They blow, ever so slightly, in his favor as Parliament reconvenes
Swathed in a velvet train, with the imperial crown carefully balanced on her coiffed brown hair, Queen Elizabeth II opened the final session of Parliament before her subjects vote again in a general election. In one of Britain's better pageants, the Queen spoke from a golden throne in the gilded House of Lords, surrounded by such royal functionaries as her Gold Stick in Waiting and the Rouge Dragon Pursuivant. So many ermined peers and bejeweled peeresses were present that a journalistic wag observed there was a "tiara boom today."
The...