Elizabeth

Your Majesty,
I hope that I can be frank with you in this letter Your Majesty. I want to be polite to you, I am a polite person afterall, but I am afraid that I may have to step away from the usual protocol for letters that you receive. I hope that it is ok that from now on I shall address Your Majesty as Elizabeth and when I am talking about Your Majesty I may hazard to just say ‘you’. I have read the step by step guide to writing a letter to my head of state and I am afraid that it has left me in an awful muddle and feeling rather like I am addressing my letter to the position and not the person who is the Queen of my country.

I shall be honest Elizabeth; I am a republican. Not in the way that George W. Bush is a republican, but in that I don’t believe in unelected leadership. I can’t shake the feeling that the time for kings and queens and princes and palaces has passed. I am also a democrat, again not in the way that a person in the United States might be, but I believe in democracy, in government for the people by the people. Call me old fashioned but it just seems the best of what there is to offer at the moment. So you know a bit about me now, I’m a republican and a democrat and I’m not very good at following protocol, and you’re probably thinking ‘oh dear me he can’t be British’ but I am afraid I am indeed.
I saw you once. You walked passed my school in the year of the Golden Jubilee, I thought it was your wedding anniversary but apparently not. The school bought in massive tubs of flowers to line the corridors with, they departed just after you did. Your life must be quite a floral one, do you have a favourite variety? My great aunt didn’t like red and white flowers together because they reminded her of death, do you have any combinations that you don’t like? I’ve taken rather fondly to those yellow fields of oil seed rape that I have the pleasure to admire on long train journeys, but I don’t imagine that anyone ties them up in bunches and hands them to you when you’re visiting their town. I think that’s what I’d give you.

Every so often I think about you Elizabeth and, again excuse me for my frankness, I feel sorry for you. You, like so many millions who suffer in this world, are the result of the ‘accident of birth’. While many strive for a world where one’s place of birth and who their parents are doesn’t dictate their existence I wonder how many think about Elizabeth II. If I wanted to go for a walk tomorrow, in my bare feet, I could do so. If I wanted to on a bike ride with my girlfriend and hold hands while we rode, I could do so. If I wanted to give up my job, stop my education, sleep all day and dance all night, I could do so. I wonder if you’ve ever stayed up all night and all day just to see what its like. I wonder if you’ve had your heart broken, or broken someone elses heart?

It must be a hard job sometimes. Aside from all of the visiting, handshaking and smiling that you’re subjected to on a daily basis you also have the overall control of a population of over 120 Million people. You’re the head of a church, the head of 16 states, the head of a commonwealth and yet you are asked not to give direction but to stand and nod, even when you hate the things that you are nodding to. It is considered unconstitutional for you to vote in any elections, you can’t even have a say in who it is that you must stand in front of every year and read out a timetable of government for. I couldn’t do your job Elizabeth, there is just too much bad governance for me to be quiet about it, but you have to, even when you hate it.

I am writing to you with a request Elizabeth. I want you to resign. I want you to be the last person in this country who is denied the right to vote, I want you to be the last person who has to nod and smile at laws that they don’t agree with. If you wanted to, until you get a place sorted, you can sleep on my bed and I’ll sleep on the sofa, I know it’s no Buckingham palace but you could wake up in the morning and go for a coffee with Phillip, or a friend and not have to worry about your hat sitting at the right angle or your grandchildren dressing up as Nazis, because you’d be just like everyone else and we’re not all followed around by the press and asked to smile for photos, I assure you of that.

If you want to, just to stir things up a bit, you could sack the Prime Minister and get rid of the House of Lords before you go, then you’d have lots of accommodation offered to you I am sure.

I do hope you consider my request.

Your Majesty’s Humble and Obedient Subject (I did this bit right)


Matthew Butcher