Queen’s words can unite and reassure our nation in these darkest of days

ONE figure can bring the nation together and provide people with the reassurance they want at a time of national crisis and that is Her Majesty the Queen. The fact that the Queen is addressing the nation at this time, in a moment reminiscent of her father King George VI’s speech at the start of the Second World War, is a sign of the gravity of the situation.

George VI’s famous address was immortalised in the film The King’s Speech and it stiffened the resolve of a country about to be plunged into six years of brutal but necessary war.

The benefit of having a highly respected head of state, who can rise above politics is that in our hardest struggles we have a figure we can all unite around.

In this light the Queen’s intervention on Sunday will have a similar effect as the country readies itself to enter what many believe will be the worst week of the coronavirus and we face our own D-Day in this struggle.

We may not be expected to storm the beaches with German bullets and shrapnel flying around our heads or suffer long nights in the bomb shelters, but the need to keep our nerve is just as important.

The tragic death of two nurses announced yesterday shows what is at stake as does the rising death toll.

The need to social distance, stay home and protect the NHS cannot be repeated often enough. It will literally save lives.

So we can all do our bit, as did the heroic generation in the 1940s, to help us get through this extraordinary episode in our nation’s history.

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who along with Chancellor Rishi Sunak has emerged as a true national leader in these darkest of days, could not have put it better yesterday when he said: “If we relax our discipline now, people will die.”

The sacrifice of those two nurses, Areema Nasreen and Aimee O’Rourke, shows the terrible risks our NHS workers face. They are literally putting their lives on the line.

The tribute paid by England’s chief nursing officer Ruth May was rightly emotional. She knows what her colleagues and the other NHS heroes are up against.

These terrible times are above party politics and nitpicking. There is a huge need for unity in a common cause.

The past few years of division over Brexit obscured how important such sentiments are.

So when the Queen speaks this weekend as the death toll begins to mount even further and faster, she will be a focal point for this nation to face the struggle together and get through this crisis.