Roseanna and the Queen. There’s a strange connection between these two slightly lofty, distant, elegant women, gleefully set at loggerheads last week by a leaked Home Office email and a panting male press core. Although the Environment Minister is young enough to be her daughter, Australian enough (by upbringing) to have the manners of Phil the Greek, and “common” enough to have worked as a lawyer all her non-parliamentary life, Roseanna Cunningham, like the Queen, is a powerful female presence. Neither woman is exactly clubbable, but both command attention.
The prospect of one attempting to sabotage the safety of the other appears to have titillated the excitable gentlemen of the Scottish press in the manner of an upmarket mud-wrestling competition. Or perhaps, subliminally, as a rerun of the last cross-border battle when an independent-minded Scotswoman was vanquished by a vigorous English Elizabeth. Add to this heady mix, Ms Cunningham’s well known opposition to monarchy and a feminist republican plot of Fawkesian dimensions appears to be unfolding.
Until you read the details.