Our exceptional Queen makes the monarchy work – lose her and it’s over

I THINK I had something in my eye watching the Queen attend the memorial service in Westminster Abbey for her beloved husband, Prince Philip.

Frail — she is nearly 96 years old and has been ill recently — yet, as always, dignified and determined.

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She was escorted to her pew by her favourite son, Andrew. That in itself was a two-fingered salute to the world, frankly. I had no objection to the halfwit being present. Even murderers are allowed to attend their dads’ funerals.

And Andrew, while pretty odious and thick as a block of ripe Stilton, has been convicted of no crime. Some are saying this may be the last we see of the Queen in public. She has endured a pretty horrible quarter of a century.

From the death of Diana all the way through to Prince Andrew’s sordid relationship with the nonce Jeffrey Epstein. And the abdication of that smug, dim-witted pair, Harry and Meghan.

Much like the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen suffered all these slings and arrows with great stoicism. But you just got the feeling, watching that moving service, that the whole thing is kind of falling apart.

You got the same sense watching William and Kate — the acceptable face of the young royals — during their visit to the Caribbean. Barracked or shunned by many. Our old empire has had enough of the Royal Family, it seems.

Fair enough, their choice. Jamaica is welcome to continue being an incredibly violent and corrupt nation — except without the Queen as a figurehead. They’ll just lose tourist dollars.

But I’m not sure that over here things are much different.

There is no great appetite for Prince Charles as King, even if we have — rather late in the day — taken to his missus, Camilla. William and Kate seem nice enough, when they’re not moaning. But there is not much majesty and mystery about them, is there?

Some commentators have suggested that we will end up with a “stripped-down” Royal Family. Fewer of them on the public payroll. And playing virtually no constitutional role whatsoever.

The problem with that is they will simply become superannuated celebrities, surely. And the whole purpose of the Royal Family, as exemplified by the Queen and Prince Philip, is one of duty to the country.

An unfashionable word, “duty”, but that’s what has kept the monarchy alive this past 70 years, when most other countries were ditching theirs.

CONSTITUTIONAL ROLE

A Royal Family with no constitutional role would simply be a bunch of euro-trash living expensive lives for no discernible purpose. Like most of the other royals in Europe.

I’m not convinced we would stand for that. All the privilege the Windsors get is contingent upon them performing an important ceremonial, but also constitutional, role for our country. Otherwise, why have them at all?

Maybe we shouldn’t. It is pretty weird to have a family who are not notably intellectual giants representing us abroad.

The Queen made it work, because she is  an exceptional woman. I don’t see that exceptionality in the rest of them — Anne, perhaps, excepted.

We last got rid of our monarchy in 1649 — but that didn’t last very long. I have the feeling that 370 or so years later, this time it might be for keeps.

THUG SMITH SHOULD PAY FOR OSCARS ATTACK

WHY wasn’t slap-happy Will Smith arrested?

Were the police worried they might get called racist?

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The man is an incontinent thug.

Chris Rock — usually a very funny comedian — made a lame joke at his wife’s expense.

That’s Rock’s job as Emcee – to take the p*** a little. It didn’t warrant that level of violence from Smith.

OJ Simpson has come out in support of Smith — yes, with friends like that, etc. Just imagine for a moment that the assault had been carried out by, say, Mel Gibson.

He’d be in a police cell by now and would never work again in Hollywood.

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YOU’D WASTE A VOTE

POOR Sir Keir Starmer.

Not only does he not know what a woman is, he now appears not to understand what a penis is.

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Maybe the Labour Party should hold “show and tell” lessons for all of their confused members (so to speak).

Wags on social media have suggested that Sir Keir should simply look in a mirror.

But it’s a serious issue. If so many senior members of the Labour Party are pig ignorant about basic science, why should anyone vote for them? Especially the women who they don’t seem to think exist.

FOOTBALL commentators have been lamenting the fact that Italy will not be playing in the next World Cup.

They were beaten at home by plucky North Macedonia. Tell me, on a scale of one to ten, how disappointed were YOU that the poor ol’ Italians got stuffed? I was howling with laughter, personally. Even opened a bottle of bubbly.

Mind you, we should have beaten them last summer.

And with better management of the game, we would have done.

That was a real missed chance, Mr Southgate.

VLAD’S FAILED

THE Russians have announced that they have ceased trying to capture the Ukraine capital, Kyiv.

That’s because they’re nice people who only want peace, according to the Russkies.

No it’s not. It’s because you have had your a***s well and truly kicked.

You have been defeated. It is incredible the speed with which the Russian armed forces have gone from being the world’s most fearsome military machine to a complete laughing stock across the world.

If we’ve learned something from Putin’s bloody adventure, it’s that there is very little to fear from the Russian army.

MARY GOT IT WHITE

I’VE been watching Banned! — The Mary Whitehouse Story on the BBC.

I couldn’t abide the woman when I was younger.

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Every TV programme I liked, she wanted stopped. Why can’t she stop interfering, I thought?

Now, though, I think she had a point. And was more right than wrong: She could see the way TV was going.

The most telling moment of the programme though was not anything Whitehouse said. It was the BBC’s boss, public school and Oxford University leftie Hugh Greene.

Just like the BBC of today, he had no respect for the people who paid the licence fee — and hence his enormous salary. “We are going to use this organisation to change the way the rest of the country thinks. We want them to see stuff they don’t like. We don’t really care if they complain.”

What a fabulously arrogant upper-class twit. But then that’s been the BBC’s mantra ever since . . . 

LIVING-GONE

THE woke imbeciles are now trying to cancel Dr David Livingstone, the incredible Scottish explorer, physician and missionary. They believe he had ties to slavery.

Well, indeed he did. He fought against slavery for his entire life, believing it to be grossly immoral. Not just British slavery, but the even more brutal Arab slavery of African people.

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It will come as a shock to the woke that other nations practised slavery. But they won’t care.

They’ll only be happy when our entire history has been cancelled.

WRONG ON WAR VICTIMS

SOME charities dealing with Syrian refugees are angry at the way we have responded to the war in Ukraine.

They don’t like the fact that we have opened our doors to as many as want to come.

We didn’t do that with the Syrians, they say — racist Europe!

No, not racist. The vast majority of Ukrainian refugees are women and children fleeing a war zone. The men have stayed to fight.

The vast majority of refugees from the Middle East are young men. They are not refugees, but economic migrants.