Prince Harry is to return to the front line in Afghanistan to shoot at the Taleban from an Apache attack helicopter. He will be armed with a clutch of Hellfire missiles and a 30mm chain gun. He will also tote a loaded side pistol on the offchance of his being obliged to make an unscheduled landing amid the enemy.

At the same time, his brother William (the second in line to the throne), newly returned from the Falklands, will continue his career as a search and rescue RAF officer. It is not impossible that the two royal heirs will be in action against the Taleban at the same time, though Harry is in the Army Air Corps, not the RAF.

The princes’ courage, and their determination to take the same chances as their fellow servicemen, does them great personal credit. But should they be allowed, especially jointly, to perform such perilous service?

Two or three years ago, when Gordon Brown was still prime minister, the answer was an adamant No. The head of the armed services, at the behest of the then defence secretary, ruled that it would not be in the forces’ or the country’s interests to put one royal prince, let alone two, in an Afghan battle zone.

Instantly, the prince’s unit would become a specific target of the enemy. Battalions of tribesman would vie in vehemence and fury to be the first to reach and annihilate it. And suppose one of the princelings were captured? Instantly, the elected government of the United Kingdom would become a focus of international blackmail. Quit the war. Or take delivery of His Royal Highness’s head. All the hills of Afghanistan would resound to the sound of this triumphant and bloody haggle.

Such were the military arguments put a year or two ago, and they seem to me unchallengeable. But there are political objections, equally strong, against the royal brothers jostling for medals in this war.

If they were participating in a war to defend the survival of this country there might be a morale-raising point to it. But the conflict in Afghanistan enjoys no national consensus. Very many people – including military top brass who must perforce whisper their criticisms from behind cuffed palms – consider the Afghan expedition a gross and wasteful mistake that eventually will lead to a humiliating British withdrawal and a restoration of the vicious rule of the Taleban.

No European power has ever prevailed for long in Afghanistan. Could it ever be right to involve two heirs to the throne in yet another Afghani cock-up wrought by self-aggrandising political dimwits? Could it not shake the Crown? Historically, William and Harry are conscripted by an old precedent. Princes of the realm, and their multitudinous cousins, have nearly always gone straight into the forces as a matter of course.

This is because they often need, on official inspection duties, to clank with military gongs, whether they have earned them or not; to denote that they are, at least totemically, in charge of something.

Twenty years or so ago Edward, the Queen’s youngest son, was shoved in the Marines, but showing no stomach for that life, resigned his commission to work backstage in a theatre. Some tabloids jeered at him for his unmartial squeamishness, but why should the accident of royal birth make a military career the only available one? There are other professions.

Is it not time we saw a scion of the Windsors training as a teacher, a doctor, a clergyman, a florist, a publican or even a barman?

But does every princeling, or princeling’s cousin, have to take up arms, whether he wants to or not? The decision to let William and Harry serve, admittedly with genuine enthusiasm, as combat officers (incidentally why couldn’t they have joined, if only as a gestural start, the non-commissioned ranks?) was probably taken as a glamorous obeisance to equality for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year.

But the monarchy is an hereditary institution. It cannot embrace equality – or indeed popular democracy. Its members are born to command, if in modern times it is only nominal command.

As Alan Bennett noted in his The Madness of George III, kings and princelings are expected to wave from balconies at toothless yokel throngs decked out in flags. That is what they are for. If they really now want to democratise their act, they will have to join a political party and hope for the best in a republican election.

I, personally, believe it would be better for the country if they stayed, in splendid neutrality, as they are. It seems to be my duty to advise Her Majesty to keep her grandsons out of dodgy oriental wars. That task should fall to the prime minister, but if Dave won’t do it, someone else has to.

A motorbike for the mayor . . .

IN spite of making £2m cuts that will close schools and libraries, Scarborough town council will let its present mayor, John Blackburn, cruise around in the official Mercedes Benz and retain on the payroll its £20,000-a- year chauffeur.

The council argues that if His Worship were allowed to drive himself he would be at high risk of having his mayoral chain wrenched from his neck by determined thieves. The chain is worth £30,000. I tend to agree with the local Taxpayers’ Alliance. They say the council is extravagantly out of touch. It would surely cost the seaside taxpayers a lot less if someone lent the mayor a bike – though, in keeping with his dignity and his determination to thwart chain-snatching gangs, it would have to be a motorised one, with a padlocked sidecar for the mayoress.

Bingo and ring-o?

THE COSMO bingo parlour in Stalybridge is seeking a licence to hold wedding ceremonies within sight and sound of its numbers’ shouter. Clicketty click. Two fat ladies. Was she worth it? Till death do us part.

What fitter place could there be for a nuptial? Every marriage is a gamble, few offering a painless, alimony-free escape route by courtesy of a lottery jackpot.

Some Church of England parsons are tut-tutting at this impious new competition from a bingo hall. But nobody should take the slightest notice of them.

These reverends are planning to put up the cost of church weddings from £296 to £415.

And that doesn’t include a whacking fee for the organist and his yellowing second hand hymn sheets.

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