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They call it “kissing hands”, even though hands are no longer kissed: the incoming prime minister goes to see the Queen, who invites them to form a government, even though it’s not her call, and they say yes, even though they know it’s not a question. When someone first explains this elaborate performance of pointlessness, the only reasonable response is, surely the monarchy should be abolished? This is just silly. But then, you were probably a teenager when you found that out, and wanted to abolish most things.
It wasn’t until today that I ever spared a thought for the Queen herself. Her first hand-kissing was with Winston Churchill, after her father’s death in 1952, and now she is about to go through it with Liz Truss. Royal-watchers are carefully skirting the fact that she is doing this in Balmoral, rather than coming to London as she normally would. It could be any reason, really. Maybe she has decided to live off-grid; which of us wouldn’t, given the chance?
More likely, it’s because she’s thinking, “Crikey, this office of state used to mean something. Could I have done more, over the past seven decades, to avert this terrible slide into political entropy? Was discretion really the better part of valour, or might some actual valour have been better still? Some time around that sociopathic blond dude, could I have changed the terms and conditions, and asked him not to form a government? I mean, God knows Anthony Eden was a bit of a pill, but this is ridiculous.
