Britain and world leaders mourned Queen Elizabeth II, the country’s longest-reigning monarch, at a state funeral Monday in Westminster Abbey. As Axios detailed, the funeral drew presidents, kings, princes and prime ministers — and authorities expected up to 1 million people to line the streets of London. As Britain and many throughout the world mourned the Queen’s death, the Heritage Foundation provided three key takeaways worth considering:
- It is governments, not crowns, that are elected to do the people’s work. Britain will thrive, if its new king and its elected leaders remember that.
- The United Kingdom Elizabeth reigned over was not the global power known to past monarchs, but the country continues to have outsized geopolitical importance.
- Leaders like Thatcher and the queen herself, served the people and brought them from the deprivations of the post-World War England to a modern, prosperous state.
The Heritage reasons:
“To deal with the global challenges posed by Russia, Iran, and China, Liz Truss needs to be just as resolute a leader of the free world as Margaret Thatcher was. And Britain’s new king ought to as good a partner as the queen was when Thatcher led in the Falklands War and battled the Soviet’s evil empire.
“There is leadership lesson here for us, too. Biden has been too much the bystander-in-chief. He seems more interested in using foreign policy to advance his domestic political agenda and his radical climate policies than to advance American interests abroad.
“Biden is not alone. Other great powers of the free world, most notably France and Germany, have done the least leading when it comes to pushing back against Putin.
“There was greatness in the second Elizabethan era. Leaders like Thatcher and the queen herself, served the people and brought them from the deprivations of the post-World War England to a modern, prosperous state.
“May the new king, the new prime minister and all the other leaders of the free world follow their example and help carry us all into a better future.”
Read the Heritage op-ed in its entirety here.
