lovegodsmashtyrants:

realsubtle:

feminhistory:

The Queen opening Parliament today. She offered her praises for Tory austerity policies saying, “Britain should live within its means.” 

The irony of watching a woman sat on a golden throne, covered in diamonds, and wearing an ermine cloak - flanked by her equally undeservedly wealthy family members - telling the nation that austerity is the way to go. 

mother jones magazine once called this vile monarch a “badass feminist” lmao as if

This indeed happened. 

Note the smug neo-colonial edge that phrase takes on in the context of the anecdote that makes up the piece’s substance. 

The Queen’s (or King’s) Speech from the Throne is composed by the Cabinet, which is to say the heads of the ruling party in Parliament. It’s a Tory speech because it’s a Tory government, if somehow the Monster Raving Loony Party had won she’d be up there solemnly proclaiming their agenda as the true path.

The monarch proclaiming this stuff as their own is essentially a ritual submission of their formally sovereign power to parliament, to do otherwise wouldn’t be a repudiation of austerity but democracy.