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.
As two thirds of people in Britain agreed, the monarchy might seem a strange system in this day and age, but it works.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister’s visit to London for the coronation is a chance to reflect on the Crown’s unique role in the country’s development.
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.
The upside of a new cross-party appointments process would be distance from the government of the day. The downside is the danger of boiling it down to a lowest common denominator.
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.
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.
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.
Even in countries where voters would prefer a republic, it is a long way down their list of priorities.