As the Queen is Head of the Commonwealth, it would have been surprising if no Commonwealth performers had appeared at her birthday party. Only extreme Brexiteers such as Colin and Pearline Hingston could link this with the issue of whether the UK should leave the Customs Union.

The UK’s exports to other EU countries are worth about five times its exports to other Commonwealth countries, yet some Brexiteers seem to imagine that we could switch our trading arrangements as seamlessly as we can change our domestic energy suppliers.

A recent poll of over 200,000 people found that 56 per cent want the UK to remain in the single market, of which the customs union is an element, and 52 per cent considered the UK would benefit from maintaining current arrangements, meaning frictionless trade and free movement of people across the continent.

This suggests that, if the House of Lords is really ‘playing with fire’ by voting for the UK to remain in the Customs Union, the fire might be limited to Nigel Farage throwing another dead fish in the Thames rather than the abolition of the House.

It needs to be remembered that the majority for Leave in the referendum was extremely narrow and may well have been boosted by Mr Farage promoting fear with his shamelessly xenophobic posters, a ruse sadly copied in the recent Hungarian elections.

Denis Fryer

Calmore