The Speech from the Throne is a speech written by the Government of the day and given to the sitting Governor to read on invitation to the House of Assembly.

“The UK still has a grip on this country constitutionally, a grip on our minds, and it is this kind of institutionalised speech that reinforces the position of the coloniser to those who have been colonised,” he said on the Tuesday, Jan 18, 2022, edition of his radio show, Honestly Speaking.

“I for one want us to rid ourselves of these kinds of relics,’ he added while revealing that he boycotted the 2022 speech, ‘and that was by choice.”

The Speech from the Throne was delivered in the House of Assembly by Governor John J. Rankin, CMG on January 18, 2022.

Goal is independence – Skelton-Cline

The man of the cloth added that the goal for himself and the territory is to be a part of a free and independent country.

“I am not at all happy and I'm not at all will participate in anything that attempts to affirm, reaffirm, celebrates all of these colonial-type relics,” he added.

Skelton-Cline added that institutional practices like the Speech from the Throne have the ability to reinforce the VI’s dependence on its former colonisers.

“We underestimate and if we are not keen in our discernment, we will miss how these practices have been programmed into our systems, into our institutions, that reinforce our codependence on our former colonisers.

“It is, is out of my spirit, out of my conviction that I reject these kinds of things,” he said.