The King’s speech

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue…

Pride: noun, feeling of satisfaction in oneself due to one’s actions of the actions of those to whom you feel a connection

There are things afoot in the world to make one want to dive back under the duvet and not emerge until it’s all over. The last few months have felt a little like that, whether from an economic, political or environmental point of view.

There are so many things to be miserable about, and I have gone into detail on many of them here, probably too often. I do occasionally, however, like to try and find things to be pleased about. So, there are times when I find myself very proud of my British passport (the one that took 15 weeks and two days to acquire, back in 2022, meaning I made the NMBS Sorrento Conference by the skin of my teeth).

The 2012 London Olympics, of course, the Lionesses’ Euros triumph, the Red Roses’ World Cup win, the work behind the scenes during the pandemic to get the Astra Zeneca vaccine up and delivered, the joy with which the country celebrated the Platinum Jubilee, and the pomp and respect with which they celebrated the late Queens’ funeral just a few months later, the NHS ‘ efforts in getting my friend to the start line and finish line of the London Marathon on Sunday, four years after her cancer diagnosis, said fabulous friend and her husband for everything they’ve been through in that time, yet still managing to get round the Marathon, the people who turned out in their thousands to celebrate sweaty strangers running 26.2 miles through London. One of those strangers carrying a fridge to represent the hidden weights that too many of us carry alone.

So many things to be proud of. And here’s another one.

I bring you a picture of the most erudite, eloquent dressing-down of a powerful figure you’re likely to see. Whether you are a royalist supporter of the House of Windsor, an ardent republican or somewhere in between, there is no doubt in my mind that this was beautifully done.

The reminder to President Trump that it was NATO that stepped up to the plate after 9/11, the highlighting of the need to continue to support Ukraine, the warning that what America says and how it says it carries weight around the world, and the line about 250 years being ‘just yesterday’ for us. Class.

It was a joint effort, of course. I don’t for one moment think that the speech was all the King’s doing, but equally, there no way that he was just reading civil-servant prepared, Labour government-approved prose. The Royal Family has always had to be seen to be above politics. But they aren’t – remember the late Queen and her ‘Brexit hat’ in Parliament. As regular readers of this column will recall, I am a sucker for someone who can cleverly structure a sentence and make it sing. Particularly when they do so in such a way that messages are clear, yet unstated.

The Prime Minister is in pickle of his own making because of a decision to try and match President Trump with an Ambassador as oily and devious as he is. Maybe it’ll turn out that what was needed was a class act, delivered in perfect RP, with style and grace by someone whose great-great-great-great grandfather fell out with the United States rather badly, and who was born in a house that was built when America was still just a jumble of British colonies, French outposts, and Spanish missions. Who knew?