Do we care which other royals the Duchess of Cambridge has to curtsey to? Yes, it actually matters!

When it comes to the arcana of royal protocol, I’m as bemused as your average BBC presenter. Essentially, I couldn’t care less. But I can’t be the only person surprised to learn that Prince William’s wife has been told that, if hubby isn’t present, she has to curtsey to “blood royal” princesses, even if they happen to be the offspring of arch-slapper, Sarah Ferguson. Yes, you heard right – the lovely Kate Middleton has to abase herself to air-headed party-girls, Beatrice and Eugenie!

There’s no favouritism at work here – them’s the rules, and that’s that. And that’s just how it should be. Kate Middleton seems an enormously sensible young woman, who evidently knows what’s expected of her – dress beautifully, smile a lot, don’t embarrass The Firm, and be really nice to us ordinary folk from whose midst she has emerged. But, no matter how level-headed she is, the sort of mass adulation she has received since getting hitched to the second in line to the throne would be enough to swell anyone’s self-regard. So the occasional reminder that, without the Royal Family, she’d just be another pleasant, nice-looking, stick-thin, middle-class office worker strikes me as a sensible check on potential Diana-style hubris. Because it’s not who she is, but what she is that matters.

Of course, the not who you are but what you are rule applies elsewhere.  

Back in 1997, when we were informed that the members of the new Labour cabinet had eschewed formal titles in favour of first names – “Let’s hear what Robin has to say on this issue”, “Please stop hitting me, Gordon”, “Tony, I hope you die writhing in agony” etc.-  I knew things were going to turn out even worse than I’d feared. The penchant for altering or altogether ignoring rituals, customs and traditions for no other reason than that they make some jumped-up Johnny-Come-Lately feel a bit awkward is invariably a sign that the alterer has no sense of history - and the government of a country should never be entrusted to anyone ignorant or contemptuous of its history.

The reason cabinet members should, as far as possible, address each other by their formal titles when conducting government business is to remind them that they’re supposed to be acting in the interest of 60 million Britons rather than tinkering with laws and introducing policies simply to satisfy their own evanescent enthusiasms or to gain some temporary personal advantage. The members of the last Labour government acted as if their only motive for gaining power was in order to stick it to the other guy first – usually another guy sitting at the same cabinet table.

I’m guessing that’s why no American would think of addressing Barack Obama as anything other than Mr President (rather than, say, “Numbnuts”) – and why Obama’s eagerness to use executive privilege to introduce ruinous policies purely in order to scramble together a few more votes before the next election is a betrayal of his office - and, of course, the American people. (The decriminalising of illegal aliens strikes me as a particularly sordid and distinctly un-Presidential manoeuvre.)

When Ted Heath’s disastrous local government reorganisation of the early ‘70s created meaningless regions with names which held no emotional or historical resonance for the people who lived there – Avon? Cleveland? Humberside? Huh? – it displayed the same arrogant contempt for tradition as did The Incredible Sulk’s fanatical determination to see Britain tortured on the Procrustean bed of the EEC, just so that its national identity could be erased within a European superstate.

When the Speaker of the House, John Bercow, insists on wearing a lounge suit because the formal attire that goes with the office make him “uncomfortable” (ah! did the poor little diddums feel embarrassed in all that howwible finery!) – and on hijacking an address in the presence of the Queen in order to promote some silly little charity he’s involved in - we know he has conflated the enormous historical significance of his office with his own – utterly negligible – importance as a here-today-gone-tomorrow politician. Ditto Gordon Brown’s refusal, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, to wear black tie to deliver his annual Mansion House speech.

Making the holders of high office dress up in a uniform and perform rituals which may very well make them look ridiculous (the sillier the better, actually) helps remind them that dozens – in some cases, hundreds – of other people have held the same office and performed the same duties, often with self-effacing devotion – and that, with any luck, hundreds will in future. The whole thing isn’t about them – it’s about this country, and it’s about the rest of us.

The Queen has spent the last 60 years showing – quite splendidly - that she knows full well it’s all about the title she inherited. And I’m sure making Kate curtsey to Her Royal Sillinesses will reinforce the message in her mind.