A Mark of Respect

On the sudden, but long anticipated death of our Eternal Chancellor of the Exchequer, following a lengthy period of incapacity and a brave struggle against systemic collapse, it is announced that the funeral will be a quiet family affair with semi-public accoutrements. The interment will take place in Hyde Park with a two hundred foot high memorial mound erected above the tomb. Entrance to the site will be available to all members of the public on payment of an entrance fee that will be announced after the ceremony is completed. Tickets may be booked in advance through the Qatari Investment Office.

The Palace of Westminster will, as a mark of respect, be entirely swaddled in Osborne and Large wallpaper with the pinnacles surmounted by one thousand and one body casts of of the late chancellor, produced by Anthony Gormley, with details picked out in Sparrow and Ball Downpipe, Dead Trout and Elephant's Breath.

The National Statistics Office will fall silent for a period of twelve years as a mark of respect.

The late Chancellor's sarcophagus will be hauled to Hyde Park on a ceremonial tumbrel drawn by the chairman elect of the Bank of England progressing on his hands and knees. The eulogy will be given from on high by the London Mare, otherwise known as the Gulf of Tears.

Police have stated that they respect the right of people peaceably to ignore the ceremonies but that they expect all those who intend to stay at home to notify them so that they can be escorted to a place of safety.

Lord Tebbitt has described anyone who has any other ideas as a semi-domesticated bigot. Ian Duncan Smith remarked that it was "a political stunt" that had anyway already achieved its desired effect before taking place. The prime minister, on his flight back from a trade mission to Azerbaijan, issued a statement: "Never has there been a chancellor who wrapped up so much for so few."

Christine Lagarde will not be attending due to a prior commitment to attend a funeral in Slovenia.

Any man's death diminishes me.

1965: Day of sorrow

A nation united.

Uninvited guests

The President of Argentina (but the London ambassador is)
Nelson Mandela (but his representative is)
Arthur Scargill
Glenda Jackson
Augusto Pinochet (but his ghost is)
Jacques Delors
Meryl Streep
Bobby Sands
Philip Morris
Clive Ponting
Diana Gould
Peter Fluck
Ken Livingstone
Derek Hatton
Nigel Farage
Roger Law
Ian Hislop
Morrissey
Convocation of the University of Oxford
Durham Miners' Association
The enemy within
The evil empire
The state (not officially)
The Good Samaritan
St Francis of Asisi

"The hatred that burns in their hearts against Margaret Thatcher is actually an enormous tribute to Margaret Thatcher, because she won." Conor Burns Conservative MP

"Everyone likes to win arguments. She likes to win them more than most." William Whitelaw, her Deputy Prime Minister 1985

"This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated." Anonymous 1948 in a report on Margaret Roberts (her maiden name) by the personnel department of a large chemicals firm, rejecting her job application.

"She carried the cult of the individual much too far and has done us terrible damage in Europe with her fishwife yelling and screaming." Nicholas Soames Conservative MP

"No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions: he had money as well." the late Margaret Thatcher

Death and glory

It is repeatedly said at present that, although the only British prime minister in this or the last century to be accorded a state funeral has been Winston Churchill, in recognition as his role as leader during the second world war (the simple description 'war leader' is no longer particularly distinguishing amongst modern British prime ministers), nineteenth-century prime ministers such as Disraeli and Gladstone were given state funerals.

It appears to be a mistaken belief and that they also were given not state but public funerals:

"A public funeral was one paid for by Parliament through a resolution to the monarch. It was, and remains, a very rare event. In the nineteenth century only Nelson, Pitt the Younger, Charles James Fox, R. B. Sheridan, George Canning, the Duke of Wellington, Palmerston, and Napier of Magdala had been so buried (several had been offered and declined, for example Beaconsfield and Russell). Palmerston was the best precedent (and he had made the same requirement about his wife), but he had died in the Parliamentary recess and the procedures had had to be short-circuited. The Wellington funeral had been a lavish but rather chaotic affair; the catafalque being too heavy for the road which gave way under it in St James’ and too large to get through the gates of St Paul’s (where both Nelson and Wellington were buried) and the congregation was thus kept waiting for over an hour. Gladstone’s funeral was to be the first public funeral with a recognisedly modern aspect – worldwide press coverage via telegraph and the procession filmed."  

Moreover, the records of Glastone's funeral show it as, by current standards, a rather subdued affair without pomp and bombast. It was also the custom that the monarch, or members of the royal family, did not attend and Victoria had no intention of doing so (having ensured that news of Gladstone's death was entirely omitted from the court circular by means of an 'oversight', in contrast with the effusive mention of Disraeli's death, which she had herself written - Victoria, for all her popular reputation, was not the model of propriety that is our present queen). However, the prince of Wales defied her and acted as one of the pall bearers.

Gladstone left the rather ambivalent instruction in his will that his burial was "‘to be very simple unless they [his Executors] shall consider that there are conclusive reasons to the contrary’. Of course there are other ways of arranging one's own funeral.