David Scott's farewell to the Queen is a piece that deserved to be read as an audio article. Alex Thomson has now done so.
In the weeks since the Queen's passing, UK Column subscribers have expressed sharply divided opinions to us about her legacy and the right attitude of the constitutionally concerned towards the Royal Family. David's piece has been spotted and praised by a number of allied commentators, notably—and perhaps not coincidentally—in the USA, where there is much less cynicism about the Royal Family in general and Queen Elizabeth in particular than there is in truth-speaking circles in Britain.
To Alex's mind, what makes this piece a worthy record is that it treads the ground that is shunned by both the dominant camp of the mainstream media and Establishment on the one hand and the largest dissident camp on the other. Instead of treating the late Queen either as infallible or as a capstone of evil, it considers the Queen as a person and, to the extent possible, reflects on what conflicting claims were in her mind throughout her seven-decade reign presiding over what David Scott rightly calls national decline and moral decay.
We have so far had over 150 comments on David's piece in our subscribers-only UK Column Community, and many of these have been erudite in their use of primary sources to consider the personal constitutional culpability of the late Queen versus that of her ministers and advisors. The piece read here by Alex encapsulates for a thinking audience far beyond those circles, including foreigners and those new to the study of constitutional trickery, what it is that all the endless debate is about with the British and their monarchy.