I would posit that any effort to awkwardly crowbar the new religion of multiculturalism into this ancient song is misguided at best, and evidence of wanton arrogance at worst.

As for the “President Blair” argument (or “President Thatcher” as it was in the bad old 1980s), this really is a non-starter. The irony is that it was the PM’s power under the royal prerogative that enabled Blair to go to war in Iraq without sufficient parliamentary scrutiny.

A sensible republican settlement could end up strengthening the power of parliament and inspire greater democratic engagement. Look at how Mary Robinson reinvigorated Irish political life in the 1990s — and how her Belfast-born successor Mary McAleese has sensitively built bridges with the North and helped defuse sectarian suspicions.

Does Britain really lack the ambition and imagination to do something similar? I beg to differ!

I also support Jerusalem as the English national anthem.
In rugby this is now just about the case after years of pressure.

It always cheeses me off when English teams are forced to sing the British national anthem an implcation the British political class would prefer the English would shut up and not exist.

For which reason I hope you won’t mind me pointing out that your argument against monarchy as presented here is built upon its own sweeping (and faulty) generalisations, both sociological and ideological. In light of that, I do hope that you’ll permit me one of my own when I say that the disdainful villification of the patriotic ‘white van man’, who sings his anthem with pride and who lines the avenues at the death of ‘Queen Mum’, is the ‘evidence’ upon which I base my assertions.

The monarchy is at best a constraint on the accumulation of power by an otherwise all-consuming oligarchy, and at worse it is an anachronism that, however irritating it might be for the bourgeois ‘revolutionaries’, remains stubbornly popular, both at home and abroad. Subject Blair or President Blair? – for me, there’s no contest.

My father was an infantryman, and he isn’t a huge fan of the monarchy either, though he is patriotic and defensive of the institutions and traditions of our country, which includes the monarchy – but then again, being personally offended or frustrated by the monarchy isn’t really a sound basis for saying the monarchy must therefore be bad. Nor for saying that it must be anathema to a democratic society.

Again, it’s largely middle-class chippiness that is the root here, and the call for republicanism is very much an expression of that resentment (the success of which will be the final triumph of the plutocratic classes). Which is precisely why Guardianistas in particular so loathe the flag-waving working classes – especially when they so inconveniently turn up, en masse, to honour their Queen (rather than their cultured masters), be it for state celebrations or the singing of an anthem.

The Uruguay anthem is a real delight, I have to agree!

As for Ronaldo – maybe he’s been saving his vocal cords until he starts crooning lullabies to Cristiano Jnr…

They are still cheating so and sos though. I wonder if Beethoven ever deliberately hand-balled? Brahms? I bet Wagner did.