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As a country, we seemingly can no longer build high-speed rail links, conduct public inquiries for less than £200 million or open Hammersmith Bridge to cars in less than half a decade. The restoration and renewal project is presently slated to take longer than the Victorians took actually to build the Palace after the great fire of 1834. We are all familiar, as we heard in today’s Oral Questions, with the exciting daily saga of our front door, which is ever evolving and rarely revolving. In a sense, the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain are the exact opposite of all that: they work well, cheaply and efficiently. Yet we are about to penalise and hamper the two architects of our state ceremonial. It is as though we were looking for the one area of British public life that still works faultlessly and deliberately trying to sabotage it.