To recognize the untimely connection that the Queen is creating in the divided British society, one only had to tilt one's head back on Thursday.

More than seventy Royal Air Force planes flew their colorful national formations over Buckingham Palace - and the cheering was tremendous.

Hardly anyone complained, not even that part of society that otherwise grumbles about the waste of fossil fuels, especially in times of high energy prices, or about the glorification of the past, in this case the "Battle of Britain".

Queen Elizabeth II stands above the lowlands of the dispute.

Her platinum anniversary lets the reflexes of everyday political and cultural struggles slacken.

Jochen Buchsteiner

Political correspondent in London.

  • Follow I follow

The British treat themselves to two bank holidays and a weekend to celebrate their Queen's 70th jubilee.

State acts such as the "Trooping the Color" parade or the service in St. Paul's Cathedral are flanked by pop concerts by international stars, but also by numerous community events.

The authorities have approved more than 16,000 street parties.

The jubilee plates, which cost up to eighty euros, and almost all other special editions from the porcelain manufacturers were bought before Thursday, even though the nation is groaning under a "Cost of Living Crisis".

Even the Sex Pistols congratulate you

The kingdom presented itself in high spirits at the start of the celebration.

On the morning radio, the weatherman announced with mock indignation that on this sunny day there would also be “an unpatriotic cloud” here and there.

The conservative "Spectator", Britain's most traditional magazine, had the drummer of the Sex Pistols, Paul Cook, write an article - the punk band had released the song "God Save the Queen" for the Silver Jubilee, in which there was talk of a "fascist state". .

Even the otherwise stuffy John Major, the eldest of the former prime ministers, gleaned a few lighthearted anecdotes from his reminiscences of the Queen this Thursday.

The British Queen manages to reactivate the best in the country even after 70 years on the throne,

that unmistakable mixture of wit and pomp, respect and irony.

They are reconciled through the monarch.

It is probably her greatest achievement that (almost) everyone feels connected to her.

Even after the great schism between those in favor of and those against the EU, both camps remained loyal to it.

For Brexiteers she embodies the very ideal: the uniqueness of the nation, the idiosyncratic and distinctively English that ultimately made membership in a club geared towards mundane compromises with neighbors so intolerable.

The Remainers, on the other hand, suspect the subtle, clandestine contradiction in the Queen.

In her after-dinner speeches before and after 2016, hadn't she repeatedly pointed to the European foundations of British history?

Didn't she deliberately combine colors reminiscent of the Brussels banner on certain occasions?

To this day, it remains a mystery whether Elizabeth II was sympathetic or alienated by the kingdom's new path.

But that's how the British feel about almost all questions.

Was the Queen happy about the socio-political liberalizations of the 1960s and 1970s, or did she see them as a threat to traditional class society and thus to the monarchy?

Did she support or despise Margaret Thatcher's radical economic reforms, which divided the country in the 1980s at least as much as Brexit does today?