MICK HUME: Oath of allegiance to the king? Sounds more like stuff from a Stalinist People’s Republic

An oath of allegiance? Sorry, but this national “Homage of the People” sounds more like the stuff of a Stalinist People’s Republic.

After all, the authoritarian regime in North Korea is very fond of compulsory public oaths of allegiance to Kim Jong-un.

Fortunately, we don’t get locked up for refusing to sing along with the Archbishop of Canterbury on television – or because we do so in a ‘knowing’, tongue-in-cheek style. After all, it is an invitation.

But this stunt still seems like a bizarre attempt to make the monarchy appear, in the enthusiastic words of a misguided royal biographer, “democratic and inclusive.”

The archaic formulation of the people’s promise – “May the king live forever!” – may have sounded solemn from the traditional phalanx of cloaked dukes and bishops in the abbey, but certainly can only sound ridiculous from suburban garden parties, a few bottles of rosehip.

I’m sure we’ll all enjoy some pomp and circumstance on Saturday, but as a Democrat I’d rather there hadn’t been a reinstated Charles II, let alone a third.

I’d rather be a citizen than a subject, so I won’t persuade friends and relatives to swear allegiance to a hereditary monarch, his heirs and successors, “So help me God,” if it be all the same to you.

However, I also want nothing to do with those infantile ‘Not My King’ protesters who think the coronation is all about them, or the awful left-wing snob of a Cambridge professor who says those who take the oath are ‘belching’ are.

But even from the monarchists’ point of view, this so-called Homage sounds like a bad idea.

It threatens to dilute the magic and awe the historic ceremony is supposed to inspire, reducing it to a regal version of a city council ‘inclusiveness’ exercise.

Would the late queen, with her fine feelers for the public mood, be so eager to ridicule the monarchy? I doubt it.