Plat on back
IT is a monumental, unprecedented and joyous achievement.
Tomorrow, the longest-reigning monarch in our history celebrates 70 years as Queen.
Elizabeth II has been the mother of our nation so long most of us simply cannot imagine life without her presence.
When she came to the throne, a few years after World War Two, Britain still had an empire. Some food was still rationed. There was one TV channel.
The Beatles were five years away from even meeting. Elvis was a schoolboy. Smartphones were 60 years in the future.
Her Majesty has seen 14 Prime Ministers and 14 US presidents come and go over eight decades of tumult: The assassination of JFK, the Swinging Sixties, the moon landing, the Troubles, the strife-torn 1970s, the Falklands, the end of apartheid and Soviet Communism, two Gulf Wars, the death of Princess Di, 9/11 and later the Scottish independence and Brexit votes.
And she has almost never put a foot wrong. What an example to Charles.
We hope she enjoys every minute of tomorrow’s Platinum Anniversary, even if she is celebrating it without Philip . . . and marking her father’s death too.
An incredible innings: 70 not out.
Hearty congrats, Ma’am, from The Celeb Report.
Listen to them
BORIS Johnson must break off from the Downing Street mayhem today and ponder the plight of Sun readers facing the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.
Those on Pages 32 and 33 don’t enjoy an MP’s salary or savings. Soaring bills aren’t inconvenient. They are terrifying.
And while Tory ratings are in freefall, they can sink far further yet.
Because, for all Rishi Sunak’s efforts to cushion the blows, what voters see is this: Crippling bills, mortgages up, inflation set to hit 7.5 per cent in April, more and more families facing hardship.
And a PM turning a deaf ear, pressing on with a tax rise he must see is madness.
Boris can rearrange the deckchairs at No10 all he likes. Pilfering our pay packets in
April is economic and political suicide.
Gas bottle
WHY isn’t this Tory Government, with its huge majority, “getting fracking done”? There is no good answer.
The current bills crisis has exposed the scandalous failure by successive regimes to secure our energy future.
It will be decades before we can rely solely on renewables and new nuclear plants.
We MUST meanwhile extract the shale gas under our feet.
Past Tory Governments buckled to a propaganda war won by eco hysterics promoting almost entirely bogus scares.
This one should revive fracking with a Covid-style PR campaign, explaining why cheap home-made energy is a vital staging post towards Net Zero.
Does it have the courage?
