HOPEFULLY, the D-Day commemorations will have given everyone from the most powerful man on earth downwards through our jostling Tories and our boycotting left-wing leaders plenty to ponder:

The monarchy may have its detractors, often for understandable reasons, but how good it was for the country to be headed by an apolitical figure. How much better to have a dignified queen as your ultimate figurehead rather than a preening president or a prime minister who is getting sacked in the morning.

The astonishing bravery of a generation which, in its youth, was prepared to run up a beach into the guns. We should marvel at how they responded to their country's call. It is partly because of them that no generation since has been asked to follow in their footsteps. How lucky are the subsequent generations who have grown up in a more peaceable age.

We as nations are stronger when we work together. D-Day led to the liberation of a continent. It would not have been successful without the Americans or the Canadians or the Australians or the Poles or the Norwegians or the Czechs or even the French resistance.

Britain may be an island off Europe but we can never turn our backs on Europe – what happens over the Channel will effect our shores. We are rearranging our relationship with the EU, but a two-fingered no-deal departure that antagonises our neighbours will be just as counter-productive as boycotting a banquet with a man you may have to do a trade deal with in a few months' time.

Oh, and although the British can barely govern themselves these days, they still do a state occasion very well.