Displaying items by tag: Queens Speech

Prince Charles delivered the Queen’s speech last week, giving the world a glimpse of the future king. Joe Little, editor of Majesty Magazine, says the Queen’s increasingly infrequent appearances have a ‘huge inevitability’ about them given her age; in the future we will only occasionally see her. Rushed to hospital in October, struck down with Covid in February and increasingly frail, her appearances are now rare. Just three weeks from an unprecedented four-day weekend to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee, we can pray that her strength and stamina grows in that time. Buckingham Palace speaks of the Queen’s ‘episodic mobility issues’, but she is still sharp and conducting her duties from the comfort of Windsor Castle. On her good days, she needs a walking aid; on bad days she is immobile. In June the Queen will not use the gold state coach in the Platinum Pageant procession. She will travel by car to an easier entrance than the Great West Door of St Paul’s Cathedral.

On 11 May the Queen set out the government's priorities at the state opening of Parliament. She said her government would ‘deliver a national recovery from the pandemic that makes the UK stronger, healthier and more prosperous than before’. Pray that Ministers can now start making progress beyond the twelve-month pandemic emergency, and give more time to push through laws to make manifesto promises real. May their plans provide all that is needed to succeed. The Queen also said the government would ‘strengthen the economic ties across the union, investing in and improving national infrastructure’ Pray for our government to stand strong in all that God intends it to do in the coming season. Other topics covered included education, women's rights, freeports, internet safety, the environment, modernising planning laws, and discouraging asylum seekers from crossing the English Channel. Pray that the PM’s ‘rocket boosters’ agenda would successfully repair all that is damaged.