Friday's Royal parade was a dying gasp for the Monarchy, not a new beginning. This isn’t wishful thinking. I want the Crown to survive. But I do not think it can do so in a modern Britain that has turned its back on the ideas and habits that make a Monarchy possible.
Almost everything about the day was false, and wherever it touched reality it was worrying rather than reassuring.
The Royal cars trailed to Westminster Abbey between motorcycle outriders with flashing blue lights and Range Rovers crammed with bodyguards.
On the way back, the Life Guards (trained killers to a man) for some reason had to be escorted down the road by mounted police. Even Majesty must now be governed and pestered by the twin menaces of ‘security’ and ‘health and safety’.
The police, for once looking like servants of the people in their tunics and helmets, only reminded us how many of them there are and how rarely we see them, and also that on all other days of the year they slouch about in flat caps and stab vests.
The Edwardian braid and sashes worn by Princes and Dukes emphasised that our Armed Forces are shrunken remnants – lots of big hats, not many planes, ships or soldiers. Never have they looked so laughably Ruritanian.
Inside the Abbey, it was obvious that most of those present, though they are our educated elite, feel awkward in church and do not know the words of what were once familiar hymns.
And even on the 400th anniversary of the majestic, poetic and powerful King James Bible, we had to endure a lesson (sorry, a reading) from some flabby modern version.
The marriage service was, as it almost always is, tamed to remove the really dangerous, subversive bits. What? A wife obey her husband? He’ll be calling her ‘dear’ next.
But then again, this husband didn’t promise to endow his wife with all his worldly goods, only to share them, nor to worship her with his body. The blunt statement that the first purpose of marriage is the procreation of children was censored, too.
The fierce condemnation of men who behave towards women ‘like brute beasts that have no understanding’ was also left out. I should have thought it was needed now more than ever, given the way so many much-admired celebrities regularly act.
If you go back to the present Queen’s Coronation service in 1953, you will find it was a profoundly British occasion – a -celebration, reaching back far into the past, of our long and happy sovereignty over ourselves.
It was also a straightforwardly Protestant Christian ceremony, based on ideas of self-discipline and self-restraint that we have entirely abandoned in the years since. The two things are completely bound together. You cannot remain free unless you can govern yourself.
When the day comes for our next Monarch to be crowned, we will no doubt put on an excellent show for the tourists. But political correctness, equality, diversity and the overwhelming fear of giving offence – and the fact that these days we prefer to do what we like rather than what we know to be good – will ensure that it will lack the heart and meaning it had in 1953. And my guess is that it will be the last time we try.
Peter Hitchens blog
Edit to add ~ Im starting to think Peter is just trolling everyone