Queen Elizabeth channelled blitz spirit in rare address – but is this generation up to the task?
“We will meet again” were just the words we needed to hear last night.
At 93, married to an ex-serviceman with a distinguished naval record, a woman who first spoke to Britain and the Commonwealth in 1940, Elizabeth II was consciously channelling the Second World War.
She even referenced Dame Vera Lynn’s poignant ballad, a deft and, we assume, a very personal touch. When she mentioned the “front line” staff of the NHS and in social care, she also echoed the past - and underlined the ultimate sacrifice so many of them now risk, and some have paid. It is a matter of life and death.
Usually, the tendency to recall the blitz, the Dunkirk spirit and Winston Churchill is cringeworthy.
Yet for once the British, and the peoples of the Commonwealth, are right to remind themselves of calls answered, challenges faced and losses endured in the past, just as they are today. And after? We will meet again.
This was not some pound shop politician exploiting a past they were never around for; this was the real thing. Churchill was her first prime minister, and she was around in the war. She deserves to be listened to with respect - and because she gets it right.
Of course there are plenty who’ll ignore her message, just as some did when her father made similar calls for unity and resolve when the country stood alone against Hitler. Such broadcasts aren’t for them, anyhow.
When the Queen spoke of our “national attributes” of “self-discipline, quiet good-humoured resolve and if fellow-feeling” I admit my mind drifted a little.
I could not help thinking of the people loading supermarket shopping trolleys sky high with hand sanitiser, dried pasta and loo roll, only to sell them at vast profit on eBay; the guy whose sense of duty had him clocked at 104 mph on the North Circular (no licence, no insurance); and of course all the sun basking heroes invading the parks. Not everyone has had their finest hour in recent days, but, then again, in the war we had spivs, looting and draft dodgers.
On the whole, though, the Queen was right; she and her generation do have something to look back on with pride, and it showed inspired leadership for her, the grandmother of the nation to tell her people that they can do it again.
She paid the baby boomers, the millennials, Generation X and all the rest that they will prove that “Britons of this generation were as strong as any”.
I do wonder, though. I hope she won’t be disappointed when the time comes for us all to meet again.
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