It was with regret that I read that Albert, retired King of the Belgians, has finally had to admit, following litigation and then a DNA test, that an artist called Delphine Boël is his natural daughter. It is not that I wish to take sides in the dispute; it is simply that there is a soft spot in my heart for Albert, King of the Belgians. I am always interested in the drafting of constitutions, including their very first words. The US Constitution famously begins with the words ‘We, the people’. When the draft constitution of the European Union — later transmuted into the Lisbon treaty — was first published in 2004, I noticed that its first words were ‘Albert, King of the Belgians’. The reason for this is that the constitution, like other European treaties, required the endorsement of the heads of state of all the contracting parties, and Albert came first alphabetically. The fact that the constitution of a project for the United States of virtually an entire continent kicked off with the Belgian blood royal made me laugh and somehow confirmed my impression that it might be a silly idea. This Brexit day, I think fondly of Albert, father of Delphine, but not, I am glad to say, father of the free polity in which, from now on, I shall live.
Sir Philip Pullman objects to the new Brexit 50p coin on the grounds that its slogan on the obverse, ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations’, lacks the Oxford comma. I suspect he is right, since the word ‘prosperity’ is not intended to link to the phrase ‘with all nations’; but there is a more fundamental, non-grammatical objection to the words. They could be written on any coin at any time, and they have no special application to Brexit.
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