I WAS heckled on Thursday. I was walking near Cambridge University through a park which is frequented by the local undergrad poshos.
“F*** the Queen. F*** the Royal Family,” one of the spotty-faced gremlins yelled at me (in an unmistakably middle-class voice) as he and his mates boozed on the grass.
I knew this was directed at me because I had come dressed as a walking, talking Union Jack to meet a friend.
My sewing hobbyist of a mother had made me a custom Union Flag dress especially for the Jubilee — and I was unashamedly looking like an upmarket tribute to Geri Halliwell at the 1997 Brit Awards.
I’ll admit, my instinct was to heckle back and ask the foul-mouthed twit why he felt the need to overcompensate for his small manhood by throwing jibes about a 96-year-old lady.
But a barely post-pubescent student was not about to ruin my Jubilee spirits.
There is one thing that really bothered me about this brief encounter, though — the idea that being proudly “anti-royalist” is somehow seen by large swathes of the youth as a badge to wear with pride.
Not least young people who are supposedly the best and brightest among us.
READ MORE QUEEN'S JUBILEE
The number of young people aged 18 to 24 who think the monarchy is good for Britain has nose-dived over the past decade, according to YouGov. In 2012, a comfortable 60 per cent thought as much.
Ten years later, barely a quarter think so. This is compared with seven in ten of those over 50. And this is tragic.
Those of us, like me, who have a deep affinity with Queen and country are increasingly painted by woke, sanctimonious do-gooders as elitist dinosaurs fighting for a dying institution.
And what’s worse, we seem to be taking it on the chin that the beginning of the end of the monarchy is nigh.
In fact, if I had a pound for every time I’ve heard pundits talk over the last few weeks about the inevitability of a “slimmed-down” monarchy, I might just be as rich as the Queen herself.
It is rumoured Prince Charles supports the scaling back of the 1,200-year-old institution. But the social case is not compelling, and the economic case is non-existent.
Especially given that the Royal Family costs each taxpayer just a couple of quid A YEAR.
I haven’t seen value for money like that since I bought pick ’n’ mix at Woolworths as a child.
Scaling back the royals is a suicide mission. There is no such thing as a “slimmed-down” monarchy. There is a monarchy that is relevant, and a monarchy that is utterly irrelevant.
The idea that a reduced-fat, zero-sugar kind of monarchy could wield much influence for long is for the birds.
Such a set-up would quickly and surely fade into global irrelevance. The support of Commonwealth countries, which make up a third of the world’s population, would quickly fall like dominoes.
The smug, metropolitan anti-royalists of Britain would start successfully spreading the gospel that the monarch is an oppressive symbol of white supremacy, encouraging republican outbreaks in places with close cultural ties to Britain.
This cannot be good for anyone. And this comes from someone who, having come from a former British colony, knows the uncomfortable history of British imperial rule.
But if Queen Elizabeth II’s reign has taught us something, SURELY it is that a strong, dedicated monarchy can and does belong in a modern world.
It can unite all corners of the nation, and the globe, wield significant moral influence, and raise morale immeasurably.
I don’t want a “slimmed-down”, half-in half-out, hokey-pokey Royal Family when the Queen passes the baton.
I want to see a full-fat, emboldened, and even more devoted monarchy.
Boos up for Boris
BORIS JOHNSON has so far had little reason to envy Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
The PM had spent his political life being the loveable, charismatic, proven election winner – a ladies’ man who has until recently enjoyed an almost rock star-like popularity.
Starmer, on the other hand, was the Corbyn rebound candidate who wouldn’t even stand out in a line-up of magnolia walls. That is until yesterday.
On his way into the Jubilee service at St Paul’s, Sir Keir was unsurprisingly greeted by public spectators with an echo of tumbleweed and yawns.
The PM and his wife, however, were met with loud boos from the crowd.
Conservative MPs who have refrained from handing in letters of no confidence in the PM are right to have broken a sweat following this very telling reception.
I’d be astonished if anyone else has ever uttered the words: “What I’d give to be Sir Keir Starmer for the day.”
But yesterday, for the humiliated PM, it might just have been that day.
Hues in firing line
IT’S Pride Month – 30 days dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ+ people. Cue the corporate virtue-signalling.
Who can forget when every man and his dog changed their profile picture to a black square in solidarity with Black Lives Matter?
It achieved immeasurable change – literally immeasurable, because it amounted to precisely nothing.
Well, every June sees the annual LGBTQ+ cringe-fest where corporatist giants paint their logos in rainbow colours.
It’s intended to show “allyship” with the LGBTQ+ community but does nothing more than remind the rest of us that we’re surrounded by virtue-signalling execs beholden to gender-obsessed ideologues.
But my personal favourite this year has to be the US Marines. To celebrate Pride Month, the supposedly toughest fighting force on Earth have uploaded a picture of rainbow-coloured bullets.
I’m sure it would bring great solace to any victims to know they were at least executed with LGBTQ+-friendly bullets and not the regular homophobic, transphobic kind.
Isle fans want hot girls and hunky blokes – not wokes
CONTESTANTS in the new Love Island series are set to take part in “diversity and inclusion training” before the show kicks off.
Show bosses have hired consultants to teach contestants about things such as “inclusive language”, “safe spaces” and “micro-aggressions”.
This comes as the new show is being hailed as “the most diverse ever”, with a deaf Islander and more ethnic minorities in the line-up.
What a load of disingenuous bull. The whole show is based around a very EX-clusive group of unnaturally attractive people with wildly EX-clusive dating preferences living out the summer in perhaps the most EX-clusive holiday villa on the planet.
People don’t tune in to Love Island in their millions to watch a bunch of social justice activists having deep talks about unconscious bias, lived experience and white privilege.
They tune in to watch steroid-pumped boneheads and Botox-filled bimbos shamelessly snogging and romping.
The show’s signature format sees the least desirable contestants callously kicked off the show when nobody wants to couple with them – like the fat kid picked last by his peers in a PE lesson.
A woker Love Island is nothing but insincere box-ticking.
