Trudeau aims to create “the first postnational state” where, in his own words “there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada”, but only a list of vague shared values and shared public services everyone pays their taxes towards.
The Order of St Patrick also has no business being dormant so long as Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom.
In government, Labor have so far confined themselves to gestures such as banishing His Majesty from the banknotes whilst relegating a referendum to a second-term issue.
The current outrage can be written off as displacement activity by those shocked by a deal from Sunak that forces them to consider a compromise.
As it never attracted as much ire as Iraq we may never see a proper inquiry into a decades-long, £27.7 billion failure.
My generation wants to see a monarch who speaks out on the issues that matter to him. To misquote The Leopard, for the monarchy to survive, it is going to have to change.
For almost a century, Labour has been a solidly monarchist party – and Labour Prime Ministers have often enjoyed better relations with the sovereign than their Tory equivalents.
Not everyone understands the appeal of monarchy. It falls to those of us who do to make the case for it.
Monarchies provide a far better check on the ambitions of power-hungry politicians than republics do.
Party, media and online dynamics create incentives to reinforce the ‘them and us’ perspectives of one 40 per cent coalition or another. Reaching out for common ground can be risky.
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?
Just as we find we were even more attached to Queen Elizabeth than we realised, so we find ourselves even more loyal to her successor than we expected.
“On behalf of all my family, I can only offer the most sincere and heartfelt thanks for your condolences and support.”
“She seemed so timeless and so wonderful that I am afraid we had come to believe, like children, that she would just go on and on.”
As we left the hall, the three of us hugged, found the nearest bar, had a well-deserved sit down and a beer, then jumped on the train home.