You can always tell when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge screw up really badly and everybody knows it. What happens when they screw up? There is a 24-48 hour flurry of royal commentators dutifully spouting palace talking points and trying to nonsensically sprinkle sugar over the Tweedlekeens’ dumbf–kery, and then everyone goes silent as the grave. It’s like they think if they go quiet, people will forget. It happened recently with Kate’s asinine Five Big Insights launch – after the flurry of busywork and sugary coverage, no one said sh-t for an entire week about it. Same with William’s disclosure that he concealed having coronavirus back in March/April – a quick flurry of PR, followed by complete silence.

So it is with the Tweedlekeens’ ridiculous Keen Pandemic Choo Choo Tour this week. There were maskless appearances, and a handful of sugary articles about their body language, or how great it is that they speak to peasants, or they’re no longer “under attack” from Meghan’s existence. Then the sugary narratives dried up and all we have now is silence from the old-guard royal commentators, and only a handful of actual truth-tellers who will even bother to speak about how stupid the Keen Tour was. The Scottish Daily Record columnist Annie Brown is one of those truth tellers. She did a column on Wednesday about the tour – here are some highlights:

We get that they have been stuck in with the weans but they need to switch off Peppa Pig and watch the news. Bootlicker Boris Johnson welcomed the “morale boost” the tour would provide – to the virus presumably. But the couple rolled into Scotland this week, as welcome as a persistent cough. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was criticised by royalists for not bowing and scraping with the zeal of a Blackadder minion.

The Scottish Government had made it clear that under current lockdown restrictions it is illegal to travel between England and Scotland without a valid reason. The exception to the rule includes travelling for work. In case the couple are reading – work is an activity, such as a job, requiring effort, usually for money but rarely a personal train.

The parasite express has ploughed through the lockdown tiers, with a full team of lackeys, despite it being an offence to travel between Level 3 or Level 4 local authorities. In Edinburgh the pair stopped off to talk to hospital staff and patients, some of whom were glad to have spoken to them. They thanked a hospital cleaner, telling her that she was “one of the most important people in the whole organisation”. Hopefully her bucket was nearby. Kate who changes designer coats, the way we change our pants, was wearing an outfit which cost more than months of wages for a cleaner.

Wales was equally rapturous about their visit, with the Welsh government again emphasising the restrictions. For the Welsh leg, Kate wore a £1500 kilt and tartan scarf, possibly because she thinks Wales is in Scotland. The couple toasted marshmallows at a market stall, which any passing miner must have recognised as definitely “work”. Touching a marshmallow with her gloved hand, Kate said: “I’m going to have that marshmallow on my fingers all day” – reassuringly hygienic in a pandemic.

The trip also shows a total disregard for the rest of us being cooped up like it’s Colditz, while being separated from loved ones. William and Kate visited the elderly in care homes, which most relatives have been unable to do. And they unwrapped secret Santa presents with students – on which there was a spending limit of £10. By way of explanation, Kate, a spending limit is… oh never mind.

We shouldn’t be surprised at the idiocy and arrogance of the tour, given William accused the media of being over- dramatic when Covid hit the UK in March. He was then on a tour of Ireland and asked a paramedic: “Is it being a little bit hyped up do you think in the media?” He faked mock horror and said: “By the way, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are spreading coronavirus, Sorry.” You said it Wills. Sadly, there will never be a vaccine to protect us from royal dullards.

[From The Scottish Daily Record]

This was a piping hot cup of tea. And it also shows me that my gut-feeling about the politics of the Tweedlekeens’ tour was dead-on – the tour really hurt the relations between England and Scotland, and it’s a bad look to see some hereditary peers verbally browbeat Nicole Sturgeon because she wasn’t sycophantic to two “royal dullards.” William and Kate’s tour was poorly thought-out, poorly executed, and actively harmful at every level, scientifically, diplomatically, politically.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.