If this Royal exposé is supposed to make the Queen look bad, it will fail

Having read the weekend’s coverage of Endgame, Omid Scobie’s new book about the Royal family, loyal subjects may well fear that it’s little more than a hatchet job. Apparently it depicts the King as a spoiled baby who insists that staff iron his shoelaces and squeeze out his toothpaste for him. Portrayals of the Prince and Princess of Wales – and pretty much everyone else apart from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – are said to be similarly unflattering.

What puzzled me, though, were certain claims that the book supposedly makes about the Queen. Her Majesty, it seems, cannot abide “wokery”. Indeed, the book alleges, she “rolls her eyes when subjects such as gender identity or veganism come up”.

Sorry, is this meant to make the Queen look bad? If so, it’s unlikely to succeed. If anything, in fact, it will make her more popular.

To earnest young fans of the Sussexes – who are, I suspect, Endgame’s target audience – gender identity and veganism are no doubt topics that must always be treated with the utmost reverence and solemnity. Most other people, however, will surely feel that eye-rolling is an entirely acceptable response.

So, if that’s what the Queen does, the news will scarcely damage her public standing. Instead, it will remind people why they like her. She has always come across as someone who has a mischievous sense of humour, and abhors self-righteousness. Indicating a certain weariness over the topics of gender and veganism, therefore, would be wholly in keeping with this image. Were she suddenly to start gushing about the wonders of soy milk, and announce that her new pronouns are they/them, Royal staff would either fear that Her Majesty had had a funny turn, or assume that it was part of some mysterious practical joke.

According to Vanity Fair magazine, “legend has it” that in 1970, when a 24-year-old Camilla Shand first met the 22-year-old Prince Charles, she said to him: “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather, so how about it?” I don’t know whether this legend is true. But I hope it is. Those certainly are not the words of a woman who would drearily wring her hands over the evils of cisgender heteronormativity or global meat production.

While we’re on the subject, incidentally, I don’t believe that the Sussexes are vegan. If they were, they would surely have mentioned it. Vegans always do.

Great news for the Left: another excuse to denounce the Empire

Of the modern Left’s many obsessions, arguably the greatest are the British Empire and climate change. How exciting, therefore, to hear that the two are actually linked. Because, according to a new report, the British Empire is in fact to blame for climate change.

“It is well known that colonial powers extracted natural resources from colonised lands to support their economic and political power,” says Dr Simon Evans, of the environmental website Carbon Brief, “but the link to historical emissions had never been quantified until now. Our findings reinforce the significant historical responsibility of developed countries for current warming.”

In other words: Britain isn’t just responsible for its own carbon emissions. It’s also responsible for the carbon emissions of the many countries it used to rule.

This news will be enthusiastically welcomed by British progressives, for whom there is no greater pleasure in life than denouncing their own country’s past. Personally, though, I’m not convinced that, on this occasion at least, the Empire is to blame. If our ancestors had simply put their feet up at home, and resisted the temptation to go out and conquer a quarter of the Earth’s surface, global carbon emissions would not necessarily have been lower. Sooner or later, all those uncolonised countries would surely have had the wit to start extracting their natural resources for themselves. So, as far as the environment was concerned, the outcome would ultimately have been the same.

Still, if we’re determined to blame Britain for the whole world’s ills, we can always condemn our countless great inventors and engineers, instead. If it hadn’t been for Watt, Stephenson, Trevithick, Faraday and others, there would have been no Industrial Revolution, with all its attendant smoke, smog and other pollutants. So when you think about it, climate change is really their fault. Stupid geniuses.

Frankly, though, I would go back even farther in time. Because in my view, the blame for climate change lies squarely with cavemen. After all, they discovered fire. And the wheel. Without either of those calamitous innovations, mankind would have produced barely any pollution at all.

If only we were all still shivering naked in caves, with a life expectancy of 23. We’d be so much better off.

Way of the World is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday