CHARLES BANNERMAN: There’s never been a stronger empathy between monarch and people
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By pure coincidence, I’m going to steal a line from a song linked with a football team sometimes dubbed Her Majesty’s Eleven to rate Queen Elizabeth II’s performance of her regal duties across seven decades.
Whether ardent monarchists or rabid republicans, we are all entitled to appraise a career which began before most were born and ended last week at Balmoral.
“Simply the best... better than all the rest.”
Because, irrespective of the perceived merits or otherwise of monarchy, there was a job to be done and I don’t think anyone else in our long history has carried it out with such dedication, distinction and aplomb.
She presided over the abolition of Empire, ensuring that the Commonwealth emerged phoenix-like. According to Walter Bagehot’s three rights, she was consulted by, encouraged and warned 15 Prime Ministers through crises as diverse as Suez, Profumo, miners’ strikes and Irish Troubles. There was the dignity of her 1992 Annus Horribilis speech amid a personal family crisis and the Windsor Castle fire.
And she continued the work of her father George VI and grandfather George V to make the monarchy publicly more accessible and visible, hence arguably saving it from extinction.
These two Georges are possibly among her competitors for that top accolade, given their stewardship of the country through two world wars. And George V, although he did abandon his Russian cousins to murderous Bolsheviks, was also the first to understand that change was necessary in the face of German aggression and the subsequent threat of Communist revolution.
Never in our history has there been a stronger empathy between monarch and people than during these last 70 years, which is also a remarkably long time to maintain such standards.
In her performance of duties, negatives are extremely rare. Yes, she did dither over returning from Balmoral to the mass hysteria of London after Diana died, and was also criticised for a similar hesitancy in visiting Aberfan after the 1966 disaster.
So what about this claim that she was Simply The Best of all time?
Well there are a few duds we can weed out instantly. For instance Charles I was such a despot that he lost his head in 1649 and four decades later his son James II was kicked out for similar tendencies. George IV was an outrageous spendthrift, an indolent sybarite interested only in his own comfort.
And her uncle, Edward VIII? Let’s just give thanks that he abdicated before Word War II began.
Queen Victoria is often touted as a contender, but I can’t give much credence to a woman whose self-indulgence allowed her to become a recluse for years after her husband’s death, abandoning her duties for John Brown in the face of rising republicanism.
After considering James I, dubbed The Wisest Fool in Christendom, genial Charles II who certainly encouraged the sciences and general Hanoverian mediocrity, I’m really struggling to see any of them as rivals to Elizabeth II, even for a fraction of her 70 years.
And I’ll sign off with this thought: For her entire reign, anti-royal campaigning has focused almost exclusively on the process and nature of the institution and hardly ever on the post holder.
That’s as big a tribute as any to the woman herself, but leaves King Charles III with an extremely difficult act to follow.
