David Flint : Beyond Parody

Australian independence hater David Flint was so very, very pleased to learn the UK Guardian had decided it was time to re-embrace the British monarchy, he excitedly used this editorial to attack those who think Australia is mature enough to now exist without a foreign head of state, like most of the rest of the world :

"It is a knockout blow to the Australian republican movement – a mere shadow of itself compared with the formidable force it once was under the Turnbull-Keating ascendancy – as well as the minuscule United Kingdom, Canadian and New Zealand republican movements.

That respected voice of progressive politics, The Guardian, has returned to the monarchist fold.

Probably the leading English language quality newspaper of the left, The Guardian has renounced the republican agenda it vigorously endorsed in 2000. The newspaper had even challenged the law in relation to the succession.

The Guardian is the leading intellectual media source for Labour and similar parties in the sixteen realms over which The Queen reigns. This decision will have a considerable effect in these parties and beyond.

It will make it acceptable for ALP politicians to admit that they support the existing constitution. After all a large number of the 72% of Australian electorates which voted No in 1999 were held by the Australian Labor Party.

Some republicans hoped this declaration by The Guardian was just an April Fool’s day joke...

Did they, David? Did they?

....but there is no evidence of that.

No evidence....except for the fact the editorial was published on April 1.

What an hilarious old dickhead David Flint is.

He has since scrubbed the above editorial praising the Guardian from his website :

Goodbye Ma'am

The things you learn reading London newspapers. Apparently, under the Rule Of Rudd, we're gearing up to get rid of the Queen, and Malcolm Turnbull's installment as head of the Liberals will make the shape of the Republic something of an election issue come 2010, or 2011.

You can go here to read the comments from the London Times, a few of which from the Old English are hilarious.

Apparently we are "ungrateful Aussies" who are "always whingeing" and "whining" because we want to dump the Queen. We should all be left to "roast on the beach" and are little more than "organic malcontent." Whatever that means.

Some of the Old English have never forgiven our convict forefathers for striking it somewhat lucky with deportation to Australia, at least as far as the weather goes, and then destroying British rule. More than a century later, we're still a pack of feisty anti-authoritarians. We've never been forgiven by the Etonian class for that, either.

It's a strange choice for the key issue of quite a large story in the London Times on the change of government. I don't think I heard any politician mentioning dumping the Queen at any time during the election. If they did, they didn't do it very loudly, or very often.

Becoming a Republic certainly wasn't an election issue. But it is very likely to be, come the end of Rudd's first term.