The Queen's death

Journal Column 15th September 2022

By Graham Robb, Senior Partner Recognition PR

A week ago today our country had been through three days of change and upheaval after a new Prime Minister was appointed, a new Government was assembled and significantly different policies on the cost of our energy were being announced; but then the worst news.

Our glorious Queen, the world’s most experienced stateswoman, the head of our national church, the matriarch of our nation, died. A world leader, solemnly committed to a lifetime of service under God, who was driven by duty and sustained by faith, had left us. We all knew The Queen was elderly and frail, but it was difficult to process the news.

Many great people in the world have had their say, so the words of your humble columnist this morning might seem almost irrelevant, but Her Majesty was interested in every point of view, from the man in the street to the Prime Minister in a private audience.

What amazed me last week was the very personal way this national moment of loss has affected so many individual people. I have shed tears numerous times over the period as passionate deep-seated feelings of love for country and monarch have combined with vivid memories of other losses I have experienced in recent years; my late wife and both my parents. I have met many people who share the same sense of jolted memory. Her Majesty, who we subconsciously saw everyday with every postage stamp, coin or banknote and was a staple of our family Christmases, is gone and we transmute the sense of national grief to our own remembered private grief. It happens because of the almost personal, subliminal, connection we all have with somebody who, as Regal Head of State, was set above us.

I was talking to an electrician who was working on a repair at my office, he half-joked about the work ethic of British workers compared to Her Majesty who was working 48 hours before her death; a 96-year-old woman who formally conducted the essential business of a transfer of Government and Prime Ministers with such grace. The last photos showing that beautiful radiant smile as she happily carried out her duty, shaking hands with Liz Truss. Nobody I have talked to has anything but a sense of the occasion in our national history, nobody alive today will again see such a long-serving female monarch. She was undoubtedly, as Boris Johnson said in his excellent speech in tribute, Elizabeth the Great.

My youngest daughter, who lives and works in the USA, has been offered condolences by all her American friends, as if she was one of the Queen’s own relatives, yet being out of the Country she has felt the sense of loss even more.

Our country’s rich tradition has ensured that our loss did not also create a vacuum of power. The ability to see the Privy Council in session, at the Accession Council, was a wondrous thing for everybody, like me, with a passionate interest in politics. It was a timely reminder that, after a change in personnel in Government, the power and authority of the people resides in the Sovereign. To see Charles proclaimed our new King by the Council and hear him saying ‘approve’ as new rules and laws were placed before him, demonstrated that, in the person of the Sovereign, there is the ability to stay silent and not approve. Of course, it has never happened as it would provoke a constitutional crisis, but should a law be so unacceptable to His Majesty be put before him – say, a law abolishing elections or extending Parliament indefinitely – we all know that the person, who was effectively chosen by God, could always refuse to approve. In this he is our King, the ultimate sovereign and ruler whom politicians understand is required to give his assent to laws, and this fact should cause the greatest of them to have some measure of humility and political temperance.

The King himself gave one of the greatest speeches I have ever heard. It was as if his entire person had been lifted to a greater mission by his people. His words were perfectly chosen and delivered with a sincerity that conveyed them directly and almost personally to every viewer. The phrase ‘God save the King’, will be sung with greater commitment and passion by so many of us as a result. The passionate support he has received on his tour of all parts of the UK this week, bodes well for the future of our constitutional monarchy.

I’ll end this column with words from my granddaughter. Her mother was watching the TV coverage of events in London and told her daughters: “Girls watch this news, it’s history.” Little Alice, aged six, replied: “Mum, you always say that.” Indeed she does. With Brexit, a pandemic, war in Ukraine, changes in Government, a new King – history has never happened so quickly. We long for calm, we long for respite from events, we long for stability; God bless King Charles III.