The Queen is a moron; the earth is not flat
According to David Starkey, Elizabeth Windsor is "poorly educated" and boorish. In short, she is a moron. It's hardly a shocker, is it? I mean, the whole family has had the most expensive private education and between them they have 2 O levels in art history. Or something like that. What next? Starkey reveals that the earth is not flat, that water turns into steam when boiled, and that TV historians are histrionic poseurs? Mind you, Starkey's stance is a bit refreshing, especially coming so soon after the programme in which we saw Blair effuse about how wise she was and how much he looked forward to his weekly meetings with her. Piffle. These PM/Queen meetings (and I doubt if they are weekly, since one or other is out of town so often) must be the dreariest waste of time for Prime Ministers. But once out of office what can they say except how much they looked forward to them, how much they gained from them, etc, etc? Some truths are just not allowed to be spoken. So, I'm a little surprised by Starkey. He does like his Queens, but not this one it seems.
posted by Politaholic at 9:51 am
4 Comments:
P'holic
Pimlott's book on the Monarchy detailed the value ascribed to the meetings by PMs since the war and not one PM felt they had been influential in any significant way. PMs do not want for advice and out of touch monarchs must come way down the pecking order of those listened to.
Thanks for that Skipper; I hadn't realised former PM's had said this. It seems these things can be said after all. I haven't read Pimlott's book on the Queen. I read his book on Dalton, and the earlier stuff on the Labour Left in the 1930's. But a book on the Queen? Life is far too short.
Grr, this is the second try replying to this post. Tip: when commentating, cutting your commment is good. But pasting the last comment you made on top of your new text by accident isn't smart.
Anyway, I agree with Septic. The current difficulties Brown has had are just that, current. No one beyond Westminsterblogland will remember or care. The electorate will be going to the voting booths with more pressing matters in mind.
The problem with New Labour and Brown is that for all their talk of renewal, what exactly does renewal mean? Not a lot, to be honest. It's not just that New Labour lacks the vision thing; all it has to offer is "common sense" neoliberal managerialism, which isn't going to get anyone excited. The only thing going in New Labour's favour is the Tories and the LibDems have nothing substantially different on offer. They're all concerned with business as usual, which means snouts in the trough for the rich and crumbs for everyone else. This of course is supposing nothing goes drastically wrong with the economy, of which there is every possibility.
By rights we should be seeing a renaissance of the left inside and outside of the Labour party, but we haven't and there's little sign of one taking place. But for those of us sick to the back teeth with capital's untrammeled dominance, its here where we have to re-connect socialism to the broad masses mainstream politics chooses to ignore.
Sorry, what a nob, that was supposed to be a comment for the post above. It's getting late, I think I'd better go to bed.
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