UPDATED/”Damn that Justin Trudeau”

Despite making a point of including in his speech to the Commonwealth Heads of Government delegates the very important information that he is the youngest prime minister in the Commonwealth (I mean, really, who cares? The same people who care about Franco Debono’s Form 2C report, perhaps?), it was Justin Trudeau whose youth struck Queen Elizabeth, according to newspaper reports and commentators.

Or maybe not. I don’t think so, anyway. I noticed that her words “Thank you, Mr Prime Minister, for making me feel so old” were not a reference to his own youth but a gentle reprimand for the faux pas of mentioning her age during his own speech immediately prior to hers.

That was when he said something to the effect that “the queen has been a presence in Canada since she first appeared on a postage stamp there in 1935 when she was nine years old”. I remember thinking when I heard it, “God, how rude.” And she must have thought the same.

It is the sort of thing an older person would say in ‘amused’ reaction when asked by a child whether he remembers dinosaurs.

Somebody in her position, and with her manners, would never have made a reference to his age; hers was nothing but a humorous rebuke for his having drawn attention to hers. Trudeau should not have said that – it was really ill-mannered, ungallant and inconsiderate – and she responded with a light rebuke. The funny thing is that not many seem to have noticed that it was actually a rebuke, just as they seem not to have understood that making specific reference to the head of state’s age (or any woman’s, or anybody else, really, in that context) that way is completely out of order.

And now I suppose I shall have to explain to a lot of internet trolls why Trudeau was out of order and why the Queen’s words were actually a rebuke to him and not an observation on his relative youth.

UPDATE/ I’ve just found this – which pretty much says the same thing.