True Humility

As anyone properly schooled in the ways of Britishness will be aware, a rah-rah without a bit of sanctimonious hypocrisy is hardly a rah-rah at all. A national leadership which treats Remembrance Sunday as a jingo jamboree can hardly be expected to let the Ruritanian idiocy of a Coronation proceed unleavened by nagging and finger-wagging. Accordingly, the Palace has made a suggestion as to how the plebs might best celebrate the ceremonial plonking of some stolen jewellery on the head of a superannuated tax-dodger; and naturally, the suggestion is that everyone should go out and spend the bank holiday working for nothing. Of course, the idea that bank holidays should be an occasion for leisure is merely the flipside of the extremist doctrine that workers should be properly treated and the rich properly taxed. Even so, the aristocratic delicacy of the Palace's proclamation is worthy of His Majesty's late father; not least because it went on to remind the serfs that the Coronation would be a time for "solemn religious service," rather than anything having to do with the nation as a whole.