Just when the Queen should be entering the long, veiled twilight of her life and reign, we have never paid so much attention to what she has to say. Nor has she ever been so strongly rooted at the heart of the national conversation. We live in an era in which everyone is desperate to have their opinions heard; in which there has never been so much opportunity to broadcast those opinions through social media; in which the Russell Brands and Nigel Farages of this world battle each other for shouty chunks of airspace. And yet the person we’re most keen to hear from is the one whose job depends on keeping her opinions to herself. Despite John Humphrys’s best efforts to woo her, she has never given an interview – and never will. The Queen is the embodiment of the highly restricted rights of a British monarch, as proposed by the constitutional historian, Walter Bagehot, 150 years ago: “The right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.” She has been exercising those limited rights more than ever in 2014. Her most powerful intervention of the year came on September 14, outside Crathie Kirk, the Aberdeenshire church next to Balmoral. The previous Sunday, a bombshell YouGov poll revealed that the Yes vote was leading in the Scottish referendum poll for the first time. And so the Queen spoke up – not to a head of state, and never to an interviewer. “Well, I hope people will think very carefully about the future” was all she said to an anonymous well-wisher waiting outside the church porch. That well-wisher reluctantly passed on the information to Jim Lawson, a freelance reporter. Buckingham Palace officials refused to comment on Lawson’s report, but it emerged that, in private, they were delighted with the coverage. telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/queen-elizabeth-II/11314406/Why-we-crave-to-hear-from-the-Queen.html
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 23:31:31 +0000
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