This Sceptred Isle
May 7, 2025 19:33:46 GMT
#1
Post by Josephine Somerset on May 7, 2025 19:33:46 GMT
 ∾ Goldsborough Hall ∾ Etiam Si Omnes, Ego Non |
{ This speech was delivered from the front steps of Goldsborough Hall, Goldsborough in the County of North Yorkshire. }
This Sceptred Isle
Wednesday, 7 May 2025
Lady Josephine Carew, The Marchioness of Harewood
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This Sceptred Isle
Wednesday, 7 May 2025
My Fellow Britons All,
The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the third age by some, an Age yet to come, an age long pass, a wind rose in the village of Goldsborough. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
This past March, I retired from elected politics, taking much needed rest and time to help plan and attend the Coronation of His Majesty The King, rest, and recuperate from a long period of service to the British people. At the end of my tenure as Prime Minister of Great Britain, I felt that I accomplished everything I could and under water with a stagnating region that was busy with real-life. The era of the happy warrior was ending and it was time to set down, in the Voltairean sense, my pen of war. The age of the new generation had come.
Over the past couple weeks and months, I have realised that I left my duty unfinished — to modernise the Empire of Great Britain for an ever-changing world. To bring the Imperial Family from out of the isolation of the Anglosphere and into the light of the international community.
Initially, I felt I had made the right decision. The Viscount Kirkwall was a wonderful successor as the Prime Minister and, from 10 Downing Street, he assembled an incredible cabinet. He was doing the work that was desperately needed to be done and he was able to inspire the region into a forward momentum. However, with the advent of the Second Warwick Premiership, I feel we have lost the plot, despite a government filled with capable and exceptional ministers.
The 39th Premiership has seen a regression in attitudes and ethos that were laid down during the Kirkwall Ministry. We have seen a Cabinet reshuffled before being appointed, ministers assigned to portfolios that do not best align with their strengths, an attempt to prosecute a journalist before a thorough investigation, a steadfast belief in violating journalistic integrity, stepping away from The Path Forward in the Home Office, disregarding the vote of the people in the public university, abandoning the flexible economy compromise, distrusting and accusing civil servants, lacking an established foreign policy, and even allowing the Business of the Month poll to be abused.
What we are seeing is a rapid degradation of His Majesty's Government. Not because its ministers are incapable, but because the Empire of Great Britain lacks a vision and is set in ways that should live in the elders days alone. We need to modernise and set ourselves up as a dedicated NationStates region interested in the world around them, rather than merely the world we have created offsite.
This sceptred isle needs to break the girdle of isolation, a pernicious attitude which has choked the life out of us and estranged us from the wider world. We have been stuck in a cycle and I mean to break it. The Empire of Great Britain has for a long time now operated without direction and with the attitude of "just because". I am sick and tired of "just because", "it won't hurt", and "why not". To quote Brandon Sanderson, in The Way of Kings, "Somebody has to start. Somebody has to step forward and do what is right, because it is right. If nobody starts, then others cannot follow."
Whether I am called the Iron Lady, the Boudica of the North Riding, or the Lady of the Lampstand, it matters not to me. It is time to fight for the Imperial Family to which we all belong. To charge forth, fey with the battle-fury running like new fire in our veins. To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, out of doubt, out of dark, to the Isle's rising; to be singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
This past March, I retired from elected politics, taking much needed rest and time to help plan and attend the Coronation of His Majesty The King, rest, and recuperate from a long period of service to the British people. At the end of my tenure as Prime Minister of Great Britain, I felt that I accomplished everything I could and under water with a stagnating region that was busy with real-life. The era of the happy warrior was ending and it was time to set down, in the Voltairean sense, my pen of war. The age of the new generation had come.
Over the past couple weeks and months, I have realised that I left my duty unfinished — to modernise the Empire of Great Britain for an ever-changing world. To bring the Imperial Family from out of the isolation of the Anglosphere and into the light of the international community.
Initially, I felt I had made the right decision. The Viscount Kirkwall was a wonderful successor as the Prime Minister and, from 10 Downing Street, he assembled an incredible cabinet. He was doing the work that was desperately needed to be done and he was able to inspire the region into a forward momentum. However, with the advent of the Second Warwick Premiership, I feel we have lost the plot, despite a government filled with capable and exceptional ministers.
The 39th Premiership has seen a regression in attitudes and ethos that were laid down during the Kirkwall Ministry. We have seen a Cabinet reshuffled before being appointed, ministers assigned to portfolios that do not best align with their strengths, an attempt to prosecute a journalist before a thorough investigation, a steadfast belief in violating journalistic integrity, stepping away from The Path Forward in the Home Office, disregarding the vote of the people in the public university, abandoning the flexible economy compromise, distrusting and accusing civil servants, lacking an established foreign policy, and even allowing the Business of the Month poll to be abused.
What we are seeing is a rapid degradation of His Majesty's Government. Not because its ministers are incapable, but because the Empire of Great Britain lacks a vision and is set in ways that should live in the elders days alone. We need to modernise and set ourselves up as a dedicated NationStates region interested in the world around them, rather than merely the world we have created offsite.
This sceptred isle needs to break the girdle of isolation, a pernicious attitude which has choked the life out of us and estranged us from the wider world. We have been stuck in a cycle and I mean to break it. The Empire of Great Britain has for a long time now operated without direction and with the attitude of "just because". I am sick and tired of "just because", "it won't hurt", and "why not". To quote Brandon Sanderson, in The Way of Kings, "Somebody has to start. Somebody has to step forward and do what is right, because it is right. If nobody starts, then others cannot follow."
Whether I am called the Iron Lady, the Boudica of the North Riding, or the Lady of the Lampstand, it matters not to me. It is time to fight for the Imperial Family to which we all belong. To charge forth, fey with the battle-fury running like new fire in our veins. To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, out of doubt, out of dark, to the Isle's rising; to be singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
Dutifully and Hopefully Yours,
Lady Josephine Carew, The Marchioness of Harewood
LG LP GCB GCVO CH PC LHC KC LLB
