In glossing the strengths of Elizabeth II, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss, made a negative portrait of the country that the deceased and mourned monarch leaves behind her. “It was the rock on which modern Britain was built. Our country has grown and flourished under her reign, ”said Truss at the door of 10 Downing Street, which she had barely crossed herself 48 hours earlier. “Through thick and thin, Queen Elizabeth II provided us with the stability and strength we needed,” concluded the conservative politician.
It was Shakespeare who wrote that “there are people who are born great, others become great, and some greatness comes upon them.” Truss, who with the mere support of 81,000 members of the Conservative Party, managed to take over the fate of 67 million Britons this week, has had the greatness – or the condemnation – of being the prime minister who ends the “second Elizabethan era” and begins a new “Carolina era”, which coincides with the beginning of an economic recession, with a huge energy crisis, galloping inflation and 78% of British, according to the company YouGovcompletely disappointed with the idea that Truss is going to occupy Downing Street.
Fortunately for her, the real challenge of the coming days will not fall so much on her shoulders as on those of a man who has spent more than seven decades preparing to be king, and even so, he has not finished dispelling the skepticism that many have about his ability. citizens.
Carlos III has finally ascended the throne with a popularity rating of 42%, also according to his follow-up YouGov for years. Well below the 75% that Isabel II had, but also the 66% that her son Guillermo de Ella enjoys. The dilemma endlessly fueled by many of the British tabloids has now been definitively resolved, by pitting the modern and neat image of the second in line of succession against that of his father, and suggesting the possibility of a generational leap that would make the king king. Duke of Cambridge ahead of Charles.
Constitutional normality has been imposed, but the new monarch, accustomed to being controversial and provocative for decades, must still conquer the reticence of many Britons, who look at him suspiciously since those blushing brawls with Lady Di. And that they still do not admit that Camilla Parker-Bowles, the third in discord in that unhappy marriage, has become the queen consort, despite the fact that the express wishes of Elizabeth II with respect to her daughter-in-law are fulfilled.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe
Carlos III, who in recent months had already replaced his mother in the most institutional and symbolic tasks of the crown ―it was he, for example, who read the Queen’s Speech at the solemn opening of Parliament last May―, plays with an important base. He knows, and has said so, that as king he will have to exercise a scrupulous neutrality that he did not respect as a prince, but the British also know that he knows and is concerned about the problems of his time, such as the threat of climate change or the deterioration of the centers urban. Carlos III can be an accomplice monarch for a Government that has ahead of it the enormous task of avoiding a winter of poverty and discontent.
“I am sure that the values of Elizabeth II will be upheld by her beloved son Charles, our new king,” said Labor opposition leader Keir Starmer in his official reaction to the death of the monarch. Just one sentence in a long intervention dedicated to praising the figure of the queen. A way of showing her support, but with the condition of placing Carlos III in front of the mirror of his predecessor.
Elizabeth II, as the respected journalist Andrew Marr recalled on the pages of the weekly New Statesman, “was an absolutely central woman in Britain to understand our own meaning, to understand who we are.” It has gone definitively when the United Kingdom has irretrievably broken ties with the European continent, Scotland threatens to stir up the specter of secessionism again, Northern Ireland revives its internal brawls given the near possibility of a reunification of the island, the countries of the Commonwealth that the late queen did so much to care for feel less and less attached to a political idea that has little effectiveness, and many colonialist memories unamended.
Liz Truss, like all new prime ministers, has entered Downing Street with an adamist speech in which she promises bold plans to rescue the UK economy and return the country to the greatness that the Conservatives, in that nostalgia that Brexit brought with it. They strive to recover. Paradoxically, it has been an event beyond her control and of incalculable historical dimensions – the death of Elizabeth II – that has led the United Kingdom to enter a new era. And the eyes of millions of Britons will focus, rather than on the prime minister, on the new king and the era he ushers in.
Follow all the international information in Facebook Y Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
#death #Queen #Elizabeth #places #United #Kingdom #uncertain #future