I am informed otherwise by those who perhaps have an even greater knowledge of this place than others—it goes back a long way.
The practical situation is that if we talk about the choice of Head of State, we can make only favourable comments about the people concerned. It is not difficult to say anything favourable about our present Queen, who has had a remarkable reign and has never interfered with politics in any way. However, if we look back at her immediate predecessors—again, without being derogatory —her father had an unhappy time and her uncle was a very unsuitable monarch, and her great grandfather and various others were not suitable.
There are grave doubts about the immediate successor, which are well known. There are many doubts about him and we are not even allowed to know what he wrote in letters to Ministers a few years ago. [Interruption.] “Quite right”, says an hon. Member. Who are we to know? We are only the elected people of this country. We are the representatives of the nation, not someone who happened to be first past the bedpost some time ago. That does not qualify him to make the crucial decisions he would have take, which is common in most countries where they have an elected state and the Head of State is there to keep the Prime Minister in control. That might have been necessary in the dying days of Mrs Thatcher’s rule, the details of which I gave last week—