God Save the Queen!

The Daily Telegraph reports today that the Queen wants her government to buy a £10m private jet, seating up to 12 people. This is causing some people consternation, coming as it does just days after we discover that the Royal Family costs us £40m a year.

Let me rephrase that: the Royal Family ONLY costs us £40m a year. That sum is a bargain.

It is unacceptable that the most hardworking and well-known Royal Family in the world is living in palaces that urgently need restoration and that the Queen no longer has a Royal Yacht or a Royal Jet. While it should not be a widely publicised priority before an election, an incoming Tory government MUST restore to Her Majesty the trappings of power that one expects - and that means buying and providing for the upkeep of a Royal Yacht and a Royal Jet. It also means repairing the palaces too.

I pledge allegiance to the Queen?

This government has come up with some stupid ideas in its time. I have said before that there are a myriad of areas where the government needs to turn its attention - our filthy and inefficient hospitals, our failing schools, business regulation, ever-rising crime, pensioner poverty, tax reform, our crippled transport system and so on. These should be the government's priorities. Instead, Lord Goldsmith has come up with the absurd idea that 18-year-olds should be compelled to sit through citizenship ceremonies which might well incorporate a pledge of allegiance to the Queen.

It will come as no surprise to learn that I am an avowed monarchist - but I am wholly opposed to this proposal. While the Pledge of Alliance might work for Americans (who pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the republic for which it stands, as embodied in its constitution) it will not work here. It's not the way we do things and it is cringe-making.

There is undoubtedly a societal crisis that has led many commentators to infer that Britishness is in a sense of crisis. Gordon Brown himself bangs on about the issue when he needs good headlines from the tabloids. But blame for this crisis lies with the government - uncontrolled immigration, devolution, multiculturalism and political correctness are all direct consequences of this government's policies. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, two Scots, are responsible for Britishness being in crisis. And now they have the affront to insist that all 18-year-olds are compelled to sit through a tedious citizenship ceremony and to pledge allegiance to the Queen.

If the government is serious about wanting to deal with the crisis in Britishness then it needs to address uncontrolled immigration, the unfairness of the devolution settlement, multiculturalism and the cultural apartheid it breeds and the pernicious and anti-freedom creed of political correctness. It won't because it can't. And there's the problem. Even its eye-catching initiatives no longer succeed in pulling the wool over voters' eyes. Truly we are governed by a row of exhausted volcanoes.

Today's Hero & Zero: Gordon Brown & Levy Mwanawasa

Today’s Hero is…Gordon Brown, for coming up with another stupid gimmick. He has launched a mission to find a national motto to make us all feel British. I feel perfectly British thank you very much and I don’t really see the need for us to have a motto at all.

If Brown is worried about people not feeling British enough then a combination of devolution and the West Lothian question, political correctness and the erosion of free speech, ghettoisation and the discouraging of integration, and continued multiculturalism are to blame – not the lack of a motto.

But if he wants a motto how about New Labour’s mantra: do as I say, no as I do.

Today’s Zero is…Levy Mwanawasa, the President of Zambia. He has said that if Robert Mugabe is not allowed to attend the EU-Africa summit in December that Gordon Brown has said he will boycott if Mugabe attends, he himself will boycott the summit. President Mwanawasa said: “I will not go to Portugal without Mugabe”.

With respect to Mwanawasa and the mighty people of Zambia, I think that Africa has more to gain from an EU-Africa summit than the people of Britain or the wider EU. The fact that some tin-pot leader from a third-world nation has failed to act of Mugabe’s racist brutality is of more concern to me than his views over an EU-Africa summit.

If the highly influential President Mwanawasa doesn’t want to come to Portugal in December because he would rather stand shoulder to shoulder with an evil tyrant like Mugabe, so be it. We won’t miss him.