The Queen is dead... now Britain-haters will rejoice in destroying her country

WELL now, here it comes, the next stage of the revolution. The last echo of the last lament had hardly died away before the Britain-haters were back at work. There was an exaggerated politeness to the late Queen until her funeral was over.

Clergy who normally enjoy addressing God matily as ‘You’ and inflicting funky go-ahead prayers and jerky hymns on their remaining flocks had to say ‘Thou’ and ‘Thee’. A largely Godless establishment had to sit through the beautiful, severe solemnities which the Queen loved and they either loathe or simply don’t understand.

But then came that astonishing moment when the crown, orb and sceptre were taken from the Queen’s coffin, and her Coronation vows officially passed from this world, as she had done. I felt a shiver. The unspoken charter, under which this country remained at least outwardly the same while she lived, was at an end. I was reminded of the haunting words from Ecclesiastes: ‘Man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets… Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’

I have already written here about the rigged ‘Proportional Representation’ pseudo-Parliament which the Left-wing parties are hoping to impose on this country if the Tories lose the next Election.

Preparations are well advanced. Then on Friday we learned that Gordon Brown, who is still the man who edited the ‘Red Paper for Scotland’ in 1975, and should not ever be mistaken for a conservative, has produced a major plan for constitutional change, including the abolition of the House of Lords.

Like a man who has had his head severed but doesn’t realise it, much of Britain still has not grasped the significance of the huge constitutional changes brought in by Brown and Blair after 1997.

The Scottish independence crisis is only part of this. Some are just beginning to see that we will have to hand over Northern Ireland to Dublin before long – a surrender of national territory in response to the IRA’s violence. But here comes a convulsion in the principles by which we are governed. It is already well under way.

Judges in an English court warned a few years ago in a case about Christian foster parents who couldn’t agree to the modern view of homosexuality: ‘Although historically this country is part of the Christian West, and although it has an established church which is Christian, there have been enormous changes in the social and religious life of our country over the last century… We sit as secular judges serving a multicultural community of many faiths.’

This is a striking thing to say in a country whose law and government originate, beyond doubt, in Christian principles.

But it still hasn’t hit home. Now it will. Probably next spring, King Charles III will be crowned. This ceremony is unique in the Western world. No other European monarch has a coronation such as ours, with its rich mixture of law, religion, tradition and patriotism. But can a ‘multicultural community of many faiths’ put up with a ceremony which requires the new monarch to assent to the demand made to his mother in 1953: ‘Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?’

If so, the promise will be empty, as King Charles well knows. It is quite obvious that, in the 70-year gap between the two ceremonies, the entire country has been utterly changed, divorced or unwed rather than married, committed to personal autonomy rather than to selfrestraint, vaguely republican rather than vaguely monarchist, filled with competing cultures rather than sharing a single one.

Expect to have this point made hot and strong at the Coronation, by the choice of those present, by the atmosphere, by the words used and the songs sung and the poetry read and the music played. The country in which the late Queen dwelt will be utterly abolished. It will not just be the beginning of a new reign. It will be the end of an old world. And who knows if, how, when or where that will finish?