 'is being discreetly supported by Downing Street', with the MoS revealing: 'Officials at Number 10 have held discussions about how to use "cultural bonds" to help tie Scotland more closely to London, with the Royal Family regarded as one of the most powerful weapons in their armoury'.
The Queen is not a weapon in any government's armoury; she is the Sovereign. Ministers should not be sending her out as a human shield to cover for their failure to confront and defeat separatism in Scotland. New Labour created the problem when it introduced devolution and the Tories made it worse by conceding both additional powers and even a referendum on ending the United Kingdom. Politicians, not Her Majesty, got us into this mess and it is up to them, not her, to get us out of it.
The Sovereign is above politics. She must be because the Crown is one of the three constituent elements of Parliament, along with the Commons and the Lords. It is the Queen (or, if we want to get technical about it, 'the Queen-in-Parliament under God') from whom sovereignty emanates and therefore the Queen who grants Royal Assent to Acts of Parliament.
In a constitutional monarchy, the monarch cannot be of party or faction and by convention does not express political views. There is a case to be made that saying the country of which she is Queen should continue to exist would be a constitutional rather than a political statement but the monarchy is alert to modern sensibilities about hereditary royals lecturing the commoners. (At least that part of the monarchy not headquartered in California.)
The Queen should not be deployed like a monarchical MOAB against the forces of separatism because Downing Street is too gun-shy to get on the battlefield itself. However, if Her Majesty has decided of her own initiative to use her good offices to remind us all of the ties that cleave us together, that is another matter. Elizabeth II is the longest-reigning monarch in our country's history and one of the longest in the history of any country.
If she has calculated that she can contribute to a renewed sense of national unity without imperilling the neutrality of the Crown, that judgement is based on seven decades of insight and experience. For all that I want to see the Queen protected from politics, not least given the grief she is presently going through, I trust her political acumen over that of every minister and MP in the land combined. Few monarchs have understood their people like this one.
I am not one of those royalists who collects Queen Mum tea towels and has a set of Diana and Charles commemorative china sets forlornly tucked away. I respect such wholesome pride in the Royal Family, but for me the relationship is more transactional. I look at almost 70 years of Elizabeth II on the throne, 70 years of tumult in which she has brought stability, continuity and unity, and struggle to believe that a succession of presidents, lurching this way and that according to the political mood of the day, could have achieved even a skerrick of what the Queen has.
She has been our rock and our lodestar, earning admiration through selfless dedication to duty and never seeming quite so remote from us as the politicians who supposedly represent our democratic will. I do not need to be convinced that the people of these islands have a common purpose that makes us better together, but I doubt there is anyone who better understands that purpose than the Queen.
A small but illustrative proof is the contrast between Her Majesty's visit to the site of the Grenfell disaster and that of Theresa May. I have more time for Mrs May than most but in cloistering herself with the police that day she sent a message that the government was cold and distant. Her Majesty, in heading straight for the throngs of local residents, showed that, despite the palaces and jewels and carriages, she was as one with her people. This is why politicians should not 'use' the Queen: they should be led by her.
When Her Majesty speaks about the ‘new bonds… forged in times of emergency’ and how they ‘will serve us all well in the future as the United Kingdom seeks to rebuild and reshape community life’, she captures a particular spirit of the last year. That spirit saw Covid-19 as something that brought us together to protect ourselves and our loved ones, care for the sick and vulnerable and acquire the vaccines that would allow us to return to normal life.
But the Queen is not alone in her ability to speak to Scotland in a way no politician can. Prince William's moving address to the General Assembly discussed how Scotland had been home to both his saddest and happiest memories, for although it was where he mourned the untimely death of his mother, it was also where he spent much of his childhood and where he met his wife. 'The connection I feel to Scotland will forever run deep,' he said.
The connection runs in the other direction, too. Scotland may not be the most effusive nation when it comes to displays of royalism but there is a quiet respect for the Queen and her family, for their service and the sincere affection in which they evidently hold the land and the people. It is a regard shared by people of all political viewpoints, including many who wish to see an independent Scotland. However much it may rankle with republicans, the manner in which the Queen has fulfilled her duties has kept the question of the constitutional monarchy beyond politics while republicanism was on the march the world over.
Yearners after a presidential system used to console themselves that the conclusion of the Queen's reign would spell the end of the monarchy. Watching Prince William in recent days has convinced me that, whatever the public one day makes of King Charles, there is still another prince across the water.
Few if any committed nationalists will abandon their principles simply because the Queen or her grandson visit more often and talk about what Scotland means to them. But the Royal Family remains a symbol of something no one talks about in Scotland anymore: Britishness. The Queen should not be used as a gambit in any government's political strategy, but if anyone can embody the unity sorely needed in this fractured United Kingdom, it is surely her.
Rhiannon Spear: nul points
Another Eurovision, another epic fail for the UK. Britain’s entry was typically naff so we can hardly blame our Continental cousins for preferring Italy’s raucous rock offering.
Still, most of us can enjoy Eurovision for what it is: a glorified sing-song best enjoyed with a healthy measure of irony and an even healthier measure of Prosecco. Not so, SNP councillor Rhiannon Spear, who tweeted: ‘It's ok Europe we hate the United Kingdom too. Love, Scotland.’
For those fortunate enough not to follow SNP politics closely, Spear is the sort of career politician who gives career politicians a bad name, achingly certain without seeming to believe in anything of intellectual substance. Imagine Nicola Sturgeon without the unbridled sense of humour.
Spear is free to hate the UK all she wants — it's about the only viewpoint not criminalised under her party's Hate Crime Bill — but she shouldn't drag the rest of us into it. Her hatred is her own, not Scotland's.
Nul points for such narrow nationalism.
A likely stoli
Spare a thought for our overworked vaccinators. The lovely lady who jabbed me at Ravenscraig sports centre last week told me how, after a long day of saying 'increase your intake of water', she advised her final patient: 'Increase your intake of vodka'. I'm not sure how much good it would do but we must follow the science.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on May 24, 2021. Feature image © NASA/Bill Ingalls.