The Stocks Were Sold; The Press Was Squared

The Middle Class was quite prepared.

The idea of the monarchy's political neutrality is original to the present Queen, who acceded as a 26-year-old woman in 1952 when the Prime Minister was Winston Churchill.

Do those demanding that a generation be skipped imagine that, even if he were to succeed tomorrow, Prince William would thus comport himself, over 30 and possessed of a good degree, an Officer's Commission, and a Y chromosome which he had successfully passed on?

Yet still they agitate for a second Williamite Revolution. Or a third one, if you count 1066.

Henry Tudor, whose line was specifically barred even from the Lancastrian succession, was invited back from exile by an alliance of Lancastrians and dissident Yorkists because the latter regarded his betrothed, Elizabeth of York, as the rightful monarch, a view from which they never deviated.

William of Orange was invited over by an alliance of Whigs and dissident Tories because, to the latter's satisfaction, he was already married to the next Protestant heiress, with whom he was to reign as joint monarch.

And now, a scion of perhaps the greatest of all the Whig dynasties, which once bankrolled its dissolute Hanoverian creatures and which is as convinced as ever of its own superiority over them, is being lined up to leapfrog his father by an alliance between that perennial interest and the mighty bourgeoisie into the upper echelons of which he has contracted a marriage which has lately produced an heir.

Not for nothing has an ebook on the arrival of Prince George entitled Diana's Baby been published by, and with a preface by, Melanie Phillips. We have been warned.