Brexit leader Nigel Farage has slammed the “inhuman” coronavirus rules which saw the Queen, 94, left sitting masked and alone at the funeral of her husband of 73 years.
The Queen, who along with her late husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was vaccinated against the Chinese virus all the way back in January, was following social distancing rules for funerals imposed on the rest of England by Boris Johnson’s administration.
“So desperately sad to see the Queen sat alone during the funeral service,” wrote former UKIP, Brexit Party, and Reform UK party leader Farage on social media.
“These Covid rules are inhuman.”
Just 30 people attended the funeral of the Duke, Britain’s longest-serving consort, in a substantial reduction from the 800 who had originally been planned — although a substantial number of Armed Forces personnel took part in the proceedings, reflecting his status as perhaps the last major public figure to have seen action during the Second World War, when he served in the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific theatres, being mentioned in despatches and bombed during and shortly after the Battle of Cape Matapan, and present in Tokyo Bay for the surrender of the Japanese Empire which marked the conflict’s final end.
The accession of his young wife to the British throne — as well as the thrones of the various Commonwealth realms, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the likes of Jamaica and Papua New Guinea, along with several other states which have now severed their links with the British monarchy — cut short his military career, however.
The Prince gave up naval life to become, as the Queen once put it, her “strength and stay” through the long decades of her reign — as he had given up his titles as a prince of Greece and Denmark in order to marry her in the first place.
He threw himself into many roles as patron of hundreds upon hundreds of charities — the Duke of Edinburgh award being perhaps the best-known of his initiatives — and as the ceremonial head of many military units, with which he retained strong links throughout his life.
Grandson Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, flew in from America to participate in the restricted funeral, although his controversial and heavily pregnant wife Meghan remained behind, reportedly on the advice of her doctors.
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