A right royal Brexit mess

Reports emerged around Christmas that Queen Elizabeth II said she was in favour of Brexit but BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg did not report it at the time. This news story got lost in the speculation as to whether she was actually alive and not spending the festive season getting embalmed when she was meant to be at a church service.

In the meantime, Buckingham Palace confirmed that the Queen is indeed still alive, but there were some shrill voices screaming about BBC bias because Laura Kuenssberg did not report the story before the referendum. She did not report the story because she only had the one source and, for a story as potentially explosive as the Queen expressing a clear view on such a contentious issue, this was quite simply not enough to run it.

Without a second source, the story was on very shaky ground. Laura Kuenssberg followed good journalistic practice but she was still slagged off, particularly by those who favour leaving the EU. Brexiters were whining that she didn't report it because the BBC is pro-remain and if people knew the Queen supported Britain leaving the EU, that would tip the vote in favour of voting out.

For a pro-remain broadcaster, the BBC sure as hell gives Nigel Farage a lot of airplay... But I digress.

I trust every Brexiter who got a bit excited because the Queen might favour leaving the EU is a republican. After all, pesky "unelected" people seemed to be a cornerstone of every pro-leave argument and a post-Brexit republic would mean the unelected Queen would become a private citizen and vote like the rest of us can. Or she could run for office herself and her popularity and world view could be put to the test at the ballot box. And how about some House of Lords reform with an elected upper chamber while we're at it, eh? Wouldn't that be just lovely?

Of course the "unelected people in Brussels" argument is bunkum because we do vote for MEPs. But we are now in a post-fact, post-expert idiocracy.

And it is a post-responsibility idiocracy if low voter turnout in Britain for European elections is any indication. God forbid anyone take an interest in voting for those who represent us in Brussels. As a result, we ended up with gravy-train-riding UKIP MEPs not turning up for important votes despite these self-serving hypocrites telling us at every opportunity that they were our "eyes and ears in Brussels". It would seem our eyes and ears did not very often extend to being bums on seats.

In the meantime, MEPs from other parties did plenty of good work that was seldom reported in the British press and engagement with constituents by MEPs was poor. If the hounds of Article 50 are released, we won't get a chance to forge closer links with our MEPs or demand better media coverage of their work, or, I dunno, take some bloody responsibility and seek out information on what our MEPs are doing - it's actually not that hard to find if you have an internet connection and a functioning brain stem.

But back to the Queen...

If you're a monarchist Brexiter, is one of your pro-monarchy arguments that the Queen is above politics? If so, you might want to really think hard before getting too excited about a Brexit-loving monarch on the throne. If she did express a view on the referendum, she is clearly not apolitical so that's that pro-monarchy argument shot to pieces. If Laura Kuenssberg had a second source, it would certainly be in the public interest to report it.

Kuenssberg's source claimed the Queen said: "I don't see why we can't just get out. What's the problem?". Good Lord. The problem is that this is exactly the kind of ignorant, simplistic statement that helped a bullshit-ridden, cynical leave campaign win against a complacent remain campaign in the first place. If the Queen really said such a stupid thing, she is like millions of other people in this country who seem to think leaving the EU will be easy-peasy and that trade deals can be easily done over a cup of tea and a slice of Victoria sponge.

Whatever the hell Theresa May meant by a "red, white and blue Brexit", one thing is clear. We are gearing up for another year of extreme levels of stupidity, possibly starting at Buckingham Palace. The other certainty is that Laura Kuenssberg will continue to be a responsible journalist but that won't stop elements of the left and the right criticising her without ever bothering to do a proper content analysis of her work.

2017: my expectations are very low indeed.





Photography by Maxwell Hamilton/Flickr

Clean for the Queen: A load of rubbish

If anyone spots me putting rubbish in a bin, ensuring my rubbish and recycling are separated, or not throwing crisp packets and banana skins out of car windows, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I am not doing it for Queen Elizabeth II.

I do it because I really hate littering and I believe in taking responsibility for my small role in keeping Britain tidy. As far as I can remember, I've only littered twice in the almost-40 years I've been alive. A plastic wine glass blew out of my hand when I was on a boat off the coast of Cyprus in 2014. I still feel awful about that. And one night in 2006, I was walking home from a film screening in Dubai while eating Burger King. A man attacked me, tearing my tights and putting his hand down the neckline of my dress, leaving scratches on my decolletage. I got away by elbowing him in the chest, throwing my burger at him, ducking under his arm and running away, leaving a trail of meat, bun, lettuce, tomato, onion and sauce in my wake. I don't feel quite so bad about that one.

The reason why I am making this bizarre statement about not being motivated by the Queen in my quest for cleanliness is the pathetic, embarrassing, forelock-tugging load of toss that is Clean for the Queen.

According to the absurd Clean for the Queen website, the campaign aims to "clear up Britain" in time for June 2016, when apparently it is compulsory to celebrate Liz's 90th birthday or else risk being sent to the tower for high treason.

The website is urging schools, local councils, community groups, businesses and individuals to "do their bit" and clean up the country. Without a trace of irony, the website asks us: "What better way could we show our gratitude to Her Majesty than to clean up our country?".

Oh, I dunno. How about we let her retire, declare a British republic, have an elected upper chamber instead of the bloated farce that is the House of Lords, and grow the hell up?

Or how about instead of just keeping Britain tidy for a few days in June, why don't we ensure that local councils are properly resourced and people are educated so that we can keep Britain tidy at all times?

And while we're on the subject of keeping the place spick and span, perhaps the Queen herself can show a bit of damn gratitude herself and pay her cleaning staff a living wage? The arse-kissing sycophants will say it's an honour to clean Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and it's great experience (always the excuse of apologists for poverty line wages or, worse, working for free). But if you clean places such as Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, not only are you expected to do more than a cursory turn with a feather duster, you will also need to live in commuting distance of your place of employment - and neither place is renowned for cheap rental properties.

Another look at the laughable website reveals the weird claim that when the Queen came to the throne in 1952, "litter was not the problem that it is today" and goes on to blame "food packaging, plastic bottles, takeaway meals and cigarette butts".

Did people really only start dropping fag ends after 1952? Before plastic bottles, did everyone in Britain really dispose of all their rubbish responsibly? And even if 1950s Britain was a litter-free utopia, it was also a time of coal fires and cars powered by leaded petrol. Fifty-five new coal-fired or oil-fired power stations were opened after Elizabeth II ascended to the throne.

But the mentality behind Clean for the Queen is about rose-tinted nostalgia, of harking back to the so-called good old days, even if there were plenty of things about the good old days that were actually pretty crap, and even if things that have improved since 1952, such as literacy levels, life expectancy and child mortality rates, have precisely nothing to do with the existence of the Queen.

Instead, we have a Clean for the Queen campaign that unsurprisingly, is robustly supported by the government. The Environment Minister, Rory Stewart, is admittedly one of the more sensible people on the government's side of the House of Commons but he still said, in support of Clean for the Queen: "Her Majesty The Queen is an inspiration to all of us. Her 90th birthday is a unique opportunity for people to come together in celebration of Her Majesty's long service and dedication to this country."

Yes! What an opportunity! To pick up litter that litterers should have put in the bin in the first place! To do for free what people should be employed to do! It's scarily similar to businesses such as Tesco taking advantage of work-for-unemployment benefits as a source of free labour instead of being the job creators they profess to be! Well, fancy that!

As a bonus, Clean for the Queen is supported by the Countryside Alliance, those champions of hunting foxes in the most cruel way possible. Let's forget that these people think setting dogs onto foxes is an actual sport and instead congratulate them on picking up some litter.

No. Just no. Clean for the Queen? I'll settle for my local council collecting my rubbish, food waste and recycling every week regardless of who's on the throne.


Photo by Circe Denyer.

The Queen is probably not a Nazi but I am still a republican...

For The Sun, it was mission accomplished.

Step 1: Stoke up outrage over photographs and a film from 1933 featuring the Queen Mother and Uncle Edward apparently teaching the Queen and Princess Margaret how to do a Nazi salute. Put said photo on the front page with a Nazi-pun headline.

Step 2: Wait for the inevitable media outcry whereby other news outlets, both within the Murdoch stable and outside it, won't stop banging on about it so the front page gets a ridiculous amount of free publicity. No need to pay an ad agency this week.

Step 3: Weather the storm of criticism about The Sun being a republican newspaper that just wants to cut down "hardworking royals" and piss on British traditions.

Step 4: Bask in the increased sales and website clicks safe in the knowledge that, if anything, running an 82-year-old photo as "news" has probably increased support for the monarchy.

The Sun loves the royals and would be lost without them. They love a good royal scandal because they love the revenue but they will always join in the media forelock-tugging whenever there is a royal wedding or birth that demands pages and pages of fawning coverage. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

Firstly, the Queen probably isn't a Nazi. She probably isn't a rampant lefty either, but I am pretty sure she found the wholesale slaughter of millions of people by the Nazis in WWII as abhorrent as any reasonable person would.

However, that's not to say the photograph is not newsworthy. It's not newsworthy as an exposé of Her Maj as a fan of Hitler but it is newsworthy from a historical viewpoint. It's a story that would be better placed in a history magazine rather than The Sun's front page but it is still interesting to consider how close Britain came to having a serious Nazi sympathiser on the throne before Edward abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, a woman whose support for Hitler is hardly a state secret. The British monarch is meant to be apolitical but only the seriously naive believe that royals have no opinions and have never tried to influence the government of the day.

The Queen was six years old when the photo was taken so it is ridiculous to think she'd have any idea what the Nazi salute stood for any more than I knew what I was talking about when, aged four, my party piece was to inform houseguests that the Australian Prime Minister of the time had a face like a bum. I've since revised my views on Malcolm Fraser just as the Queen, in all likelihood, didn't cheer on Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939.

But it is certainly absurd to think that the Queen Mother had no idea about Nazi ideology in 1933. Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and by 1933, it had been translated in English and The Times ran excerpts to expose Hitler's racist agenda. She was not living in a vacuum. An ivory tower, yes, but not a vacuum. It would be unbelievable to think she was in blissful ignorance about Hitler's ideologies. She would not have been aware of the full horror of the concentration camps as those horrific places were in their nascent stages in 1933 but she must have had some inkling about his views on race.

The Sun probably knew that running this story on the front page was not going to damage the monarchy - and that people would indeed rush to the defence of the Queen. I am an avowed republican but I do not think this story is necessarily the best way to argue for a British republic. There are plenty of great arguments for a British republic and it would behoove British republicans to share them rather than feeding the troll that is The Sun.


Picture by Karen Arnold.

King Abdullah is dead, satire is on life support...

I had to check and double-check and check again. The world is currently such a ridiculous place that sometimes even the sharpest among us can accidentally fall for a spoof article. So when I found out a US Army General was sponsoring an essay competition in honour of the recently departed King Abdullah, I did a double take.

But sure enough, there it was, announced on the Department of Defense website on January 26, the same day the first execution by beheading under Saudi Arabia's new ruler, King Salman, took place. General Martin E. Dempsey is the brains behind this absurd idea.

I even tweeted the writer of the announcement to ask if this competition was real, if this really was the next innovation of the awful grief orgy for a despotic monarch of a terrible regime. He replied, rather adorably: "No, ma'am. Not a spoof. It is the real deal." I was last called "ma'am" when I went through passport control at the airport in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2009.

The thing is the focus of the competition isn't a terrible idea. The statement said that the competition focuses on "issues related to the Arab-Muslim world and is designed to encourage strategic thinking and meaningful research on a crucial part of the world." There is nothing at all wrong with intelligent research on the Arab-Muslim world. Indeed, intelligent research is a welcome alternative to oversimplification, ignorance and lack of understanding of a region that is both troubled and fascinating.

But the whole idea jumps the shark when it is stated that King Abdullah is a "man of remarkable character and courage" and a "fitting tribute to the life and leadership of the Saudi Arabian monarch." This would be the "leadership" of a man who, despite being an absolute monarch, has still let the religious arm of the state run an oppressive, evil regime. Come on, Abdullah - if you were going to be an absolute monarch, you may as well have tried for the benevolent dictatorship style rather than the useless style where you turned a blind eye to religious police being ridiculous, awful and violent to people trying to live peacefully in your country.

I get it. Saudi Arabia is joining the military effort in the fight against ISIS. Saudi is letting the US use their land to train and equip Syrian fighters. Saudi buys arms from the US and the UK for its well-equipped military, even though it has done pretty much bugger-all since 1991. Saudi is, naturally, are more than happy to let the US buy its oil - despite all the noise about the US being so close to energy self-sufficiency, 13% of oil consumed in the US is imported from Saudi.

But the sad fact is that Saudi lending a hand in the fight against ISIS won't do a whole lot to stop the radicalisation that leads to terrorism. It cannot be denied that ISIS has its ideological roots in Wahabbism, the extreme form of strict Islam which has formed the basis of Saudi law and society since the start of the 20th Century with its influence starting much earlier.

Saudi Arabia can throw whatever military might and money it likes behind the fight against ISIS, but as long as the country is beholden to Wahabbism, to the vile religious police, and to a judicial system that does not include fair and open trials and favours public beheadings for crimes ranging from murder to witchcraft, it is part of the problem. It sets a hideous example that inspires some of the worst of humanity.

But as long as there are arms deals at stake and cheap petrol to be enjoyed, it is clearly far preferable for the leaders of the western world to drop everything, including flags to half mast, and head over to Saudi Arabia like dumb labradors to lick the face of the new king in an unironic grief orgy.

Kudos to Michelle Obama for not covering her hair (and looking suitably bored) in Saudi this week - and kudos to Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush for also eschewing headscarves when they visited the kingdom -  but it would have been even better if she didn't go at all. Perhaps she could have released a YouTube video, dressed in one of her trademark sleeveless dresses, saying that she was defying her husband by not going to Saudi. That would have been cool.

Instead, we have witnessed commentators on TV news channels talking about King Abdullah as if he was the Saudi equivalent of Germaine Greer. He mentioned that women will be able to vote and run for office in this year's municipal elections, but we will have to wait and see if King Salman makes good on this promise. He promoted one woman, the Utah-educated Norah Al Faiz, to the position of Deputy Minister of Education for Women's Affairs. She is very accomplished but she is still the deputy to a man who oversees these matters pertaining to women. There are more women in higher education than men in Saudi, this is true, - but when these women cannot drive a car, when they cannot work or travel without permission from their male guardians, when not all professions are open to them, the potential to be gleaned from their education is reined in by misogynistic restrictions. Women's testimonies in courts are worth less than those of men. Women who have pressed rape charges have ended up being punished for immorality if the accused is found not guilty.

On the upside, King Abdullah has daughters who have received university education. But these would be the daughters that he keeps locked up in the palace in terrible conditions, a hangover from his anger at that particular wife not giving him a son. He is a latter day, science-denying Henry VIII, seemingly unaware that it's his contribution to the reproductive process that determines the sex.

So, yeah, I'm not about to shout from the rooftops about what a great guy King Abdullah was for women of Saudi.

And no, it's not just a matter for Saudi Arabia to deal with internally. It is everyone's business. Even if you don't subscribe to the principle that no woman is free if even one woman is oppressed, how about considering, for example, that Saudi beheads people of other nationalities too. It is easy to say: "Well, just don't get a job there if you lose so many rights!" but with cases such as Burmese and Nepalese maids beheaded after farcical murder trials, it is clear that vulnerable people see working in a place like Saudi as an escape from poverty. There is a global problem to consider here.

After all, the world had the balls to impose sanctions against South Africa during the apartheid years. How is the gender apartheid of Saudi any less a crime against humanity?

Misunderstanding the monarchy

Yesterday's front page of the Evening Standard may as well have carried the headline: "SURVEY SHOCK: BRITISH PEOPLE FAIL TO UNDERSTAND HOW A MONARCHY WORKS".

According a Kings College London/Ipsos Mori survey (and surveys are always a fine source of nonsense and general bullshit), Prince William is currently the most popular member of the Royal family, followed by the Queen. No huge shock there given the hype around last year's wedding and this year's Jubilee. Next on the list came Prince Harry then the Duchess of Cambridge and poor old Prince Charles came in at number five.

Ipsos Mori director, Roger Mortimore, has extrapolated from the survey that: "A lot of people would like the idea of William succeeding straight away. He is young and good-looking and popular."

And here we go again with the familiar refrain from those desperate to keep the monarchy relevant: that it'd be just awesome if we skipped over Charles and let William take the throne when the Queen passes on. Except that's not how monarchies work. The whole point of a monarchy is that the next person in line will indeed inherit the throne, regardless of public opinion or suitability for the role.

Sure, the Royals have made a few attempts at modernisation over the years. The Queen started to pay tax, albeit in response to public pressure, and this year, she announced that if William and Kate's firstborn is a girl, she will still be allowed to inherit the throne. It's hardly a great stride for feminism or women's independence - Kate had to be confirmed into the Church of England before the wedding, if she was a divorcee, William would have been compelled to give up his claim to the throne to marry her, as per the Edward-and-Wallis marriage of 1937, and because her main role in life is now to produce and heir and a spare, the media is on a grotesque uterus watch.

Of course, if her Majesty is tired after 60 years of reigning and 65 years of marriage to Prince Phillip, she could always abdicate and pass the throne over to Charles now. Edward VII abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, there was a scandal at the time involving plenty of slut-shaming of the highest order, but the world kept turning, his brother became the king, and we all got to enjoy The King's Speech. No real harm done.

Or is there? The other line monarchists like to spin is that the Royals are mere figureheads with no real political power. Except that Frank Gardner revealed that the Queen has indeed opined on why Abu Hamza was still in Britain rather than being deported to the US for trial. Her views on the matter echoed popular opinion but it was still an opinion expressed to people of influence by a woman who is meant to be above politics.

Plans for same-sex marriage legislation, meanwhile, were conspicuous by their absence from her speech for the opening of the current session of Parliament. Her speech is written by cabinet - were they worried that it was not an appropriate topic for the Queen's dulcet tones or were they trying to put marriage equality on the backburner for this session? Whatever the case, it is impossible not to politicise a speech written by politicians, regardless of who delivers it.

Then there was the revelation that Prince Charles had written 27 letters to Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister. In a massive failure for democracy and transparency, Attorney-General Dominic Grieve blocked the release of the reportedly frank letters despite three judges ruling that the release was in the public interest.

Moronically, Grieve blocked the release "because if he forfeits his position of political neutrality as heir to the throne, he cannot easily recover it when he is king." He fails to appreciate that as taxpayers who fund the Royal family, we do have a right to know if Prince Charles is trying to use his position to influence policy. If Prince Charles wants to play a role in Britain's political life instead of being a politically neutral Royal, he needs to renounce his position and become a private citizen - then he is free to express his opinions in whatever way he sees fit or he can get himself on the electoral roll and run for office, if he wishes.

But it's easier for Prince Charles to influence policy on the sly with no accountability or transparency while living at the expense of the taxpayers. People of Britain, this is your future king. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" is another glib catchcry of monarchists who try and convince us all that the Royal family is benign. But it is broke and it needs fixing very badly.


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com