Sunday 24 December 2017

Fidelis defensor

As noted by most of the commentariat, a lot has changed for Theresa May over the last year. But one thing has stayed the same:
Theresa May underlines Christian heritage in Christmas message


As I wrote in May:
There's something very regal about Theresa May these days. Regal in the specific sense of resembling the only UK monarch in my living memory, Elizabeth II. Years ago, I linked to an acute pen portrait of Our Dear Queen from a sadly now-inactive blog. Some of the parallels with our famously sphinx-like Prime Minister are striking:
Of course the monarchy can survive, or even flourish, when the monarch does a reasonable job, which in Elizabeth II's case has meant keeping her head down and never saying anything remotely interesting...she understands (unlike her eldest son) that a constitutional monarch is better seen than heard, and that the role consists in being rather than doing.
The present Queen may well be the most boring monarch in British history... She has been for sixty years a vacuum at the heart of the state. Anti-monarchists, like atheists, need something to get their teeth into. Just as it's easier to opposeMichele Bachmann's God than Giles Fraser's, it's easier to oppose a despot or a crowned fruitcake than Queen Elizabeth II... Where public affairs are concerned, the weight of inertia is typically huge. It certainly is in the case of the monarchy (or the NHS, or the BBC). Boring is good, or at least safe from too much scrutiny.
Heresy Corner

Dutiful about things that nobody in their right mind cares about any more, conventional, incurious, unimaginative, pious, platitudinous, out of touch with the world outside her privileged bubble, reassuringly dull, too bland to be objectionable, only there by historical accident, but still there for fear of something worse.

Yeah, I reckon I got that one about right.

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