SHE DOESN’T HAVE A LOT TO SAY.
Canadians of a certain age will remember the 26-second coda to the Beatles’ Abbey Road album: “Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl/but she doesn’t have a lot to say.” Da-dah-da-dahda-dah. If I quote more of it, I’ll probably have to pay a royalty.
In fact, the Queen doesn’t have a lot to say. She’s never had a lot to say. She does not appear on Oprah. She doesn’t comment on politics. She doesn’t tell us her views about she-cessions or how she’s feeling about the pandemic or mental health or her own recent grievous loss. She maintains the traditional divide, almost universally breached these days, between private and public life. That is a tradition we would do well to support.
Even in her public life she is economical with words, admirably so. Elsewhere on this page you will find the complete text of what in the Mother of Parliaments is called “The Queen’s Speech,” which Her Majesty delivered this week in the House of Lords to open a new session of Parliament. Our version is “The Speech from the Throne,” last delivered in September by Gov. Gen. Julie Payette in one of her final official functions before being deposed in a staff putsch.
The two speeches couldn’t be more different.
This week’s Queen’s Speech was 940 words, including salutation and benediction, which makes it just slightly longer, if perhaps more consequential, than the average column appearing on this page. It is a model of succinctness and all but completely free of partisan taint. It is mainly a list of legislation the government (“my Government”) intends to bring forward. The official official text is actually a little longer since it helpfully provides the name of the parliamentary bill that will try to fulfil the legislative purpose the speech sets out. Thus Her Majesty reads: “Laws will simplify procurement in the public sector” and the official version adds, in square brackets, “Procurement Bill.”
Our Speech from the Throne, by contrast, is a campaign-like exhortation, windy and vacuous, devoted to the wisdom of the current government and all the admirable social goals it has in mind — with not a mention, of course, of how equally lofty and noble past such efforts may have fallen on the rocks. The most recent version was 6,781 words long and took Mme. Payette just under half an hour to read, though her pace was faster than Her Majesty’s. (The various versions of the Gettysburg Address that are in existence — we don’t know exactly what Lincoln said in the two minutes he spoke — are all, would-be orators take note, under 300 words long.)
The Queen’s Speech is spare, as good English usually is. Of course, she is queen of the people who invented the language (though her own ancestry is German) so she knows her way around an English sentence. She also knows what an English sentence is. Unlike the sentence fragments that these days populate most political documents, it must contain both a noun and a verb.
Apart from CBC’S The National, the Speech from the Throne is probably the most overwritten of our public texts. Does anyone remember Mme. Payette’s COVID homily last September? “Like a reed in high winds, we might sway but we will not break. Because our roots are firmly in place, our goals clear, and because we have hope — hope that lifts the soul on dark days and keeps us focused on the future.” Though generations of poets have invoked hope I can’t remember any who emphasized its main virtue as being to keep us future-focused. (Note that the quoted bit beginning “Because” is not a sentence.)
At every Speech from the Throne I wonder how the governor general really feels about reading an infomercial from the prime minister sitting on the smaller throne off to the side. If you were once a partisan of the prime minister’s party, which too many of our GG’S have been, perhaps you don’t mind. If you were appointed by that PM, perhaps you feel you have no choice. Anyone else must find the role of marionette demeaning. But you only have the job for five or 10 years so you do what has become traditional in this country.
The Queen, by contrast, got her job from the Archbishop of Canterbury. In fact, she had been Queen from her father’s last breath, this according to legislation dating back to the Act of Settlement in 1701 and practice much older than that. If you are a king or queen, even a new king or queen, you have a sense that prime ministers come and go but your office endures. And it will not shill on a government’s behalf.
If only in this one regard, our office of governor general should be treated the same way. Whoever replaces Mme. Payette, he or she should follow the real Queen’s example. When it comes to the Speech from the Throne: Just the facts, ma’am or sir. No embroidery, just the facts.