Over the past couple of weeks, this column has focused on the forthcoming General Election and, specifically, how centre-left voters can use it to draw a line under the discredited Blair era. Only time will tell whether the "Vote Kennedy - Get Brown" strategy I outlined last week will achieve the aim of reducing Labour's majority to a point where a leadership change becomes inevitable. Suffice it to say for now that with exactly two months to go to the anticipated May 5 poll, I don't think the election result is quite so cut and dried as everyone is assuming. Yes, I still expect Labour to win - but as I sought to demonstrate last week, it is the scale of the victory that really counts in determining the ultimate winner in the long Blair-Brown battle. For the time being, though, it is time to take a look at the other big story of 2005 thus far - the proposed wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. When this was first announced, there were suggestions that it could even be linked to the election, with Mr Blair hoping it would generate a national "feelgood factor" that would propel him to a serene third triumph. Well, if the Prime Minister genuinely thought that - and I frankly doubt that he could ever have been so daft - he was in for a rather abrupt disillusionment. In fact, it is already clear that the marriage of Charles and Camilla is about as likely to generate a national feelgood factor as the Germans winning the next Eurovision Song Contest. The wedding was always going to be opposed in certain ultramontane circles as an "insult" either to the memory of Princess Diana or alternatively to the historic teachings of the Anglican Church. Indeed, if there are any electoral implications at all, they may well be negative ones for Mr Blair, for having given the go-ahead for the nuptials in the first place. But as the weeks have gone by, the controversy has given way to something far more damaging for the reputation of the monarchy - namely ridicule. Each new revelation about the plans for the event, from the mix-up over the venue to the Queen's non-attendance, has suggested our Royal Family could not be relied on to organise a booze-up in a brewery. Now as a monarchist myself, I have to admit I find all of this rather sad. My own view of the reaction to the wedding amongst a certain section of the public is that we seem to be expecting far higher standards of the Prince than we are prepared to embrace ourselves. In this increasingly post-Christian society of ours, we idolise celebrities who fall in and out of marriage with each other at the drop of a hat. To condemn Prince Charles for wanting to marry the love of his life when, as a widower, he is perfectly free to do so, seems to me the height of British hypocrisy. Ever since the "War of the Waleses" between Charles and Diana first came to public notice in the early 1990s, there has been a tendency among the public to see one or other of them as the villain of the piece. But they were not villains, still less heroes or heroines, but genuinely tragic figures. Had Charles been anyone other than the heir to the throne, he could have married Camilla in the early 70s - but she was black-balled because she had "form," namely, previous relationships. Instead, after playing the field for a few years, he allowed himself to be pressured by his father into marrying someone to whom he was totally emotionally unsuited. There has been increasing talk since the wedding announcement that the marriage to Camilla should in some way disqualify Charles from ever becoming King. But should the fact that someone married the wrong person and is now trying to put that right really debar them from the Crown? The fact that Charles is a genuinely flawed figure should make him more, not less suitable, to be our Head of State. He may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth - but in the trials and tribulations of his emotional life he is, in the final analysis, much like all the rest of us. As it is, I have a hunch that Charles will not, in fact, become King, not so much because of the Camilla marriage but because he had the sheer bad luck to be born when he did. Even if the Queen were to live only another 10 years - and she could well go on for 20 - Charles would be of pensionable age before he came to the throne. I suspect that by then there will be a desire on the part of the public for a younger Head of State rather than what might be viewed as a further instalment of Windsor gerontocracy. Purists might balk at such a breach of the hereditary principle - but in truth it would by no means be the first time that public opinion had altered the royal line of succession. As to the longer-term political implications, some have claimed over the years that New Labour has a hidden agenda to destroy the monarchy. Personally, I doubt that republicanism has ever formed any part of Mr Blair's project, such is his instinctive conservatism when it comes to constitutional and other matters. But there are others around the Prime Minister - not least our old friend Alastair Campbell - who would like nothing more than to see the Windsors sent packing. Sadly, it seems that Charles and Camilla's wedding, and the mixture of controversy and farce surrounding it, has merely strengthened their hand. | 
