You've got to love a bit of theatre

As part of their desperate efforts to cover the tracks of their epic fuck up certain elements at Channel 4 decided to commission a four part historical drama called The Devil's Whore. This series tells the supposedly true story of Lady Angelica Fanshawe who was the consort of many of the main actors in the English civil war a premise that allows the series to show the drama of many of the key events of that period in history as if somehow the problems of today are all the result of a war that ended 400 hundred years ago.

In the first episode shown on November 19th one of the keys scenes was the moment in 1641 when King Charles sent men at arms to the House of Commons to arrest 5 MP's who were supposedly threatening national security. At almost exactly the same time as this was shown the security services, looking for a way to prevent details of the Baby P report being leaked, decided to send anti-terrorism police to arrest an MP and search his Commons office on a charge of obtaining leaked information that was embarrassing to the governing Labour party. The speaker of the House of Commons, a long time Labour supporter, decided to break with tradition and let them. This turned today's State Opening of Parliament into bit of a tense affair with the Commons Sarjent at arms being heckled and the first business of the new Parliament being the speaker having to explain himself to the house.

I suppose you could try to dress this all up as a way to start a discussion of how the Monarch's popularity would be affected if she was actually seen to be doing things but all in all it seems like an awful lot of fuss just to protect one little lesbian.