What happens next: Operation Unicorn and London Bridge

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 09 September 2022

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LONDON - The Queen has died at the age of 96 at her Scottish residence Balmoral castle and, as a nation mourns, the plans that have carefully been put in place for marking her death are already underway.

Preparations known as "Operation London Bridge" have been updated for many years, but because she died in Scotland a second plan called "Operation Unicorn" has also been activated.

The code phrase, “London Bridge is down”, will have been used to communicate to prime minister Liz Truss, as well as key officials, that Her Majesty has passed away.

This phrase has set into motion the plan of action around her death, including a period of official mourning and the details of her state funeral.

Details of the plan were published by The Guardian in 2017 and by the Politico website in 2021.

While the full details have yet to be officially confirmed by Buckingham Palace, here's what is known about how the coming days could unfold.

'London Bridge' and 'Unicorn'

The plans were initially created in the 1960s and involved a number of government departments, as well as the Church of England, the Metropolitan Police, the British Armed Forces, the media, the Royal Parks and Transport for London.

Royal funerals are organised by the Earl Marshall and officers in the College of Heralds. Codenames for the death of a royal are nothing new.

The death of the Queen’s father, King George VI, in 1952, operated under the code phrase, “Hyde Park Corner”. Plans for the Queen Mother’s death in 2002 were called “Operation Tay Bridge”, while “Operation Forth Bridge” referred to the death of the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who died in 2021. “Operation Menai Bridge” refers to the funeral plan for her son, Charles.

The moments after the Queen’s death

Under Operation London Bridge, the first official – apart from the Queen’s family and medical team – to convey the news of her death would have been her private secretary.

Their first act was to tell the prime minister, who was given the news through a secure telephone line by civil servants using the code phrase, “London Bridge is down”.

The Queen’s private secretary was also responsible for informing the cabinet secretary and the Privy Council Office.

Government ministers and senior civil servants were informed by the cabinet secretary, and the Foreign Office told the 14 Commonwealth countries where the Queen was head of state.

Today is referred to internally by those organising it as “D-Day”.

The media reaction

The government’s websites and social media accounts have already turned black to mark the Queen’s passing, and no content that is non-urgent will be published there.

The BBC and the PA Media news agency learned of the Queen’s death through the Radio Alert Transmission System (RATS).

Commercial radio were notified through the Independent Radio News via a network of blue “obit lights”, which let DJs know to prepare soothing and inoffensive music while they waited for a news flash.

BBC Two suspended its scheduled programming and switched to BBC One’s broadcast of the announcement of the Queen’s death.

A pre-recorded sequence of portraits of the Queen broadcast on BBC News allowed presenters to change into black clothing to be ready for the formal announcement.

The political reaction

A royal footman has pinned a dark-edged notice to the gates of Buckingham Palace and that notice is also displayed on the palace website.

Prime Minister Liz Truss addressed the nation from outside Downing Street just under an hour after the Queen's death was announced.

She said: "It’s an extraordinary achievement to have presided with such dignity and grace for 70 years. Her life of service stretched beyond most of our living memories.

"In return, she was loved and admired by the people in the United Kingdom and all around the world."

She added: "Today the crown passes, as it has done for more than 1,000 years, to our new monarch, to our new head of state, His Majesty King Charles III."

The king will host a meeting with the prime minister and then deliver a speech as soon as possible.

Flags are being flown at half-mast on Whitehall and government buildings. A service of remembrance, attended by the prime minister and senior government ministers, will take place at St Paul’s Cathedral in London as soon as possible.

The new monarch

Tomorrow, under Operation London Bridge, the Accession Council will meet at St James’s Palace to proclaim the new monarch, King Charles.

The plan for Charles’s accession has its own code name, “Operation Spring Tide”.

The Privy Council must meet within 24 hours of the Queen’s passing, and will proclaim Charles as king in the first part of the meeting. He may or may not be there for this part, but his presence is required for the second section, in which the new monarch reads a declaration and take an oath, assuming the duties and responsibilities of the sovereign.

Before her death, the Queen said she wanted Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, to be known as queen consort when Charles became king.

A special session of Parliament will be held as soon as possible where MPs will swear allegiance to the King, after which most parliamentary activities will be suspended for a period of time.

The King will host the prime minister and the cabinet for an audience as soon as possible.

Once this is done new monarch will be made by the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh administrations.

Charles is expected to make a tour of the UK in the coming days visiting Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Queen’s final journey

Because the Queen died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, the plan under Operation Unicorn has been activated.

This means her coffin is expected to lie in repose at Holyrood Palace followed by a service of reception which will likely be at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh.

The Queen’s coffin will then be taken by plane to the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace and finally, it will be taken to Westminster Hall and lie in state.

At Westminster Hall, the Queen’s coffin will be placed on a raised platform, called a catafalque, and members of the public will file past to pay their respects.

It's expected the hall will be open for 23 hours a day to cope with the numbers, with a brief closure for cleaning each day.

The Vigil of the Princes, in which the Queen’s children and grandchildren arrive unannounced to stand watch over the coffin, is also expected to take place.

The funeral

The Queen’s state funeral will be held at Westminster Abbey, under Operation London Bridge.

The service will be carried out by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

After the funeral, the Queen's body will be buried in a prepared tomb at King George VI Memorial Chapel at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, alongside her husband, Prince Philip, whose coffin will be moved from the Royal Vault.

The day of the Queen’s funeral will be a day of national mourning, but a bank holiday will not be granted.

There will be a two minutes’ silence across the UK at midday and there will be processions in London and Windsor.

UK to learn who will succeed Johnson as PM today

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 05 September 2022

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By SYLVIA HUI

LONDON — Britain finally learns who its next prime minister will be on Monday after two months of political uncertainty during which energy prices skyrocketed and tens of thousands of workers went on strike.

The governing Conservative Party plans to announce whether Foreign Secretary Liz Truss or former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak won the most votes from party members to succeed Boris Johnson as party leader and thus prime minister.

Whoever emerges victorious will inherit an economy heading into a potentially lengthy recession and will need to jump straight into tackling the cost-of-living crisis walloping the U.K.

Thanks to global gas price volatility triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the average U.K. household energy bill is jumping to more than 3,500 pounds ($4,000) a year — almost triple the level a year ago. Inflation is above 10% for the first time since the 1980s. The government is facing increasingly urgent calls to deliver financial support to help millions pay for essential heating and electricity to get through the winter.

The opposition Labour Party and other critics accuse the government of being “missing in action” during a summer of discontent that saw tens of thousands of rail staff, port and postal workers, lawyers and garbage collectors go on strike to demand better pay to keep up with spiralling costs.

Truss, widely regarded as the front-runner in the leadership race, has won the support of many Conservatives with her Thatcherite zeal to roll back state intervention and slash taxes. She has promised to act “immediately” to tackle soaring energy bills, but declined to give any details.

Sunak, who sought to paint himself as the more realistic economist, said he would temporarily cut the value-added tax on energy bills. But he insisted that he wouldn’t “max out the country’s credit card” and said significant tax cuts should wait until inflation is under control.

Both finalists have declared their admiration for Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, and her ring-wing, small-government economics.

“It’s all been very nonspecific and we’re really waiting for the next prime minister to hopefully hit the ground running and tell us what they’re going to do about what is in effect an emergency situation,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London.

Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at Nottingham University, says Truss’s politics has played well with the estimated 180,000 Conservative Party members who have a say in choosing the country’s leader. But many have low expectations that she will deliver much financial relief to the country’s poorest.

“This is someone who believes in the market in a radical way, someone who believes that the objective of government is to get towards a much smaller state sooner rather than later. She takes that very seriously,” he said.

“So I think we’re going to have a very radical, right-wing, free market prime minister and one that actually is more of an ideologist than a pragmatist.”

While the economy is certain to dominate the first months of the new premier’s term, Johnson’s successor will also have to steer the U.K. on the international stage in the face of Russia’s war in Ukraine, an increasingly assertive China and ongoing tensions with the European Union over the aftermath of Brexit – especially in Northern Ireland.

Truss has talked tough as foreign secretary on all three main issues, though some analysts believe she may tone down her “robust” rhetoric if she becomes leader.

“I think on each of those issue the most domestically popular thing was to be quite tough — now that might change in future,” said David Lawrence, a research fellow at London’s Chatham House think tank.

One key aspect of foreign policy to look out for is whether Truss, if she wins, would put an influential group of Conservative “China hawks” in government, Lawrence added.

“If she does, then I think we will see a much more hawkish nudge in that direction when it comes to the U.K.-China policy,” he said.

Britain has been adrift since July 7, when Johnson announced he was quitting after his government was engulfed by one ethics scandal too many. Both Truss and Sunak were key players within Johnson’s Cabinet, though Sunak resigned in protest in the last days of Johnson’s time in office.

A Truss government may not sit well with many, because it reminds voters too much of Johnson’s misdeeds, Fielding said.

“She’s basically been elected as Boris Johnson 2.0 by Conservative members — she’s made it very clear that she is a loyal Boris Johnson supporter,” Fielding said. “I think she’s going to find it very difficult to disentangle herself from the whole Johnson shadow.”

Johnson has stayed on as prime minister in the interim, but he has been widely criticized for failing to respond to the worsening energy cost crisis. Officials have stressed that any new policies will need to wait until his successor is in place.

Voting in the leadership contest closed on Friday and the winner will be announced later Monday. Johnson and his successor will then travel to Scotland to meet with Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday — one to formally tender his resignation, and the other to be invited to form a government.

The queen’s meetings with prime ministers traditionally take place in London’s Buckingham Palace. But the 96-year-old monarch has suffered from mobility problems in recent months, and so the arrangements are being moved for the first time to the Scottish Highlands, where she traditionally spends her summers.

Thousands line up to say farewell to Gorbachev; Putin absent

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 03 September 2022

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By JIM HEINTZ and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

MOSCOW - Thousands of mourners lined up Saturday to pay tribute to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who launched drastic reforms that helped end the Cold War and precipitated the breakup of the Soviet Union, in a farewell snubbed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin’s refusal to declare a state funeral reflects its uneasiness about the legacy of Gorbachev, who has been venerated worldwide for bringing down the Iron Curtain but reviled by many at home for the Soviet collapse and the ensuing economic meltdown that plunged millions into poverty.

On Thursday, Putin privately laid flowers at Gorbachev’s coffin at a Moscow hospital where he died. The Kremlin said the president’s busy schedule would prevent him from attending the funeral.

Asked what specific business will keep Putin busy on Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the president will have a series of working meetings, an international phone call and needs to prepare for a business forum in Russia’s Far East he’s scheduled to attend next week.

Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at the age of 91, will be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife, Raisa, following a farewell ceremony at the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions, an opulent 18th century mansion near the Kremlin that has served as the venue for state funerals since Soviet times.

At the ceremony Saturday, mourners passed by Gorbachev’s open casket flanked by honorary guards, laying flowers as solemn music played. Gorbachev’s daughter, Irina, and his two granddaughters sat beside the coffin.

The grand, chandeliered hall lined by columns hosted balls for the nobility under the czars and served as a venue for high-level meetings and congresses along with state funerals during Soviet times. Upon entering the building, mourners saw honor guards flanking a large photo of Gorbachev standing with a broad smile, a reminder of the cheerful vigor he brought to the Soviet leadership after a series of dour, ailing predecessors.

The turnout was large enough that the viewing was extended for two more hours beyond the stated two hours.

Despite the choice of the prestigious site for the farewell ceremony, the Kremlin stopped short of calling it a state funeral, with Peskov saying the ceremony will have “elements” of one, such as honorary guards, and the government’s assistance in organizing it. He wouldn’t describe how it will differ from a full-fledged state funeral.

Declaring a state funeral for Gorbachev would have obliged Putin to attend it and would have required Moscow to invite foreign leaders, something that it was apparently reluctant to do amid soaring tensions with the West after sending troops to Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by Putin who served as Russia’s president in 2008-2012, showed up at the farewell ceremony. He then released a post on a messaging app channel, referring to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and accusing the U.S. and its allies of trying to engineer Russia’s breakup, a policy he described as a “chess game with Death.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who often has been critical of the Western sanctions against Russia, attended the farewell on Saturday. The U.S., British, German and other Western ambassadors also attended.

The relatively modest ceremony contrasted with a lavish 2007 state funeral given to Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet leader who anointed Putin as his preferred successor and set the stage for him to win the presidency by stepping down.

The farewell viewing was shadowed by the awareness that the openness Gorbachev championed has been stifled under Putin.

“I want to thank him for my childhood of freedom, which we don’t have today,” said mourner Ilya, a financial services worker in his early 30s who declined to give his last name.

“I am a son of perestroika,” he said, using the Russian word for Gorbachev’s reform, or reconstruction, initiatives.

Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the liberal Yabloko party who worked on economic reform plans under Gorbachev, hailed him for “offering people an opportunity to say what they thought – something that Russia never had before.”

Putin, who once lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” has avoided explicit personal criticism of Gorbachev but has repeatedly blamed him for failing to secure written commitments from the West that would rule out NATO’s expansion eastward. The issue has marred Russia-West relations for decades and fomented tensions that exploded when the Russian leader sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

In a carefully phrased letter of condolence released Wednesday avoiding explicit praise or criticism, Putin described Gorbachev as a man who left “an enormous impact on the course of world history.”

“He led the country during difficult and dramatic changes, amid large-scale foreign policy, economic and society challenges,” Putin said. “He deeply realized that reforms were necessary and tried to offer his solutions for the acute problems.”

The Kremlin’s ambivalence about Gorbachev was reflected in state television broadcasts, which described his worldwide acclaim and grand expectations generated by his reforms, but held him responsible for plunging the country into political turmoil and economic woes and failing to properly defend the country’s interests in talks with the West.