There’s nothing quite like a visit to this country by a widely loathed head of state to bring out the absolute best and worst of the British id. The best was that kid who mowed a giant dick into a field on the Stansted fight path, hoping Trump would see it on his way into London. The worst is the people revelling in the Queen “throwing shade” at the horrid, nouveau riche president by wearing a particularly wry brooch.
It’s odd that so many people are projecting their Trump-owning fantasies onto a 93-year-old monarch whose politics we don’t really know much about. I blame that almost folkloric story about the Queen scaring the shit out of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah by taking him for ride in a Land Rover on the Balmoral estate and – allegedly – pulling some proper The Fast and the Furious-style stunts. All this at a time when women in Saudi Arabia weren’t permitted to drive.
In all fairness, if the Queen really did pull this off, all power to her. But, as a nation, we’ve clearly seen enough Richard Curtis films to get it into our heads that our dear old Queenie is going to devastate Trump so harshly with a snide choice of tiara that he’ll be set off on a self-realisation character arc where he ends up buying a puppy for every child in America. Cue Beatles track. Roll credits.
But the “all pomp, no substance” nature of a state visit means that the Woke Queen narrative really boils down to literally the poshest lady in the world letting a vulgar oaf know that he’s a vulgar oaf. Yet Trump’s vulgar oafishness is the one tiny thing about him that makes him in any way relatable. I’d have no idea how to behave “properly” in front of people who own castles, either. Which is why Trump apparently fist bumping the Queen makes him as much a Man Of The People as a billionaire sex offender can possibly be.
According to some of the latest Woke Queen tweets, our monarch’s has now slighted Trump by giving him a book about Winston Churchill. Um… sick burn?
Oh, is it funny because Churchill fought fascism, and POTUS is a fascist? Or because Churchill was witty and Trump is thicker than a duvet lasagne? Is that it? Or is a book about a colonial overlord, perhaps, a safe bet of a gift for a 72-year-old racist?
Either way, please can we stop reading into every single gesture by the Queen, like we’re collectively watching a Shakespeare play and showing off about knowing 15th century euphemisms for “vagina”? Trump is probably having the time of his life, and whisperingly subtle nods to his uncouthness are not going to make a man who’s proud of being revolting “think long and hard about his actions”. The Queen is not our badass granny. She isn’t played by Maggie Smith. She’s not going to get tiddly on sherry and say, “Oh Donald, do shut up.”
So if we could keep those “Rule Britannia” fantasies about Trump ending up in the Tower of London for being rude safely within the confines of an imagined sequel to Love Actually, that’d be grand.
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