Behind The Throne?

That is their defence. "It was part of the Crown Estate, so there was nothing to stop us from partying like there was no tomorrow when in fact it was the night before the funeral of the Queen's husband."

Boris Johnson is still in his job only because, since the turn of the year, the Queen cannot sack him. By giving the Order of the Garter to Tony Blair, a decision in which only she could have had any role, she has at a stroke destroyed the Royalist constituency on which all previous monarchs have been able to fall back. Most of us are forced into monarchism for the want of anything better and which might realistically ever happen. But the Royalists are something else. Or, at least, they have been hitherto.

They despised Blair more than they had despised anyone since Oliver Cromwell. They disagreed with Blair only over hereditary peers and over foxhunting. Both of those are still there, and in the end Blair did not vote for the hunting ban. Yet the people who had once not only fought but won a Civil War for the monarchy and for the monarch did and do hate him more than anyone else since that War.

But now, the Queen has given him the Garter. Should a viable and attractive alternative to the monarchy ever present itself, then on whom would the Royal Family fall back?