Friday's Royal Wedding looks like being a generally popular event despite the usual pro and anti monarchist splits. Most people will probably see it for what it is,- a thoroughly British spectacle yet again demonstrating that ceremonial is still something that the UK does best and in unrivalled style. The American pastiche versions don't come anywhere close and the more militaristic productions across the former eastern bloc have a totally different pupose and ambiance.
The noisiest whingeing from the sidelines is coming from those arguing to exclude from the guest lists some,- mainly those whose democratic credentials are currently under stress testing or scrutiny,- and include others, notably the two most recent ex Prime Ministers,- Messrs Blair and Brown ostensibly left out because they are not Knights of the Garter, or indeed anything else. It is true that it might have been more diplomatic to have them along and avoid muttering from the left and the general anti royalist camp, but there could be entirely understandable and non political reasons for their not having received their gold edged cards.
By tradition every summer the current Prime Minister and (so far) wife has been invited to spend a weekend at Balmoral. These are personal invitations from the Monarch and the conventions of good behaviour have dictated that no details emerged afterwards. Well,Cherie Blair rather blew it by revealing that she and several-times-a-night-man Tone hit the sack and she hadn't brought her (non Papally approved)tablets with her. Nothing of course was said by the Palace at the time and one wouldn't expect it .Perhaps it now has been. As for Gordo, maybe another convention is that your dinner table talk doesn't go on too long or anaesthetise the other diners. Could he possibly have got going on economic theory and how he had saved the world? Well, maybe. In that case again no card could possibly convey a Royal frown,- or maybe just the Duke saying "Oh no,for God's sake no".
In true Royal tradition, we will never know.
