Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is an honour to be called to speak on this sombre day. On behalf of the people of South Suffolk, I send my condolences to the royal family and His Majesty King Charles III.

Like our previous Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), I will start by making a confession. I have never had the great honour to meet the Queen in the true sense, but I did work for her once. During my student holidays, I was a kitchen porter for Gardner Merchant, and one Christmas in the early 1990s I was recruited to do a 19-hour shift at Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s staff Christmas party. It did not end well.

Luckily, no one else was around, but in the early hours, while I was concluding the tidying up, I managed to upend an entire bottle of red wine over one of the Queen’s presumably very expensive carpets. What does one do in such a situation? Total panic sets in, and fear of being sent to the Tower of London. So I did the only thing I could do. A few metres away was a very large Ming vase, and I simply relocated it. For all I know, because I have heard nothing since, it is still there. Sorry, ma’am. I pledge my loyalty to His Majesty, and I hope that he is merciful and resists the temptation to put an invoice for cleaning costs in the post.

Above all else, I want to express the great privilege I feel to have lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II and the great fortune I feel that my four children lived as Elizabethans and knew what it was like to live under this extraordinary sovereign who was deservedly loved and adored the world over for her total devotion to our nation and our Commonwealth. May she rest in peace, supported in her sleep by our eternal love and affection. God save the King.