Saturday 15th January 2022

Apologise
It’s so it to say I apologise
So easy to say sorry
But to say it with sincerity
Is another matter
Better to have thought it through
From the start
Better to have been honest
But I don’t think your sort does honesty
Arrogant
High and mighty
I can’t see you resigning
You’re too up your own arse
Not even the views of the many
Can make you see your disrespect
You are blind to your failings
Blind to your lies
You really believe that you have done no wrong
And that’s dangerous
You really are a piece of work
And that’s dangerous to the health of the many
Bish 15th January 2022
(Boris Johnson)

After 70 years on the throne, every aspect of the relationship between the monarch and her prime ministers must surely have become deeply, even sometimes wearyingly, familiar to Elizabeth II. Fourteen very different men and women have held the country’s highest political office since 1952 – 10 Conservatives and four Labour. Ideologically, they cover a wide spectrum of views.

Yet they have all been united by one thing: the intense care they have taken never to embarrass the Queen in the slightest way.

Until Boris Johnson.

The thought of having to make a public apology to the monarch like the one that Johnson made on Friday would likely have sent shivers of shame down the spines of every one of his Downing Street predecessors.

From Winston Churchill to Theresa May, it would be hard to think of a more humbling and cringeworthy moment than having to apologise for their staff partying on the eve of the monarch’s husband’s funeral in the midst of a plague.