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Sept. 10, 2022 - Rebel News
39:19
EZRA LEVANT | The Queen is dead. Long live the King! A one-on-one with Conrad Black

Conrad Black reflects on Queen Elizabeth II’s 96-year life, her unmatched modesty, and how she unified the Commonwealth—unlike fractured empires of France, Spain, or Portugal—while embodying duty since WWII. Her death triggered Operation London Bridge, with Charles III’s accession declared at the Accession Council, a 10-day ceremony culminating in a state funeral on D-Day 10 (September 19, 2022) at Westminster Abbey. Black urges Charles to avoid past controversies, like environmental stances, as he now represents all. The monarchy’s seamless transition underscores its enduring constitutional role amid global instability. [Automatically generated summary]

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One-on-One with Conrad Black 00:01:03
Hello, my rebels.
A very special show today, a one-on-one with Conrad Black, a man who knew the Queen, spent a lot of time over in the UK, not just as a press baron, but getting to know the political and, well, constitutional leaders of that country.
He'll tell us about Queen Elizabeth and her successor, King Charles.
That's all I had.
But first, let me invite you to go to RebelNewsPlus.com and subscribe to the video version of this podcast.
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All right, here's today's show.
Queen's Legacy Revealed 00:12:21
Tonight, the queen is dead.
Long live the King, a one-on-one with Conrad Black on the passing of the torch.
It's September 9th, and this is the Anzu Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Well, who better to talk about Queen Elizabeth and her successor, King Charles III, than our friend Conrad Black, a man who has spent much of his career and life and political life in the United Kingdom.
He joins us now.
Great to see you again.
Thanks for having me, Ezra.
What a momentous day.
It's like you wake up every day of your life and there's a mountain out there.
And then one day the mountain's gone and you realize it wasn't a mountain.
It was a woman made of flesh and bone.
She lived to 96, but she's gone.
There is a feeling of loss, like a family member gone.
I agree.
I think there are scores of millions of people, and I'm one of them who didn't realize until she died what a fixture she was in our lives.
I mean, not that I knew her especially well or had seen her in recent years.
That's not my point.
It's just she was a fixture in the public life of the world, and particularly of the countries she had an association with, like this one.
You know, in an era of excess, of Kim Kardashian, of Megan Markle, there she was a symbol of restraint and modesty.
And if it's possible for a queen to be humble, I would say she did it.
I mean, certain things are impossible for a queen to be.
You can't be cheap as a queen, but she wasn't lavish beyond what a queen must be.
Well, she used the instances of the British monarchy that had been translated down to her over centuries as they should be used, but she never implied or indeed personally embraced individual extravagance.
So, yes, there were the crown jewels and the royal collection and the palaces and so on, but she herself, as the country could detect, lived quite modestly.
She liked driving her own Range Rover on her property with her corgis, and she didn't dress up if she wasn't expected to for a state occasion.
And she, you're right, that she managed to play it right down the center.
She was not commonplace.
She was the queen, but she was never pompous, never ceremonious.
She had a good sense of humor, easy smile, but never frivolous or silly.
And she managed this for 70 years without a single slip.
That is the most amazing thing.
Not once in 70 years did she embarrass or annoy anyone of the scores of millions of people that she served.
Yeah.
You know, there are people who were born into wealth or high station, and it can drive them mad.
I mean, I think of Hunter Biden.
Maybe that's not a fair comparison, but his father was vice president.
He had access to power and money and fame.
And he went the wrong way.
Here is a woman who, as you point out, in 70 years of service, it didn't get to her.
She didn't become angry or frustrated.
She didn't seem like she felt trapped.
I can only imagine the temptations of that office of how it would transform you.
She seemed genuine right to the end, and maybe she was a very good actor about it, but she never seemed bored or condescending.
Never condescending.
She may well have been bored at times, but she disguised that.
That was her absolutely implacable sense of duty, which, to be fair, she got from her parents.
I mean, her father never wished to be king, never expected to be king, was pressed into the office when the powers that be in that country determined that his brother was not an appropriate person to be king.
But he served and was a beloved king because he was completely selfless, and he died early because of the burdens of that office in wartime and so on.
And the queen inherited that.
And I think it's fair to say that she was taken for granted, not disregarded, but taken for granted without particular enthusiasm for much of her reign, respected, well-liked, but not with a devoted or what should I say, adulatory following.
But since the death of Diana and of the Queen Mother, she's steadily become, I think, something to which the British public and to some extent other parts of the Commonwealth have become addicted to.
And she became such an immense presence, and her longevity created a kind of cumulative respect.
It's like a dam-bursting.
When she dies, everyone is agreed that she was really a splendid example of public service.
I think she was slightly too young to be part of what has been called the greatest generation.
But she was alive and awake to the Second World War.
Well, she got the end of it.
She was, as you know, a mechanic in the Home Guard in the last year of the war.
I just want to say the greatest generation was, as described, that it was because it had the greatest leaders.
It was really because of the leadership of Roosevelt and Churchill and the military chiefs, MacArthur and Eisenhower and Montgomery and people like this, that we got through the Depression, won the greatest just war in history with, in the West, relatively modest casualties, given the size of the war.
And then there was a tremendous prosperity after the war.
But the leaders led and the people followed.
It was the best generation in all respects at the grassroots and at the time.
That's a good point.
And she herself was a leader, even though she was a young leader.
Yes.
I only learned from Boris Johnson's wonderful eulogy, which will play into that when she was 14, she gave a message to other 14, other young people that will get through this.
And then the famous pictures of her being a mechanic.
I mean, the idea of a princess getting mucky with oil and grease and stuff.
And she's still, I mean, right up to last week, she could still repair a car, you know, which I couldn't do.
I don't know if you could.
And I think that gave her an affection for soldiers and the British Army forever.
Look, she had it from when her father became the king.
And if you look at the news film of her accompanying her parents in the naval review at Spithead, just outside Southampton, in 1937 with then Lord Mountbatten, And he would point out to her the battleship Texas representing the US and the Graf Schpey representing the Germans and so on.
And you could see that she was taking it all in.
And she had this wonderful combination of being serious without being either pompous or grim.
So she took it all in, but in an amicable way.
Yeah.
You know, there was a sense of humor that she had, and of course, her late husband had a wonderful sense of humor.
He was politically incorrect sometimes.
I want to play for you a short clip that I just saw yesterday on British TV.
I mean, it's almost too much to believe that an American tourist was in Scotland and encountered her and someone else and said, oh, you're from around here.
Have you ever met the Queen?
Let me just play for you.
This clip.
It's too fun.
I want to believe this is true.
It's almost too much to believe this isn't true, but I can believe it.
Here, take a quick look at this.
And one of the picnics I went out with her, we had a lovely picnic and a lovely chat.
And then we went for a little walk, just the two of us.
And normally on these picnic sites, you meet nobody, but there was two hikers coming towards us, and the Queen would always stop and say hello.
And it was two Americans on a walking holiday.
And it was clear from the moment that we first stopped, they hadn't recognised the Queen, which is fine.
And the American gentleman was telling the Queen where he came from, where they were going to next, and where they'd been to in Britain.
And I could see it coming, and sure enough, he said to Her Majesty, and where do you live?
And she said, well, I live in London, but I've got a holiday home just the other side of the hills.
And he said, well, how often have you been coming up here?
Oh, she said, I've been coming up here ever since I was a little girl, so over 80 years.
And you could see the clogs thick.
And he said, well, if you've been coming up here for 80 years, you must have met the Queen.
I'm as quick as a flash.
She says, well, I haven't, but Dick here meets her regularly.
So the guy said to me, oh, you've met the Queen, what's she like?
And because I was with her a long time and I knew I could pull her leg, I said, oh, she can be very cantankerous at times, but she's got a lovely sense of humor.
Anyway, the next thing I knew, this guy comes around, put his arm around my shoulder, and before I could see what was happening, he gets his camera, gives it to the Queen, and says, can you take a picture of the two of us?
Anyway, we swapped places and I took a picture of them with the Queen and we never let on and we waved goodbye and then Her Majesty said to me, I'd love to be a fly in the wall when he shows those photographs to friends in America and hopefully someone tells him who I am.
She had a sense of humor and I mean you could see that her butler or aide, whoever that was, said, well, she's cantankerous but has a sense of humor.
I think you have to.
And I don't think that she was self-there's a kind of humor that everyone loves, self-deprecating humor.
I don't think a queen can or should be self-deprecating because to deprecate herself would be to deprecate her personification of the state.
So I don't think a queen can mock herself in the same way.
It's certainly more comfortable.
But I think that she managed to be as funny as a queen should ever be.
And I think her husband filled the gaps.
Yeah, yeah.
No, and I agree.
I mean, I was asked a few things the day she died, some reminiscences.
One example I gave that, if I may, was when I was the honorary colonel of the Governor General's Foot Guards in the late 90s, and the Queen was in Canada, and she was giving us a renewal of colours.
So it was a regimental event.
The temperature was 99 degrees Fahrenheit in Ottawa.
And the uniform I had was for winter events, and Canadian military uniforms aren't very stylish at the best of times.
And so there I was doing my best not to perspire.
And she said, I'm not used to seeing you dressed like this.
I used to see her in London from time to time, just in the normal course, you know.
And so I thought of when Elvis Presley met President Nixon and he was wearing a brown satin suit, and Mr. Nixon said, You're rather flamboyantly dressed.
So I took Elvis' line and I said, Well, Your Majesty, you dress for your job, and I dress for mine.
He said, Ah, but I have a better costumer.
Yeah, you know, she was quick with the quip.
I mean, she certainly was.
Well, you know, I mentioned Boris Johnson's eulogy, and Boris Johnson has his flaws, but the man has a way with words.
Oh, yeah, and he was shabbily treated, and he'll be back, too.
Not necessarily as Prime Minister, but he'll be back as a force in the politics.
Well, I mean, he's clearly still a young, young man in politics.
And I think he rose to the occasion yesterday.
I want to play, and please stay with me for eight minutes.
This is an eight-minute clip, and I do want to play it now.
And I want you to stick with it, and that won't be hard for you to do.
It'll get your attention in the first 30 seconds.
Watch this eight-minute clip, and then when we come back, I'm going to ask Conrad Black about the new king.
It's still not even, I'm not used to saying that, you know, all these things like the court of kings bench in Canada.
We call it the court of Queen.
And we go back to singing God Save the King.
Yeah, it's going to take a while to get used to that.
So, watch this wonderful speech in the House of Commons by Boris Johnson, and don't you go away.
Come right back here.
Take a look.
Elizabeth the Great's Legacy 00:15:07
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I hope the House will not mind if I begin with a personal confession.
A few months ago, the BBC came to see me to talk about Her Majesty the Queen, and we sat down and the cameras started rolling.
They requested that I should talk about her in the past tense.
I'm afraid I simply choked up and I couldn't go on.
I'm really not easily moved to tears.
But I was so overcome with sadness that I had to ask them to go away.
And I know that today there are countless people in this country and around the world who have experienced the same sudden access of unexpected emotion.
And I think millions of us are trying to understand why we are feeling this deep and personal and almost familial sense of loss.
Perhaps it's partly that she's always been there, a changeless human reference point in British life, the person who, all the surveys say, appears most often in our dreams, so unvarying in her pole star radiance that we have perhaps been lulled into thinking that she might be in some way eternal.
But I think our shock is keener today because we are coming to understand in her death the full magnitude of what she did for us all.
And think of what we asked that 25-year-old woman all those years ago to be the person so globally trusted that her image should be on every unit of our currency,
every postage stamp, the person in whose name all justice is dispensed in this country, every law passed, to whom every minister of the crown swears allegiance, and for whom every member of our armed services is pledged, if necessary, to lay down their lives.
Think what we asked of her in that moment, not just to be the living embodiment in her DNA of the history and continuity and unity of this country,
but to be the figurehead of our entire system, the keystone in the vast arch of the British state, a role that only she could fulfil because in the brilliant and durable bargain of the constitutional monarchy,
only she could be trusted to be above any party political or commercial interest and to incarnate impartially the very concept and essence of the nation.
Think what we asked of her and think what she gave.
She showed the world not just how to reign over a people, she showed the world how to give, how to love and how to serve.
And as we look back at that vast arc of service, its sheer duration is almost impossible to take in.
She was the last living person in British public life to have served in uniform in the Second World War.
She was the first female member of the royal family in a thousand years to serve full-time in the armed forces.
And that impulse to do her duty carried her right through into her 10th decade to the very moment in Balmoral, as my Right Honourable French has said, only three days ago, when she saw off her 14th Prime Minister and welcomed her 15th.
And I can tell you, in that audience, she was as radiant and as knowledgeable and as fascinated by politics as ever I can remember and as wise in her advice as anyone I know, if not wiser.
And over that extraordinary span of public service, with her naturally retentive and inquiring mind, I think, and doubtless many of the 15 would agree, that she became the greatest statesman and diplomat of all.
And she knew instinctively how to cheer up the nation, how to lead a celebration.
I remember her innocent joy more than 10 years ago after the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, when I told her that the leader of a friendly Middle Eastern country seemed actually to believe that she had jumped out of a helicopter in a pink dress and parachuted into the stadium.
And I remember her equal pleasure on being told just a few weeks ago that she had been a smash hit in her performance with Paddington Bear.
And perhaps more importantly, she knew how to keep us going when times were toughest.
In 1940, when this country and this democracy faced the real possibility of extinction, she gave a broadcast, aged only 14, that was intended to reassure the children of Britain.
She said then, we know, every one of us, that in the end, all will be well.
She was right.
And she was right again in the darkest days of the COVID pandemic when she came on our screens and told us that we would meet again.
And we did.
And I know I speak for other prime ministers.
When I say ex-prime ministers, when I say that she helped to comfort and guide us, as well as the nation, because she had the patience and the sense of history to see that troubles come and go and that disasters are seldom as bad as they seem.
And it was that indomitability, that humor, that work ethic, and that sense of history, which together made her Elizabeth the Great.
And when I call her that, I should add one Elizabeth the Great.
I should add one final quality, of course, which was her humility.
Her single bar electric fire Tupperware using refusal to be grand.
And unlike us politicians, with our outriders and our armor-plated convoys, I can tell you, as a direct eyewitness, that she drove herself in her own car with no detectives and no bodyguard, bouncing at alarming speed over the Scottish landscape to the total amazement of the ramblers and the tourists we encountered.
And it is that indomitable spirit with which she created the modern constitutional monarchy.
An institution so strong and so happy and so well understood, not just in this country, but in the Commonwealth and around the world, that the succession has already seamlessly taken place.
And I believe she would regard it as her own highest achievement that her son, Charles III, will clearly and amply follow her own extraordinary standards of duty and service.
And the fact that today we can say with such confidence, God save the king, is a tribute to him, but above all, to Elizabeth the Great, who worked so hard for the good of her country, not just now, but for generations to come.
That is why we mourn her so deeply.
And it is in the depths of our grief that we understand why we loved her so much.
Well, you know what?
He nailed it, and it was touching.
And Elizabeth the Great, I think it's true.
I mean, she wasn't a conqueror, really.
She was not in the age of conquering.
But I think she was everything she should have been, a diplomat, an encourager.
In tough times, she felt like a place of solace.
I don't know.
I can't believe I'm a little bit sentimental about it.
Maybe it's just for the bygone era.
She represents a wonderful century that's gone.
Look, when a person of that superlative quality of competence and dutifulness goes after such a long time, you know you're not going to replace her easily, so it's quite natural to feel the nostalgia.
Look, let me just say one thing on a comparative basis.
She made a tremendous effort with the Commonwealth.
I mean, she's really been the first Queen of the Commonwealth.
Her father was there briefly, and then he died prematurely, just five years after the independence of India.
And look, the Commonwealth, as we all know, has its shortcomings, but it does sort of work.
And the advanced countries within the Commonwealth are in general quite helpful to the developing countries.
And, you know, there are problems at times, but in general, it coheres and it achieves something in the world.
And I don't want to be unkind, but if you compare that to the former empires of the other European colonial powers, it shows what an achievement the Queen has had, because she really has made the Commonwealth the positive force that it is.
That's a great point.
I mean, the French have kept it together a little bit, but just by sending a thousand paratroopers here and there to prevent complete disorder.
But the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Spanish, it's a shambles.
And there's no relationship at all with the former parent country.
I mean, she has done that, and it is an achievement.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Well, let's talk about the new king and and it'll take me.
It's like when you win the new year, you sign your new checks.
Are you saying 2022 or 2023?
Except for it's 96 years of saying queen.
So now we say king again.
And this isn't the day to be petty or political.
I hope he rises to the occasion.
I think he comes in on a tremendous wave of goodwill.
Normally, when you get a person coming into an office, whether it's a new prime minister or president or monarch, whatever it is, people are disposed, as they should be, to hope for the best, give him or her a chance, and just hope it goes well.
And I think he will benefit from that.
I think he'll be, for what my two cents are worth, I think he'll be fine as long as he remembers that he is now representing everyone and not just giving his own opinions.
If he doesn't moderate the sharpness of some of his opinions expressed quite reasonably in the sense that he had every right to it when he was the Prince of Wales, particularly in areas of environment and so on, when people are suffering terribly from increasing prices of gasoline and home field and so on.
If he plays it carefully and diplomatically in that area, I think he'll be fine.
He'll be very conscientious.
He'll work hard.
He's a very agreeable personality.
He's an intelligent man.
I think it'll be fine.
But I just hope he doesn't backslide and forget himself and say things that are bound to offend at least half the people.
Yeah.
And fair enough.
I mean, he's had to wait a while.
And so, as you say, it's understandable for a man to have opinions about things.
And in some quarters, having the conventional opinion on global warming or whatever he's talking about, it almost seems apolitical, although it's not.
It's never apolitical.
But look, he's been telling us for 30 years that we had 10 years of the world, you know, Venice would be underwater.
He said a lot of harebrained things, but so did a lot of people.
It doesn't matter as long as he doesn't repeat them now.
Right.
I hope you're right.
And I think you're right.
If he is no longer, well, I'm a prince, but if he's a king for everyone, then hopefully he'll leave that behind him.
And how about the generation behind him?
I understand that William will be the new Prince of Wales.
I understand.
I think he's now, as of today, I think he's the Duke of Cornwall.
The Prince of Wales, it's a formal investiture in deference to the Welsh, you know, but I think that can't be far off.
Right.
And you know what?
He gives me a little bit of hope, too.
Yeah, well, he seems to be, look, I don't know, I've never met him, but he seems to be a good, reasonable, nice guy.
I mean, you don't need Disraeli or Churchill or Thatcher as the monarch.
You need someone like the late Queen or George VI.
Well, speaking of, I mean, Disraeli was the prime minister, of course.
There is a new prime minister in the UK who I think was the 15th prime minister to serve under.
That is right, but she also knew a number of the previous ones.
She knew Mr. Attlee, who was leader of the opposition when she became queen.
She knew Mr. Chamberlain.
She knew Mr. Baldwin.
So, yes, the 15th while she was queen.
Do you know anything about Liz Truss?
I don't know.
Yeah, much I do.
I do.
I had dinner with her a few years ago.
Look, I think she's off to a brilliant start.
She's stylishly, she's quite different from what we've seen.
She's got, you know, the British are quite perceptive in matters of socioeconomic origin, you know, and she's got an accent that is a lower socioeconomic echelon of the middle class than Mrs. Thatcher's, Lady Thatcher's.
She's got a bit of a working-class accent.
She went to a state school, but to Oxford University.
She has slightly colorful romantic history, not scandalous, but colorful, and the people like that.
And I think she's very politically astute.
I mean, she's only in her 40s.
She's in that great office.
And she stood for the leadership of her party.
First of all, she did not double-cross Boris, which puts her in a minority in the former government, and is a great credit to her.
And maybe one of the reasons she won, by the way.
Could well be.
And secondly, she ran on a straight Thatcher platform.
Even before she was invested by the late queen with the seals of office, she rolled back the anti-fracking rules.
One of Boris's few real failings in policy terms, I think, was he went full metal jacket for the more draconian version of the Green Terror.
And she's saying, we're not having any of that.
Mr. Trudeau Speaks French 00:04:55
That was hard to do.
It looked hard to do because all the polite people, the fancy people, were against it.
But when you've got the kind of energy prices skyrocketing there, she knew where the real people were.
Oh, yeah.
That was a test.
It's much worse there than it is here.
Oh, by far.
You know, in a way, it reminded me of that key moment for Reagan when he said to the air traffic controllers who went on a wildcat illegal strike, he said, you go back to work or I'm going to bring in the military air traffic.
And they said, oh, he's going to blink.
He didn't.
He sacked them all.
And then he said, I didn't fire them.
They quit.
Yeah.
And that moment was a test.
And even I understood later, I think it was in John O'Sullivan's book, that that matter was perceived by the Soviets.
Oh, we have a different man on our hands than Jimmy Carter.
It wasn't just about air traffic control.
It was, does he mean what he says?
And when Liz Truss, one of her very first things, says, I'm going to unban fracking, which was like an untouchable third rail of environmentalism, that says the woman is not to be trifled with.
Oh, yeah.
Very interesting.
And she's capping the gasoline bill, too, the cost of tank of petrol, as they call it.
And that can be hazardous.
You can end up having the taxpayers pay quite a bill for that.
But I mean, she's doing what needs to be done, I think.
And again, I think we all wish an incoming prime minister in any country best of luck.
Well, these are interesting days.
Let me ask you.
I mean, I don't want to pry, but I know you, because you spent so much time over there and you operated in high circles.
I'm not a still member of their parliament.
Are there any anecdotes that you, I mean, you told us the one about, you know, she's seeing you in your winter costume in the summer and the little shanter.
She was the colonel-in-chief.
She was a more impressive-looking colonel than I was.
Do you have any other reminiscences like that?
Because that's a great story.
Yeah, she said some very amusing things if she was confident of the discretion of the people she was talking to.
But some of them, I would be violating the discretion.
She respected me if I said them.
But when General de Gaulle made a state visit to Britain in 1960, they pulled out all the stops for him.
The Queen met him.
And she spoke French.
Yes, she did.
And Olba spoke French to her French-Canadian prime ministers here, Mr. Saint Laurent, Mr. Trudeau, both Mr. Trudeau's, and Cretia.
And she was chatting with him, and it's hard to render this as humorously as she said it, but there was a discussion about whether he'd come by cross-channel on a ship and then by train or come by air.
And he insisted on coming by air.
And anyway, she had a sort of funny way of saying to him, you know, Margeneral, we know, of course, of your immense powers and capabilities, but we didn't know that you could control the weather, too.
They'd said it could be stormy weather.
He's sort of rubbish.
I'm taking the plan.
I mean, to go be concerned with turbulence in the air.
But I'm not doing it justice.
The way she said it was quite amusing, and he responded to it in a way that showed that.
I could say a few other things, but they would offend people who are alive.
Fair enough.
I won't press you.
Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you, and it'll be interesting to see what changes there are.
If anything, part of the grand bargain of a constitutional monarchy is that the power is in reserve.
It's never, it's that it like a mountain, it's in the background, and you never need to call on the mountain if everything's fine.
And in 96 years, I guess it was fine enough.
Within the UK, there were certainly problems in what is now the Commonwealth.
But even in the UK, look, there were some serious problems at times.
But you can't avoid that.
Look, I think some monarchs get a long way because of their style, Edward VII, for example.
And I think Charles may be in that category.
He dresses very well, and he's interested in architecture and design in a way that I don't think her mother was especially.
And he could build on that, I think.
And he'll have a style that'll be different, but I think he'll be fine.
I don't mean that in a condescending way.
I'm one of his subjects.
But I have confidence that he will do well.
All right.
Queen's Coffin Lies in Westminster Hall 00:05:51
Well, from your Mote the God's ears, there you have it.
Conrad Black talking about the passing of the torch from Queen Elizabeth to King Charles.
Stay with us.
My final thoughts are next.
You know, of course, we are subjects of the Queen.
Sometimes we forget that she was the Queen of Canada.
If you'd doubt it, look at your passport, your stamps, your dollar bills, or dollar.
I guess we don't have any dollar bills anymore.
It'll be a while to get used to, but the whole thing about the monarchy is its continuity, its permanence.
So hopefully King Charles will be a great king.
I mean, we're counting on it.
It's a personification of the promise of our Constitution.
That's it for today.
I hope you enjoyed our week's coverage.
We're going to be in Ottawa for the decision in the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership race.
We're going to be very interesting.
We're going to have live streams from there.
I'll be there with a bit of a team.
And, you know, the battle never stops.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
Buckingham Palace has announced the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
After the news broke about Queen Elizabeth II's death at age 96, one of the questions that keeps coming up is, what now happens now that the Queen is dead?
This video is intended for people who don't know the protocol or Operation London Bridge as it's called, also referred to as D-Day after the Queen's passing and what happens next.
So to begin, what is Operation London Bridge?
Well this is a code phrase known as London Bridge is down and this is used to when the Queen Elizabeth II dies.
It is a complete periodic plan that details her state funeral and this plan was actually made as early as the 1960s and has had changes and various updates throughout the decades.
As the Queen passed on the 8th of September 2022, D-Day as it's called begins on the 9th of September where Charles and Camilla will return from Balmora Castle to London where the king will make a televised address to the nation and pay tribute to the Queen.
And this ceremony will last 10 days.
After the first day of D-Day, the coming days after will be referred as plus the number of days that have passed since her death.
On the first day there'll be a meeting of the accession council at 10 o'clock in the morning.
This will include senior government figures and members of the Privy Council as Charles will be proclaimed or crowned king.
Normal parliamentary business will suspend and members of parliament will meet and give tributes in the House of Commons.
On day two of D-Day the Queen's coffin will be brought to Buckingham Palace.
Now the Queen died in Balmoral Castle which is up in Scotland so her body will be taken to London by train and if this isn't possible the coffin will travel by plane.
On day three the new King Charles will start a tour of the UK and his first stop will be up in Scotland to visit the Scottish Parliament and attend services there and in Edinburgh.
Next will be Northern Ireland and whilst Charles is starting his tour rehearsals will commence for the procession of the Queen's coffin from Buckingham Palace to Westminster.
On D-Day 5 a service will take place at Westminster Hall where the Queen will lie in state for three whole days.
Members of the public will be able to view the Queen's coffin which will lie in the centre of the Westminster Hall.
On D-Day 7 Charles will then visit Wales and visit the Welsh Parliament and D-Day 8 and 9 will be the days leading up to the final day, D-Day 10, which is the lead up to the funeral where it's projected that hundreds of thousands of people will be in the capital London.
And finally D-Day 10, the state funeral for the Queen will take place at Westminster Abbey where this will be broadcasted around the world and a two minute silence will be held across the country.
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