NEWMAN’S
VIEWJune 5, 2022 · Issue no 10,317 · thesundaytimes.co.uk £3 · only £2 to subscribers (based on 7 day Print Pack)
Sunday newspaper of the year
Paddington at tea with the Queen. The clumsy bear drank from the teapot spout and found out where his host keeps her marmalade sandwiches. The sketch, which was kept secret for months, opened the Platinum Party at the Palace broadcast
BUCKINGHAM PALACE/STUDIOCANAL/ BBC STUDIOS PRODUCTIONS LIMITEDThey came from all over the world
to Windsor Castle yesterday, deter-
mined to be at the beating heart of
the British monarchy as the Queen
marked her Platinum Jubilee.
Each air mile from Japan,
Poland and Spain was a demon-
stration of the power and reach
that 70 years on the throne has
given Elizabeth II. Britain and the
world have changed immeasurably
since the Queen’s accession in
1952; yet the more things change,
the greater, it seems, is her time-
less appeal.
“I’ve lived through 14 presidents
and she’s been our only Queen,”
said John Barli, 66, who had flown
in with his wife, Billie, from Gaines-
ville, Florida, keen to be a part of
history. “She’s been the Queen my
whole life. She’s the world’s grand-
mother as far as I’m concerned.”
Yesterday, Windsor delivered
the one thing missing from the
Platinum Jubilee so far: some
proper British weather and a
chance finally to break out the red,
white and blue umbrella hats.
Party of a lifetime for the
‘world’s grandmother’
Crowds thronged through the bun-
ting-covered royal land, setting up
soggy picnics and gawping at the
70 classic cars arrayed on the Long
Walk, each from a different year of
the Queen’s reign, from Morris
Minors and Austin-Healeys to the
late Sir Terry Wogan’s 1979 Mini
Cooper.
Nicola Turnbull had brought her
family from Cuckfield, West
Sussex, to soak in the pageantry.
“For me the Queen is all about con-
tinuity in a time of change over the
last 70 years,” she said, as she
watched the changing of the guard.
“Prime ministers come and go, she
provides that person to look up to
and respect.”
As with previous Elizabethan
jubilees, the build-up to this one
was a bit muted, with headlines
dominated by economic and politi-
cal turmoil. It seemed for a
moment that the whole thing
might be a tad underwhelming.
But what the past few days have
shown is that Britain was yet again
marshalling its forces to meet the
occasion, stocking bunting, plan-
ning street parties, sourcing Union
Jack bowler hats, quietly deter-
mined to display its affection for its
national matriarch.
Travelling up and down the
country, there was a clear sensethat this jubilee was a thank you as
well as a celebration; that there will
never be another anniversary like
this in any of our lifetimes, and so it
matters to take part.
At the Weybridge Mariners club
in Shepperton, Surrey, a right royal
flotilla kicked off proceedings on
the River Thames on Thursday aft-
ernoon. Skiffs, rowing boats, tugs
and Dutch barges were decked out
in bunting. The organisers had
been expecting 30 or so boats;
instead there were well over 100.
“We won’t see this again in ourlives,” said Rebecca Cain, 42, who,
with her husband Matt, had
brought her two young girls and
their bichon frise, Mona, along.
For Rebecca, as for so many oth-
ers, there is a deep sense of pride in
having such a dutiful and historic
head of state. “She makes the UK
stand out,” she said. “Others are
queens of this and that. She is ‘the
Queen’. She’s behaved impeccably
throughout her reign. She vowed
to serve and she has.”
The Cains piled aboard the Lady
of Mann, a Dunkirk boat that
helped to ferry hundreds of sol-
diers off the beaches of France in- I joined a neighbouring craft,
the aptly named Jolly Brit, which in
its previous life was a “jolly boat”
tender used to ferry passengers
ashore from the royal yacht Britan-
nia. It also accompanied the
Queen’s barge Gloriana during its
rainy progress up the Thames for
the Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
Its 93-year-old owner, Henry
Butt, dressed in full captain’s uni-
form, regaled all aboard with the
boat’s long history, including
apparently taking part in Prince
Philip’s 1957 crocodile hunt in the
Gambia. “What can I even say
about the Queen,” he mused. “God
bless her.”
Henry and his girlfriend, Lorna
Pullen, 91, stood on the bow of the
Jolly Brit waving regally to specta-
tors on the riverbank. They met
three years ago, over lunch at an
old people’s home. “I don’t mind if
my hat blows off into the river, I
probably won’t need it after this,”
Pullen smiled, recalling a child-
hood dance around the maypole to
celebrate the coronation. “Never
complain, never explain, that’s her
secret. What a blameless and
clever reign it’s been.”
And yet like many, Pullen feels a
slight air of anxiety about what will
come next, sensing that the Queen
is the last living symbol of British
greatness. “You can feel it slipping
away, though, the monarchy,” she
said. “I’m not sure the younger
generation will want all that
pomp.”
The Shepperton flotilla was led
up to Sunbury-on-Thames and
back by a musical flagship, blasting
all the classics: Land of Hope and
Glory, There’ll Always Be an
England and a techno remix of the
national anthem that would doubt-
less make Her Majesty shiver.
Paddleboats wove in and out of
the pack, a man dressed as Admiral
Nelson in the lead, a woman with
her Union Jack-clad cocker spaniel
aboard bringing up the rear. On theJOSH
GLANCY
Continued on page 4→under his red hat, the Queen
prised open her black Launer
handbag, confiding, “I keep mine
in here,” before closing her bag and
wryly observing: “For later.”
Paddington, who is created with
CGI and voiced by the actor Ben
Whishaw, congratulated the
Queen on her historic reign, wish-
ing her a “happy jubilee, Ma’am”
and adding: “And thank you. For
everything.” The Queen replied:
“That’s very kind.”
The sketch ended with live shots
of the concert crowds outside
Buckingham Palace, as the band
Queen, with Adam Lambert in
place of the late Freddie Mercury,
opened the show with their hit We
Will Rock You, and footage showed
the monarch and her furry com-
panion tapping out the famous
opening beats to the song with sil-
ver spoons on their teacups.
The 2½-minute sketch, which
was filmed at Windsor in March,
was — as with the Queen’s 007
cameo — kept top secret, with only
a few members of the royal family
let in on the surprise shortly before
the concert began at 8pm.
Royal sources said the Queen
fully embraced the idea of starring
alongside Paddington Bear. A
Buckingham Palace spokesman
said: “Her Majesty is well known
for her sense of humour, so it
should be no surprise that she
decided to take part in tonight’sIt has been a closely guarded secret
for all of her record-breaking reign.
Just what does the Queen keep in
her handbag? Is it cash, mints, lip-
stick or the Racing Post?
Yesterday the monarch finally
revealed all to her new confidant,
Paddington Bear, over a cream tea
at Windsor Castle. Her handbag is
for storing marmalade sand-
wiches.
At 96, the Queen showed she has
lost none of her humour, starring
in a surprise televised sketch with
the fictional bear from darkest
Peru. The skit opened the Platinum
Party at the Palace, a live concert at
Buckingham Palace broadcast by
the BBC.
It echoed the James Bond spoof
at the opening ceremony of the
2012 London Olympics, in which
she and her corgis appeared with
the actor Daniel Craig at the palace,
and the Queen later appeared to
jump out of a helicopter and para-
chute into the stadium.
During her encounter with Pad-
dington in the crimson drawing
room at Windsor Castle, the Queen
laughed as the clumsy bear caused
chaos, accidentally depriving her
of a cup of tea, glugging directly
from the spout of the teapot and
spraying her footman with cream
from a chocolate éclair.
As he showed Her Majesty the
marmalade sandwiches he storesRoya Nikkhah Royal EditorIs that marmalade
I can see in your
handbag, Ma’am?
Continued on page 4→y(7HA9F6*LNSTRN( |||+?!$'lTory MPs claimed up to 67 let-
ters had been submitted calling for
a confidence vote in Johnson,
more than the threshold of 54
needed to trigger a vote this week;
l A rebel said up to 190 MPs could
vote against the PM, ten more than
would be needed to oust him;
l Johnson allies accused No 10 of a
“cavalier” approach to the threat.
The poll, conducted by JL Part-
ners, is likely to shock the Conserv-
ative Party because many MPs
were encouraged by local election
results that showed Labour mak-
ing fewer inroads in the red wall
than in London and the south.Instead, Sir Keir Starmer’s party
has increased its vote share to
48 per cent, up 8.2 points on 2019.
If turnout is about half what it was
in the general election, as is usual
in by-elections, that is likely to turn
a Tory majority of 3,358 into a
Labour majority of about 5,000.
In another development that
will unsettle Tory MPs, a Conserva-
tive donor warned that the party
faces “obliteration” at the general
election and ten years “in the wil-
derness” unless the prime minister
is removed immediately. Michael
Tory, a financier who has given the
Conservatives more thanThe Tories are on course for defeat
in the Wakefield by-election, trail-
ing Labour by 20 points in a key
red-wall seat that could help deter-
mine whether Boris Johnson sur-
vives as prime minister.
In the first public poll on the
contest, the Conservative vote has
collapsed to just 28 per cent, down
19.3 points on the 2019 general
election, when Johnson won an
80-seat majority by targeting
Labour’s traditional heartlands.
The news came as:
Tim Shipman
Chief Political Commentator
Tories face crushing by-election defeat as voters spurn Johnson over ‘lies’
£340,000 since 2010, said: “I was a
loyal and longstanding donor but
can only resume donating if there
is an immediate change of leader-
ship. And it has to be now — before
it’s too late to avoid a richly
deserved obliteration at the next
election, followed probably by a
decade in opposition.”
No 10 was hoping to persuade
MPs not to force a vote of no confi-
dence in Johnson’s leadership by
arguing he is the only leader capa-
ble of holding on to the red wall.
But the survey, carried out by
James Johnson, Theresa May’s
former No 10 pollster, found thatthe prime minister’s behaviour
was a direct cause of voters switch-
ing from the Tories to Labour. The
online poll of 501 voters is a
weighted representative sample of
adults in Wakefield taken over ten
days to gather enough returns to
ensure statistical accuracy.
Voters said the top reason for
backing Labour was “Boris John-
son tried to cover up partygate,
and lied to the public”. In all,
56 per cent agreed and just 13 per
cent disagreed, a margin of +43.
In second place was “Boris John-
son is not in touch with working-
class people”, which scored 57 percent in favour and 16 per cent
against, a margin of +41. Some
55 per cent said the Tories “have
not given enough help with the
cost of living”, while just 15 per
cent disagreed: a score of +40.
That will fuel fears in Tory high
command that Johnson’s personal
unpopularity means the govern-
ment is getting little credit for the
£15 billion extra it will spend to
ease the cost of living crisis.
Just 26 per cent of voters in
Wakefield agree with Johnson’s
argument that he “gets the big calls
right” while 48 per cent find it
Continued on page 9→INDEX
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