Lord Mersey maintained the parliamentary fiction to the last. He made his way to the palace of varieties seemingly unperturbed by rumours of his imminent demise. "Has it leaked out?" he demanded, robustly informing the press: "I will believe it when I hear it from the Queen."
And for a while yesterday, as Her Majesty progressed to Westminster in the Australia State coach, it seemed his caution might possibly be justified.
Maybe Mr Blair's Cool Britannia had been but a think-tanker's dream. Perhaps, after all, the British had decided they didn't want to be a "young" country.
Traditionalists had been horrified to learn of cutbacks in the great state ceremonial approved, allegedly, by the sovereign herself. One of the Queen's three Ladies in Waiting and two of the Gentlemen Ushers were gone - as was Silver Stick in Waiting. The long wait endured by MPs before being summoned to hear the Queen read Mr Blair's speech had been curtailed. And, horror of horrors, the Heralds would not be in their usual place.
They need not have worried. Mr Blair understands well the Tory concept of continuity and change. The Heralds - with names like Maltravers Herald Extraordinary and Portcullis Pursuivant - were in a huddle somewhere else. Gold Stick had been retained; the Lord Great Chamberlain would still carry the Imperial State Crown to the robing room; four young pages were on hand to carry the train of Her Majesty's Parliament Robe; and while the Lord Chancellor (who only required one page to help with his magnificent black and gold number) had been given a special dispensation to turn his back on the sovereign, the Marquis of Chomley and the Duke of Norfolk insisted on walking backwards before her.
To the assembled Lords Spiritual and Temporal (those lucky enough to win a balloted seat and able to borrow suitable ermine for the occasion) it must have seemed nothing much had changed. Nine hundred years of history were played out before them, with the pomp, ceremony and majesty for which the Mother of Parliaments knows no rivals. Hardly, surely (for those hereditaries pre-dating the Norman Conquest) for the last time?
Mr Blair's Queen's Speech banged on a bit. And as thoughts of lunch began to intrude, Lord Mersey and others might have thought the moment of danger past. But at 11.45 precisely the Queen (without any obvious flicker of embarrassment) pronounced the sentence of death: "A Bill will be introduced to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords."
Lord Mersey had heard it from the Queen and no mistake. Well-mannered to the end, their Lordships observed convention and received their fate in silence. But the barbarians were within the gates, and from the assembled ranks of Labour MPs came a low, guttural roar of approval. On this one at least, Tony had delivered. And the Prime Minister betrayed no embarrassment either, having had the foul deed done by the only person who shall rule henceforth by hereditary right.