Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Long may she reign REUTERS/Andrew Winning

With large parts of the nation preparing to celebrate 60 glorious years of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2012 looks like being yet another sad year for republicans.

Despite this, like some poor British Tommy left behind at Dunkirk to hold the line for just a few hours more, the enemies of constitutional monarchy are still attempting to grab whatever minor victory they can before they are swamped by flag waving reactionaries and tied up with bunting.

The pressure group Republic has said that schools holding "uncritical" celebrations of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee that do not explore republican viewpoints may be breaching the Education Act 1996 by promoting a particular set of political views.

Hilariously Republic has specifically singled out a cooking competition - Cook for the Queen - claiming that schools taking part in the competition do so at the risk of breaking the law.

In another move designed, it would seem, to spoil everyone else's fun, Republic has said that it will be holding a protest at the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. The group says it hopes that thousands of republicans will turn up "to tell the world that we want change".

Quite why anyone would want to get rid of one of the only remaining institutions which makes one proud to be British is anyone's guess. What with the armed forces and trades unions shrivelling, the economy stagnating, prices rising and our elected leaders and business leaders shaming themselves the only thing we need now is to abolish the one thing that might unite people in an increasingly fractured society.

That aside how sad must it be for the political descendents of Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Paine to be reduced to griping about cooking competitions and to using the kind of public event hijacking tactics that Anjem Choudary seems so keen on.

If this is all that the anti-monarchy brigade can muster then come the Jubilee there will be no need to sing (with heart and voice of course) the often forgotten second verse of the national anthem which calls on God to scatter the Queen's enemies, "confound their politics and frustrate their knavish tricks".