Self-Lessening Breeds

Such is the magnitude of our present crisis that even the former colonies and dominions of the British Empire are not free of recalcitrant migrancy. Even Canada, which owes a particular debt of gratitude to Britain for the fact that it isn't entirely French, has suffered a degree of contamination. Naturalised Canadian citizens (in the parlance of the British Home Office, a species of failed failed asylum seeker) are refusing to swear allegiance to the British monarch, on the distinctly un-British grounds that anything inherently pointless and undemocratic is somehow not worth doing. There have also been claims of discrimination, since native Canadians don't have to take the oath because they are assumed to have monarchist instincts in their DNA. Some who had already sworn the oath, before a legal ruling clarified their right to refuse, have been recanting their loyalty to poor old Mrs Battenberg, to the extent that nearly forty per cent of Canadians were prepared to consider de-windsoring their constitution even after the birth of a royal baby. The not-quite-Americans can consider themselves lucky that the British government is too busy blustering at the Argies and grovelling before the Saudis to send a task force.