Tomorrow’s spectacle is better understood as poetry than in the severely rational terms of democratic theorists who accept no need for religion and ritual.
Blair said that he wanted Britain “to be a young country again”. It wasn’t one then and isn’t one now. There is a fittingness in King Charles being the oldest monarch ever to take our throne.
Macron was right to say that while Queen Elizabeth was our Queen, to the world she was The Queen. That this became so wasn’t inevitable. How and why did it happen?
It is a shame that IRA violence – and Westminster neglect – undid the hopeful and constructive spirit in which Stormont was born.
In looking to the monarchy’s future, we follow in his footsteps. He was its original moderniser in our times.
All three PMs did about as well as anyone could in the circumstances, and all three, so far as one can see, are doomed.
I called publicly for the collective award of the GC to the NHS fully 15 months ago – within a month of the nation going into its first lockdown.