Remember last year when Xi Jinping paid a state visit to the UK, riding with the Queen in the royal carriage and chugging down some ale at David Cameron’s favorite pub? Didn’t it seem like everyone involved had a jolly good time?
Lies! All lies! The sordid truth of that official visit was exposed by some off-hand remarks made by Queen Elizabeth II herself at a garden party yesterday.
The Queen, holding a fabulous pink umbrella, was filmed having a chat with Metropolitan police commander, Lucy D’Orsi, who told the monarch that she had been in charge of security during the Chinese visit. “Oh, bad luck,” the Queen sighed.
D’Orsi described the visit as “quite a testing time,” before then recounting an incident in which unnamed Chinese officials “walked out of Lancaster House and told me that the trip was off.”
“They were very rude to the Ambassador,” the Queen replied, referring to the first female British Ambassador to China, Barbara Woodward. D’Orsi agreed: “They were, well, yes she was, Barbara was with me and they walked out on both of us.”
“Extraordinary!” the Queen exclaimed.
This obviously isn’t a good sign for the “Golden Age of UK-China relations,” foretold by Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne, which supposedly started with Xi’s visit last October. The BBC reports that when asked if that “Golden Era” still continues today, a government spokesperson opted to neither confirm nor deny.
Meanwhile, a report of the comments carried by BBC World News was blanked out in China.
At the time, both sides declared that the visit was “very successful.” The Queen herself said that it was “a milestone in the unprecedented year of co-operation and friendship between the United Kingdom and China.”
And now we have another milestone. We bet that the Queen really wishes that she could get that hand-tooled edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets back from Xi, though at least she has those Peng Liyuan albums to take out her royal anger on. Or she can just post on her parody Twitter account:
Well they were. https://t.co/sfCzzF2NEt
— Elizabeth Windsor (@Queen_UK) May 11, 2016
The Queen may have caught her case of the gaffes from David Cameron, who while chatting with the British monarch and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby at Buckingham Palace yesterday boasted about the quality of attendees he has coming to an anti-corruption summit in London later this week, seemingly unaware of the cameras that recorded him saying:
‘We have got the Nigerians – actually we have got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain.’
He went on: ‘Nigeria and Afghanistan – possibly two of the most corrupt countries in the world.’
Watch Queen Elizabeth follow Cameron’s example below:
But hey, let’s just try to remember the good times:
RIP: The Golden Age of UK-China Relations (2015-2016).
