LONDON. For the first time in 59 years, Queen Elizabeth II will miss the fateful Queen’s Speech. That is, when the sovereign reads the program of the government in office in the House of Lords, on the occasion of the inauguration of a new parliamentary “session”, as is the tradition of Westminster. For weeks, moreover, in the corridors of Parliament it was speculated that the sovereign would have given up, as indeed has happened to most of her public events in recent months, see her absence at the next party in the Buckingham Palace garden.
The formula of the Palace is always the same as in recent times: “With regret, after a consultation with his doctors, His Majesty has decided that he will not take part in the ceremony”. After all, Elizabeth had made an exception only for the funeral mass in honor of her husband Philip a month ago, also thanks to the door of the “poets” of Westminster Abbey: a shortcut that allowed her to reach her bench near the altar of the abbey.
Because the problem is well known: Queen recently has increasingly accentuated motor difficulties that would have made her tomorrow’s commitment very complicated. In Westminster the road to get to the House of Lords is in fact very long, between corridors and stairways, the queen should have read the speech standing and above all Elizabeth does not want to know to be seen in a wheelchair, as instead Pope Francis has done in recent days. . For the record, the queen had skipped reading the speech twice in the past, such as due to pregnancies.
So it will be the first-born heir to the throne, Prince Charles who last accompanied her arm in arm to the Lords, to read the Queen’s Speech tomorrow. A novel that obviously will trigger comparisons and fantasies about when he will be king. Meanwhile, the important thing is to preserve the sovereign for the Platinum Jubilee, which in June will celebrate her legendary 70 years on the throne. Everything else, at this moment comes later, even the Queen’s Speech.