What just happened
- President Biden said American troops would defend Taiwan if China attacked.
- Alla Pugacheva, Russia’s most famous pop star, denounced the war in Ukraine.
- Hurricane Fiona knocked out all power across Puerto Rico.
A sumptuous sunset bathed Westminster in light on the Queen’s last evening in London. Were the gods trying to say something? Even hard-boiled republicans have to admit the marathon of remembrance drawing to a close with her funeral today has shown a self-sustaining power.
Call it magnetism. The funeral has drawn 500-odd emperors, kings, presidents and heads of government to Westminster Abbey. The crush is a serious tribute to the Queen’s longevity and her success as an embodiment of soft power abroad. But when the guests go home her country will need all the friends it can get.
A reminder: the Queen died two days into a tenure in Number 10 in which Liz Truss had already
- promised an unfunded £170 billion energy bill bailout;
- doubled down on trickle-down economics to save the economy and the public finances; and
- faced a crisis of personal legitimacy arising from her elevation to prime minister on the strength of the support of about 0.1 per cent of the electorate.
Post-Elizabethan Britain’s global standing will rest on its status as a trading power and its relationships with the US, Europe and the Commonwealth. All are shaky.
Trade. The details are for another day but the numbers are bad. Overall trade values are high, but only because of spiralling gas prices which are also responsible for the worst UK trade deficit in more than quarter of a century.
US. Biden arrived early for the funeral but postponed a planned bilateral meeting with Truss until later this week. Not unrelated: his insistence that Truss’s hardline Brexit cabinet unbends on the Northern Ireland Protocol if it wants a US-UK trade deal. Possibly unrelated but certainly unhelpful: this Sunday Times / Sarawak Report scoop on Truss’s chief of staff, Mark Fullbrook, who turns out to have been helping the FBI with enquiries about an alleged $300,000 plot to bribe a Puerto Rican politician.
Europe. The UK has set a solid example on how to respond to Russia in Ukraine but Truss pandered to her party’s Europhobic ultras as a leadership candidate, saying the jury was out on whether France’s Emmanuel Macron was “friend or foe”. He has resisted rising to the bait, paid elegant tributes to the Queen and – as Lord Ricketts notes – deserves an apology.
Commonwealth. All 56 member states are represented at the funeral. Not all are happy with the status quo. The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda plans to hold a referendum on becoming a republic within three years. Jamaica is likely to follow. New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern says it’s only a matter of time before her country chooses its own head of state.
China matters as an export market and potential partner in the fight against climate change, so its funeral delegation was allowed to view the Queen lying in state despite an attempted veto by Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle. He tried to keep Vice President Wang Qishan out of Westminster Hall because of Chinese sanctions against MPs who’ve dared to call out Chinese genocide in Xinjiang, but was overruled.
India matters as the go-to case study of what Global Britain might mean in the real world. More trade? More visas? Modi is not at the funeral but India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, is. She is a former teacher and provincial governor, and a quiet reminder of non-hereditary ways to choose a head of state.
Russia matters as an exporter of death, destruction and misinformation, so was disinvited. Its foreign ministry called the decision to bar diplomats as well as Putin “immoral” and “blasphemous” to the memory of the Queen, though it was in keeping with fresh confirmations of Russia’s pariah status from China and India at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand. India’s PM Narendra Modi told Putin this was “not an era of war”.
The Queen inherited the remains of an empire on which the sun never set. She bequeathed a country struggling to find its new place in the sun – and flummoxed by Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the alleged murderer and human rights abuser, said he wouldn’t be at the funeral but would fly in anyway to pay his respects to the royal family. King Charles is fond of Saudi Arabia, which he’s visited 12 times. A diplomatic bear trap looms.
