Like mansplaining and body hair, the ability to hold and express conflicting opinions is probably something most people would hesitate to include in their dating profile(s!). And the expression of conflicting opinions in an election manifesto is certainly unlikely to deliver a landslide. But what psychologists now prefer to call cognitive dissonance has long been admired as an editorial policy. Indeed, one of the main reasons for The Spectator’s longevity is that on quite a lot of the issues it covers it can’t make its mind up. Or rather, it prefers not to make its readers’ minds up for them. Instead of the Henry Ford opinion choice they might expect to find reading the Guardian or watching the ABC, Speccie readers are often served several contrasting positions on the same topic, often in the same issue. Take last week’s. The cover story was a valediction on marriage, and as you might expect in a parish of broadly conservative values, it deprecated the waning popularity of that institution amongst demographics where things like climate change have displaced religion. But this piece was followed immediately by one which rationalised, just as compellingly, a growing tendency amongst Gen Z heterosexual women to reject marriage for political reasons. Which itself was followed by a piece which argued for the revival of marriage as the most practicable way to counter the threat of human extinction posed by declining populations and online porn. Then, just when the marriage tree appeared to be empty, along came the UK Speccie’s longest-serving scribe to give it one more shake. And the more familiar you are with Taki’s column, the less his take on marriage would have surprised you. ‘I regard it as beyond dispute,’ declared the world’s most shameless pants man, ‘that men are not by nature monogamous, and that the romantic feelings that launch them into marriage tend to be less durable than a second-hand Mercedes. Furthermore, I have taken it as my mission to publicly defend that most marginalised of contemporary species, the ardent womaniser.’

We can be pretty sure it wasn’t the Speccie’s marriage issue which prompted Mr Albanese and Mrs Haydon (née Haydon) to consummate what some had begun to think of as a suspiciously long engagement. But irrespective of what you think of his politics, all right-thinking Australians must hope, if only for the sake of their own families’ immediate futures, that the Prime Minister’s second marriage is a happy one. It is to the credit of Australian gambling companies that none of them will give you odds on a second Albanese divorce, and only a cynic would suggest this has less to do with the industry’s ethical standards than the federal government’s recent volte-face on imposing a ban on gambling ads. Britain’s bookies, by contrast, have no scruples when it comes to monetising the marital malfunction of its ruling class. Encouraged perhaps by the Queen Mother’s penchant for betting on the prospective names of her grandchildren, respectable old bookies like Ladbrokes and William Hill were happy to give odds on the disintegration of Charles’ first marriage and the likelihood of his second. So it is no surprise that right now a lot of the smart sterling is on a Harry and Meghan break-up – something many Poms are praying for in the wake of new revelations about Andrew’s Epstein connection, and rumours that the late Queen tacitly endorsed the covering up of her favourite son’s excesses. It is at times like this that even the most ardent Australian monarchists must find themselves indulging in a little cost-benefit analysis, while their arch-enemies over at the Australian Republican Movement must wonder if, after all their hard work, the Poms will end up beating them across the line. Meanwhile, the rest of us will settle for National Treasures. Partly because they don’t depend on our taxes for their survival, and partly because, far from diminishing their public standing, the failure of their relationships enhances their appeal. Did we stop loving Bob Hawke in 1995 when he traded Hazel in for Blanche? Only for a minute. And do we think any less of Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman now that their respective marriages have failed – twice in our Nic’s case? Not at all. If anything, such fallibility endears them to us. I speak from experience here, having once sold a house to Nicole’s parents. A few weeks after I moved out I got a call from the old bloke who lived across the street and liked to update me on the comings and goings of his new celebrity neighbours. ‘The big black cars pulled up half an hour ago,’ he told me on this occasion, ‘and I can see Nicole and her mum and dad having a yarn on the balcony. But the guest cloakroom light’s been on for the past five minutes, mate, so there’s a fifty-fifty chance that right now Tom Cruise is pinching a loaf in your old dunny. I thought you’d like to know.’ Wouldn’t happen with the Windsors, would it? And if all this is giving you the impression that my support for the royal family is wavering, don’t worry. This being the Speccie you know it is only a matter of time, if not pages, before someone comes to their rescue.