Elizabeth’s Finest Hour

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

What an uproar in England, where Elizabeth II is bringing charges against The Sun, famed London tabloid, for breaking the news that she backs Britain leaving the European Union. The Sun broke the story this week, reporting what it called “an extraordinary alleged bust-up” that erupted in 2011 when Her Majesty had lunch with Euro-friendly Nicholas Clegg, then her deputy prime minister. Her dressing down of the hapless Mr. Clegg left other guests stunned. Now the Queen has turned on The Sun itself.

We hope the authorities go easy on our similarly named brethren across the Pond. The whole thing could well be our fault. We don’t want to sound vainglorious, but The New York Sun was the first paper to point out that what Prime Minister Cameron and his camarilla are doing in trying to block the Brexit is flirting with lèse-majesté. This was in an editorial called “‘An Illusion of Sovereignty.’” If an independent Britain is, as Mr. Cameron suggests, but an “illusion,” where, we asked, does that leave the Crown?

When one stops to think about it, how could Elizabeth, who stands at the head of a monarchy that has been sovereign for more than a thousand years, be anything but furious — apoplectic — over what Mr. Cameron is concocting? It’s one thing to let her own subjects run her country. But letting her country be by run a politburo of socialists sitting in Brussels and composed of individuals who appear to have forsaken the very idea of national independence? It’s hard to see how she could sit for it.

So all the consternation over The Sun’s story strikes us as ringing a bit hollow. The Financial Times is huffing over the notion that Her Majesty’s complaint to the authorities over the Sun scoop has to do with its accuracy. The FT suggests that The Sun could be in a pickle because its headline, “Queen Backs Brexit,” is overstating the paper’s own story — a virtue, we don’t mind saying, that is rarely seen in the FT. We’ve no doubt that The Sun’s headline read Her Majesty just right.

Not to be misunderstood here. The New York Sun is a republican paper, meaning we believe the people are sovereign and power is ideally exercised by their representatives. There has not been a day in the existence of The New York Sun that it wavered in support the Revolution in which we broke our bonds with George III. But the aim of Samuel Adams, George Washington, and the boys was for America to be run by Americans. They had no interest in running Britain.

For our part, we see England and Scotland — all of the United Kingdom — as headwaters of liberty. Not the original headwaters (there is, after all, Sinai), but important headwaters. We see Britain’s sovereignty, its independence as vital to the prosperity of the laws that Britain’s enlightenment thinkers did so much to discover.* We have no doubt that Elizabeth comprehends that British sovereignty will be in peril if the Brexit is defeated. The Sun understood her fury. It’s Elizabeth’s finest hour.

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* To quote President Coolidge: “Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.”


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