Ian Fantom – Oct 6, 2020

The Queen has uncharacteristically taken sides in the ‘fake news’ controversy concerning the mainstream media in the UK. In a letter to the News Media Association, she wrote of the “important public service the established news media provides”, stressing that it is vital to to have “trusted, reliable sources of information, particularly at a time when there are so many sources competing for our attention” – an obvious swipe at the alternative media, much of which has been contesting mainstream stories over Coronavirus.

The letter was reported widely by the mainstream media – though it is not to be found on the Queen’s official website. The most complete text I found was on the unofficial royal website Royal Central. I enquired, and they told me that was the complete text. It ran:

The Covid-19 pandemic has once again demonstrated what an important public service the established news media provides, both nationally and regionally.

As our world has changed dramatically, having trusted, reliable sources of information, particularly at a time when there are so many sources competing for our attention, is vital.

The efforts of the news media to support communities throughout the United Kingdom during the pandemic have been invaluable – whether through fundraising, encouraging volunteering, or providing a lifeline for the elderly and vulnerable to the outside world.

They stated that the message had been released to mark Journalism Matters Week.

Journalism Matters Week

Journalism Matters Week runs from Monday 5 October to Friday 9 October, and they say that the week “highlights the vital role trusted news media journalism plays in our democratic society”. Under the heading ‘Making a Difference’, they wrote, “During Journalism Matters, an online vote is being held to determine which local and national campaigns from the past year are the public’s favourites”. They give a selection of twenty-three national stories and twenty local stories, but none of these is about key issues, such as those relating to Coronavirus or loss of parliamentary democracy. Readers are given just two days to cast their votes. This is so obviously a propaganda campaign to guide people into supporting the mainstream media, with no room for criticism. Thursday’s topic is announced as: “Journalists highlight how trusted news is produced for #trustednewsday”. I searched for the hashtag, and retrieved a plethora of articles about it in local newspapers all over the country. The first one retrieved was from the Oxford Mail, headed ‘Trusted News Day – How we beat the surge in fake news’, and was dated May 2017. They present a chronology of one day in the life of a journalist. At 9:28 they write, “What is fake news? Well, this man has brought the phrase right into the spotlight over the past 12 months”, followed by a picture of Donald Trump. Six minutes later they wrote: “The proliferation of fake news goes hand in hand with the rise in popularity of social media, with articles spread on social channels with no basis in truth, that seek to influence political thought or further an agenda or ideology”. And so it goes on. This is obviously an ongoing national propaganda campaign. The more my own local newspaper published double-page spreads telling us how truthful they were the less I was believing them. The Friday in the Journalism Matters Week is dedicated to ‘Making a Difference winners announced’.

The news agency Reuters in London described the Queen’s message as “a ringing endorsement of traditional media”. “At a time when established newspapers and television channels are routinely vilified and accused of producing ‘fake news’ by U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders, the 94-year-old monarch’s message was a rare tribute”, they stated. Towards the end of their report they wrote: “The impact of social media on democracy, and particularly of the colossal flows of misinformation circulating among users, are the subjects of heated and unresolved debates in several major Western countries, especially the United States”. But then they conclude: “Under Britain’s unwritten constitution, the monarch does not usually speak on political matters. The queen’s decision to send a public message of support to the news media suggests she considers the subject to be uncontroversial”. Really? Are they suggesting the Queen is in denial?

The Guardian reported, “The Queen’s intervention was accompanied by an article from the organisation’s chairman, Henry Faure Walker, in which he railed against US tech companies taking advertising income that used to go to newspapers”. I couldn’t find the full text for Henry Faure Walker’s article, but I did find a report of the article on the News Media’s website.

“For too long, Google and Facebook have had a free pass at using our journalism on their platforms making huge profits, whilst contributing comparatively nothing back into the industry”, Faure Walker stated. According to The Guardian article, “Last week Google pledged to pay $1bn to licence content from news publishers around the world over the next three years, although this remains a fraction of the amount that the global newspaper industry has lost in advertising revenue over the last two decades.” He also called for “further state intervention to prop up newspaper groups, on top of the £35m of government advertising money pledged earlier this year”.

I should have thought that a heavily subsidised mainstream media would go against the idea of independent journalism. I was once at a conference at the National Union of Journalists, when a journalist from the BBC told us that they had had specific instructions not to check the validity of their information if it came from official sources. If social media giants aren’t paying their taxes, then the News Media Association should be campaigning for a level playing field, not by knocking social and alternative media for carrying fake news and falsely maintaining that they themselves don’t. This seems to be a dangerous route that they are taking.

I decided not to write to the Queen, as I had on another issue, because in all likelihood I would get a reply from her personal assistant saying that Her Majesty ‘takes advice’ – a wonderfully ambiguous phraseology, in that it can mean ‘solicits advice’ or ‘acts according to advice’. I would want to know about vested interests of those who give Her Majesty such advice, and what pressures there may have been in persuading her to send such a letter. I don’t really want to harrass a nonogenarian. In May 2020 the Royal Central reported that the Queen was to withdraw from public life for the foreseeable future. I have to wonder whether one explanation of this letter, which appears to break with convention, could be that someone else is effectively in charge of the Royal household.

Has Parliament deposed Queen Elizabeth II?

I had just written those words when, by chance, I received an email through the Keep Talking group saying: “Hi All, I thought this post to be of interest regarding the above [i.e. the subject line: ‘Sovereignty’]. I don’t think that the public have any idea of the games being played. They may just wake up if the following is true. Personally, I believe this does make sense”. He gave a link to an article ‘Parliament Appears To Have Deposed QEII of Sovereignty’, written in August 2020.

The author, Michael O’Bernicia, points to an “obvious anomoly” in section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, which recognises Parliament as ‘sovereign’, yet we were constantly being told about how parliamentary sovereignty is borrowed from the People, via a democratic mandate. He refers to a previous blog of his, in which he writes: “However, Parliament only ever holds sovereignty on trust because it is always returned to the people of Britain, for the purposes of holding a general election of the new government to be entrusted with it. It is therefore reasonable to deduce that the Final Brexit bill is just as much a reaffirmation of the sovereignty of the British people, as it is of the sovereignty of Parliament”.

“Nevertheless”, he writes in his August blog, “from this observation a question naturally arose: ‘If Parliament has only previously acted with the sovereign authority of the monarch, was the real intention of section 38 to depose QEII?’”. He writes that it has become increasingly obvious that the UK government has ever since purported to exercise national sovereignty in the interests of Bill Gates, GAVI and the WHO, as per the sustainable development agendas 21 and 30. “This was enough to convince me that I’d seen enough to reasonably conclude that Parliament had created unaccountable government, upon its assumption that such an act could be deemed lawful, on the ground that it has declared itself sovereign in a statute”, he concludes.

If Parliament is sovereign then it cannot dissolve and resurrect itself. If the Queen has been implicitly deposed, then she cannot dissolve Parliament either. He argues the point in some detail, and I have to say that he seems to understand the ‘flexible’ British Constitution rather better than the Supreme Court appeared to in their ruling over Boris Johnson’s failed attempt to prorogue Parliament. Michael O’Bernicia explains:

The concept of the Crown as a part of parliament is related to the idea of the fusion of powers, meaning that the executive branch and legislative branch of government are fused together. This is a key concept of the Westminster system of government, developed in England and used across the Commonwealth and beyond. It is in contradistinction to the idea of the separation of powers. The specific language of “the Crown”, “the King”, or “the Queen” in parliament used in the Commonwealth realms also alludes to the constitutional theory that ultimate authority or sovereignty rests with the monarch, but is delegated to elected and/or appointed officials.

That is my understanding, too, but the preamble in the Supreme Court’s document giving the ruling on the prorogation case mentioned the ‘separation of powers’ rather than the ‘fusion of powers’. Something, it seems, has changed in UK Constitutional Law. The preamble also asserted the advantage of having a ‘flexible’ constitution. Presumably they were telling us that they can twist the meaning of the British Constitution to whatever they want it to mean.

In a final section headed ‘Reasons for Optimism in Dystopia’ Michael O’Bernicia writes: “Nevertheless, all of the available evidence suggests that Britain has no reigning monarch, no legitimate parliament or government and the People are rapidly waking up to the government crimes which have been committed during COVID-1984”.

Could then the Queen’s intervention in support of the mass media have been influenced by massive financial interests of Bill Gates, GAVI and the WHO, as per the sustainable development agendas 21 and 30? Could this have been why she departed from the usual policy of keeping out of politics, by endorsing a mainstream media which most Brits seem to regard as the lying press? I have to wonder what the UK Constitutional Law Association will make of this, if or when they get around to examining this issue.