UK overlooks crisis to celebrate queen’s jubilee

UK overlooks crisis to celebrate queen’s jubilee

Web Desk
June 1, 2022

UK overlooks crisis to celebrate queen’s jubilee

Platinum Jubilee marks Queen Elizabeth II’s record-breaking 70th year on the throne.
Four days of festivities provide temporary reprieve from an inflationary crisis.
Ed Sheeran sings “God Save the Queen” in front of Buckingham Palace on Sunday.

Britons prepared to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s record-breaking 70th year on the throne on Wednesday, with four days of festivities providing a temporary reprieve from an inflationary crisis and questions about the monarchy’s future.

The Platinum Jubilee takes place as Britons face the highest inflation since the 1970s, with many households struggling to put food on the table while paying skyrocketing bills.

However, with two public holidays beginning on Thursday and ending on the weekend, pubs, restaurants, and retailers are hoping for a timely sales boost following a difficult period that included the Covid pandemic.

Supermarket chain Co-op predicted “a bigger sales period than Christmas”.

On The Mall, a red-paved avenue leading to Buckingham Palace, royal enthusiasts from far and wide have been camping out, despite heavy downpours.

– ‘Magical’ –

“The last 24 hours have been horrendous. We had rain, hail, thunder, lightning,” Mary-Jane Willows, 68, from Cornwall, southwest England, told AFP.

“It’s the only way to make sure that you are at the front of the barrier when that royal coronation coach goes past, that golden coach…. It will be the most magical moment,” she said.

Angie Hart, 51, travelled from Canada to stake out a camping spot on The Mall with her husband and two daughters.

“It has always been something that I wanted to do,” she said. “I just have a real respect for the queen.”

But in Britain and the wider Commonwealth, support for the monarchy overall is an open question once the increasingly frail, 96-year-old monarch departs the scene.

With Prince Charles taking over more of his mother’s duties for occasions of state, there is a sense that the first — and possibly the last — Platinum Jubilee in British history marks a turning of the page.

A poll for The Sun newspaper this week gave the queen a 91.7-percent approval rating. Charles commanded only 67.5 percent, behind his son Prince William on 87.4 percent.

In Australia, where the queen is also head of state, new center-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appointed an “assistant minister for the republic” in a move welcomed by the republicans.

Albanese has previously described Australia becoming a republic as “inevitable”.

Historian Anthony Seldon, of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), said “how traumatic it’s going to be when it unravels, as well as it might in the next two, three, four years when the change comes”.

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