One law the Queen must have enjoyed signing was that banning age discrimination. Had she needed to apply for her job back when she was just 25, the selectors might have balked at her age. Sixty years on, she has played a blinder. On any showing, the Queen's jubilee can be celebrated for longevity and dedication to duty, in the face of often insufferable tedium. In her mid-80s, she glides over the stream of events, a tribute to the octogenarian work ethic.
Britain has never had much trouble with hereditary monarchs, even when delivered total duds. The reason is that, at least since the Hanoverians, personality has not mattered. The monarch may be a human being, but only as a ghost in a constitutional machine. No one would have invented heredity as a basis for headship of state, except possibly as a way of avoiding argument. But where it exists and serves its purpose, there seems no good reason for disposing of it. The monarch does not rule in any meaningful sense, she just represents. There is no great problem.
Monarchy's very few upsets over the past two centuries may have distressed the public and, as such, caused a flutter in Republican dovecotes. The eccentric behaviour of George IV came at a time of great political turbulence. The marriage of Edward VIII produced a crisis and abdication. Monarchy survived both. The chief hiccup of the Queen's reign came with the death of Princess Diana and was caused by a simple misreading of the nature of celebrity. It gave Republicanism only the briefest run for its money.
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