Politics needs to play its part as a divided Britain faces upheaval Martin Kettle

The death of a monarch is an entirely foreseeable event, the solemn formalities hardwired into the rituals of dynastic succession. But it is also an event that is difficult, partly for the simple reason of good manners, to anticipate with any accuracy at any particular time.

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With the death at Balmoral of Queen Elizabeth II, a prepared but nevertheless shocked nation found itself at such a moment, and it is important that our troubled politics and our wounded civil society face up to it calmly and sensibly , because this event will resonate politically and constitutionally for years to come.

Elizabeth was on the throne for so many years that, through no fault of her own, she made this process difficult. She reigned longer than any other monarch in British history . She is the only one to have reigned for more than 70 years, a span unlikely to be repeated in the foreseeable future. Until last week, she was the only monarch that the vast majority of us ha d ever known – you have to be at least 75 to have had any memory of George VI’s reign. This is a big, big event for Britain.

She presided over a system of doing monarchy that in some ways felt timeless, but which was in fact adaptive and distinctive. Her staying power and her skill at keeping her distance have bequeathed a model of monarchy that will not be easy for Charles III to replicate .