The evening before last, my daughter-in-law treated me, at our local Arts Centre,to a special showing, direct from the National Theatre of ‘The Audience’ originally shown as a play in 2013. The Audience is centred on the weekly audiences given by Queen Elizabeth II to prime ministers from her accession in 1952 until her death. Three Prime Ministers are omitted from the play as Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath are not featured. Tony Blair originally did not feature in the play, but was added when the play transferred to Broadway, replacing James Callaghan, who was excluded from subsequent productions. Advice regarding the political and historical content of the weekly audiences was provided by Professor Vernon Bogdanor (Emeritus Professor of Government at Oxford University), the former tutor of David Cameron, Prime Minister from 2010 until 2016.The play takes place in the Queen’s audience room at Buckingham Palace. This whole production was hugely enjoyable but the audience was quite small, being of the order of about 50 or so. There was a moment in the play which made members of the audience catch its breath because it featured a British Prime Minister, in close liaison with Israel, who intended to launch a clandestine and illegal attack on a neighbouring country without any thought of reference to the United Nations or thought for the long term political consequences. This was reflecting the Suez canal debacle in which Antony Eden, the British Prime Minister abetted by the French, tried to wrest back the Suez canal from the Egyptians with disastrous consequences both in military and in diplomatic terms. Most of the script could have been written in the last day reflecting the American invasion of Iran (rather than the British invasion of Egypt) but the events closely paralleled each other with a common factor being the role of Israel intending to carry out a regional war against neighbouring hostile states. So my daughter-in-law enjoyed the performance of Helen Mirren who played the part of Queen Elizabeth in ‘The Queen’ and the dialogue between the Queen and her Prime Ministers reflected little tit-bits which has become part of the public domain of politics enhanced with some amusing written dialogue. To return to contemporary political affairs, there has been a recent opinion poll in the United states in which only 28% of these sampled supported Trump’s invasion of Iran, the remainder of the sample presumably being either opposed or with no strong opinion. There are some within the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement who feel utterly betrayed by a President who vowed to remove America from ‘forever’ wars and who promised to release the whole of the files relating to the Epstein paedophile regime. We have been informed that Trump is mentioned 2,800 times in the Epstein files but in the half so far released, Trump’s name has been systematically removed or redacted. Only the American Congress can authorise a war through a piece of legislation known as a ‘War Powers’ Act but the Congress have yet to debate the issue. How this will play out is yet to be seen but it will be interesting to see if some of the MAGA Republicans might not support Trump in any Congressional vote meaning that Trump cannot get the authorising ‘War Powers’ legislation through the Congress. Those votes which require congressional approval for military action against Iran, which were already set for midweek, will amount to a major test of loyalty for some of the GOP’s far-right flank, who have for years championed Trump’s promise of keeping America out of foreign wars. Those Republicans will be forced to take a public stance after months of simmering consternation over Trump’s legal authority as he has dramatically expanded powers abroad with Congress on the sidelines. Multiple GOP sources told CNN they believe those three Republicans — Massie, Paul and Rep. Warren Davidson, who has also publicly condemned the attack without authorisation — are likely to be an island in their own party. Even so, Democrats believe it might be enough to deliver the rebukes. ‘I do think this has a real chance of passing. And it is going to be seen like the Iraq war vote,’ Khanna added, referring to the historic 2002 vote in Congress that authorised the US invasion of Iraq. Even if the measure passes, it is subject to a presidential veto, and a two-thirds vote to override could be a challenge to reach. So while it would be unlikely to change the president’s actions, it would be seen as a stunning rebuke of the administration. The Americans are being particularly critical of the UK in refusing to give the Americans the unlimited right to launch attacks from bases not only in this country but also in Diego Garcia. Keir Starmer has made clear to the evident wrath of the American administration that support for an American war must be both legal and must be supported by a clear plan of follow-on action. To this extent, we have learned the lessons of the Iraq conflict despite the calls from the political right on the UK to give unequivocal support to Trump. It does look as though the ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the USA is now dead in political terms but some commentators observe that behind the scenes, the professionals involved in intelligence gathering, are collaborating as they always have done leaving the politicians to squabble over their heads. Janes O’Brien on LBC was incandescent with rage that anything in the British political system should give any thought to giving any kind of support to an evidently deranged Donald Trump and he based his podcast around two pieces of paper on one of which was written ‘Iraq’ and on the other ‘Trump’.
The first thing I did yesterday morning and before I attended my Pilates class was to give a final ‘tweak’ to the HTML code which is the final and most comprehensive of my photo slide display scripts. I felt the need to have a general title running across the top and I have a found a way of doing this using the top line which is used to display the photo slide number. The default colour for this is white but this is sometimes made invisible in some photographs where there is a very light background (such as wall or sky) and, in these cases, I have worked out a way of utilising a black font colour thus making the slide number and the general title visible rather than invisible. So I am very pleased with my final tweak which just involved copying one line of code into each file ‘division’ and all I have to do now is to fully document the techniques I have just utilised into the document I have written documenting the procedures I have used. This can be useful for reference as to how I managed to achieve my results and which I can consult the next time I am engaged in a similar venture.