The Queen gets unexpected visitors at Balmoral

I don't know how much notice she got from Downing Street. But the Queen's holiday at Balmoral, her favourite stately home, sure has been interrupted. Quick breakfast with her family, then straight into a constitutional crisis. Boris, her latest prime minister, had done what he had hinted he would do which was to ask the Queen to suspend parliament from September 9 to October 14. So parliament comes back from holiday next week and is pretty well instantly sent back on holiday. No time to plot a vote of no-confidence in the Boris government, no time to save the country from a no-deal Brexit exit. Boris and co say the only reason for the suspension is so that the government can get together its Queen Speech policy programme which will be presented on October 14. No one is fooled by that, least of all the Queen I imagine. It's all about stopping the rebel Remainers - those who want to stay in the EU - from preventing Boris from sticking to his no-deal ultimatum and taking the UK out of the EU on October 31, come what may, deal or no deal, do or die. The Queen, poor soul, had no choice but to agree to Boris's demands (advice hohoho). If the monarch is requested by her prime minister to suspend parliament, constitutionally she has to accede. So that's what she has done. Yes, Prime Minister. But her constitutional dilemma is not over because now both Jeremy Corbyn, Labour party leader and the leader of Her Majesty's official Opposition Party, and Jo Swinson, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, have demanded to see the Queen to put their views across against suspending parliament. Queenie was looking forward to a nice quiet time at Balmoral with family and dogs, but now she and her palace advisers have to work out whether these two leaders have a right to an audience. What if Nigel Farage, leader of the gross Brexit party, also demands to see the Queen. And the Scotish Nationalists and Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein and Humpty Dumpty? She needs a rest from all these people. Her husband, Philip, will be having a fit. "Don't let those scoundrels past the gates," he will have cried. At the age of 97 he can say what he likes I guess, although of course only in private, unless some royal courtier leaks his comments to the press. Boris didn't go himself to Balmoral to speak to the Queen. He sent Old Etonian Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the House of Commons, accompanied by Commons Chief Whip Mark Spencer and House of Lords Leader Baroness Evans. With his usual upper class Etonian drawl, Rees-Mogg declared that the suspension of parliament was constitutionally absolutely fine. I recall when he and other Tory Brexiteer rebels tried to thwart the Theresa May government's EU withdrawal agreement, he denied it was a coup, just an act of parliamentary democracy. So the deed is done. The Queen approved the suspension and we're now heading into uncharted and uncharterable waters, headed by two Etonians, Boris and Jacob. Eton College will be proud.