Another thing Corbyn doesn’t get – the Queen

Jeremy Corbyn may well become leader of the Labour Party on Saturday, but at least we can be confident that he will never be prime minister. How so? Because he doesn’t get the Queen, that’s why. Not getting the Queen is right up there as the main disqualification for running this country. Previous Labour leaders have adored Her Majesty, and Harold Wilson joked that for his weekly audience at the Palace he was being whisked off “to see mother”.

Corbyn and his sullen, polytechnic-lecturer ilk, however, love to predict that every royal milestone will be a resounding flop because the British people have finally awoken from their servile slumber and become good republicans.

After the Queen Mother died and was lying in state in Westminster Hall, the Corbynistas said that no one could care less about the old lady. In three days, 200,000 people processed past her coffin. Widely predicted to be a damp squib, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 was a triumph.

Later this evening, she will quietly mark the moment when she overtakes Queen Victoria, her great-great-grandmother, as our longest-reigning monarch. That’s 63 years and 216 days, with no time off for good behaviour. And, boy, has the behaviour been exemplary.

And so it has been for nigh on 90 years. She has never stooped to conquer. Last month, the trainer Monty Roberts revealed that the Queen had told him she didn’t want any more corgi puppies: “She didn’t want to leave any young dogs behind,” explained Roberts. It was a gentle way of serving notice, but still sad. The Queen without her corgis is as unimaginable as the United Kingdom without the Queen, yet that possibility must be faced.

But not today. We know that Her Majesty starts every morning with Earl Grey tea, the Racing Post and The Daily

Telegraph. So, let me take the liberty on behalf of all our readers of saying: first class, top notch, played a blinder, couldn’t have done it without you, simply terrific, nobody does it better, the final furlong is a long way off.

Keep it up, Ma’am. Keep it up!