Thanks to Diana, the royals are done for

We are approaching an important royal anniversary, which I trust will be marked with a display of the appropriate reverence for the woman involved. It is almost exactly 20 years since Princess Anne was gratuitously rude to Cherie Blair, during a reception at Balmoral. The Princess Royal can sniff out stinking fish from a distance of several miles, I think. Anyway, having been introduced to HRH for the first time, the ghastly Blair insisted that she should call her ‘Cherie’. Anne replied, icily: ‘Actually, let’s not go that way. Let’s stick to Mrs Blair, shall we?’ That put the vaulting Scouse besom in her place. Why did Anne take an instant dislike to the Prime Minister’s wife? To save time, one supposes.

We do not hear very much about Princess Anne these days, just the occasional report of her snapping a little testily at photographers or commoners. She has not explained to the world, via a television interview or through the press, her profound mental anguish and depression at having a retinue of emotionally incontinent half-wits ahead of her in the queue for the throne, although that is something she must surely feel. And so she has not been sainted by the maniacally obsessive and dangerous mental health lobby or the simpering, touchy-feely liberals. She may be the last person in our royal family to retain those truly royal genes of stoicism, discretion, a certain hauteur and a sense of bearing. I don’t think you’ll find any of that stuff in her largely idle, perpetually whining nephews — nor indeed, in her older brother. She works harder than the rest of them, fulfilling her duties uncomplainingly. Cherie Blair later referred to her as ‘that bitch’. Acquiring the enmity, immediately, of a woman as truly awful as Blair is just one more reason Anne should have our unqualified respect.