The police have said sorry for arresting anti-monarchy protestors under the wrong legal rubric on Coronation Day, but is that really a lead news story, as it was on Tuesday’s Today programme? If the police had failed to contain the mini-mob and a couple of them had, as they intended, obstructed the processional route, there would have been a huge and justified outcry. Coverage like that of Today makes no allowance for the fact that these protestors are not ordinary citizens. Protest is their full-time job, as is making a monkey of the law. Every week, I receive notice in my inbox of protests by this coalition of organisations which explicitly promises trouble. As I write, I am looking at one which says, ‘Animal Rising Declares Intention To Disrupt The Derby Festival’. Why is an intention to disrupt a legitimate right? The smaller print of the Animal Rising announcement also attacks the new Public Order Act and its measures against ‘locking down’ (at issue in the Coronation Day case). It adds: ‘Animal Rising claims that this new legislation will not deter people from taking action and that it represents the actions of a government not fit for purpose… The need to address the climate and nature emergencies to create a better world for everyone is more important.’ Which is quite close to saying that a very small mob should rule.

Meanwhile, the Online Safety Bill trundles through the Lords. It is immensely complicated, sometimes genuinely incomprehensible, but the core problem is simple to state. The spirit of this law is that of a character in The Simpsons. Helen Lovejoy, the interfering and judgmental wife of Reverend Lovejoy, pastor of the Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism First Church in Springfield, always cries out in any situation: ‘Won’t somebody please think of the children?’ In order to protect children from a harm it cannot precisely identify, the current Bill threatens to destroy the value of encryption services such as WhatsApp by, in effect, decrypting them. Its child safety duties also require platforms to treat users as children by default, until they establish that their service is not likely to be accessed by children. Only once this verification is complete may platforms grant access to content that may be harmful to children. Google or Wikipedia, for example, would have to withhold any information that could be psychologically harmful to children until the user’s age was verified. Ofcom could fine such websites 10 per cent of global revenue if it deemed they had got this indefinable matter wrong. This move against freedom is a whale compared with which the Public Order Bill is a minnow, yet only a brave handful of legislators is paying attention.

After Penny Mordaunt’s magnificent performance with the Jewelled Sword last Saturday, it seems clear that she is the only conceivable challenger for the Tory leadership before the next general election. There is something about a handsome woman on the warpath which excites the fealty of traditional Tory supporters, particularly men. Under the power of this atavism, Conservative backbenchers backed Margaret Thatcher against Ted Heath for the leadership in 1975. A similar phenomenon was observable when Joanna Lumley uttered the warcry ‘Ayo Gorkhali!’ on the steps of parliament. MPs rushed to introduce the legislation she championed to improve Gurkhas’ rights. Though well-meant, the new rules made Gurkha families less a proud warrior race and more another component of the British welfare queue. Yes, yes, one wants to say to all those true blues, it is thrilling to think of Penny wielding her 7lb weapon, but remember that Boadicea, despite her spear, sharp chariot wheels and embonpoint, still lost to the Romans. (By the way, Penny did not have to bear the full weight of the sword: it rested in a pouch suspended from her collar.)

Thinking of swords, why did the pages not have them? In 1953, they had little silver swords, and breeches and stockings too.

Everyone rightly admires the Princess Royal’s performance at the coronation. She too had a martial appearance, although, in her case, unarmed. As Colonel of the Blues and Royals and Gold-Stick-in-waiting, she rode in the procession back from the Abbey. The best bit was the way she rode – chatting gaily to the officer beside her, alert yet easy in her element, as riders talk when they move between coverts on the hunting field.

An American friend, Dr Augustus Howard, sends me his reflections on the coronation: ‘The ceremony certainly sidelined the old aristocrats – what Blair began by removing most of them from the Lords was completed with their effective exclusion on Saturday. But it was these aristocrats, after all, who originally forced the monarch to subject himself to law in the form of Magna Carta… And in exchange for the monarch’s concessions, the nobles pledged their fealty. In an ironic twist that the “modernisers” surely did not consider, “democratising” the fealty oath only serves to expand the theoretical scope of the monarch’s power – now everyone is taking this oath… pledging direct and unmediated fealty to the Crown.’ I found this very perceptive, the citizen of a great republic seeing things more clearly than we over here.

Willie Landels, the former editor of Harper’s & Queen, has died. He was the sort of exotic creature not now allowed, in our timorous corporate world, to edit anything. When I became editor of this paper in 1984, I took Willie out to lunch to get his advice. He passed no comment whatever on the paper’s content. Once he had finished eating, he picked up the copy we had with us, and weighed it in his hands. Then he inspected the spine. ‘Charles,’ he said, ‘these staples: don’t you think they should be gold?’ I am sorry that I, and all my five successors, have failed to implement this good advice.