Chided by the Earl of Rochester that he'd never said a foolish thing, nor ever done a wise one, Charles II replied, "This is very true: for my words are my own, and my actions are my ministers!"

In fact, in 1680, we hadn't quite reached that point, but as she enters her seventh decade on the throne, Elizabeth II runs no such risks. Even diehard socialists accept Elizabeth as the embodiment of a constitutional settlement that renders the Monarch politically blameless because she will have acted solely on the advice of the leader of the government which her subjects elect.

Constitutionally, we've come of age and whilst out of ingrained affection we preserve the courtesies, it's the Prime Minister who calls the shots and it's the electorate that must shoulder the blame when the government's found wanting. Our two Elizabeths have been exemplary monarchs, but whereas Elizabeth I was the Sovereign of a subject people, Elizabeth II is, in reality, the subject of a Sovereign Electorate.

But it's precisely because the Monarch cannot refuse the PM's advice that particular care should be taken both about that advice and the way in which it's tendered. Manners matter in human relationships and that includes the relationship between the Monarch and her people.

With the exception of The Garter, The Thistle and The Royal Victorian Order, all knighthoods are bestowed on the PM's advice and given that it's the Queen that must confer that honour, the advice both to confer and revoke should be treated with equal care.

In 2004, Fred Goodwin was knighted for services to banking. His career at RBS had been stellar, as were RBS's contributions to the Exchequer. In 2007, Goodwin's Midas touch failed him as the takeover of the Dutch firm ABN Amro led to the near collapse of RBS. On October 13, 2008, Goodwin resigned from RBS.

So far the position mirrors that of Gordon Brown who in 2004 sold Britain's Gold Reserves at a market low, costing the taxpayer at least £5 billion. There is, however, one significant difference. Brown is still a Privy Counsellor, but just three and a half years later, Goodwin has been stripped of his knighthood. So what changed? What was it that did not justify Goodwin being stripped of his knighthood in 2008, but did nearly four years later? The answer appears to be that Goodwin's public humiliation suited both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition because it distracted attention from the "bonus crisis" that was causing problems for them both.

And now consider the Sovereign's role in all this. After all, it was the Queen who conferred Goodwin's knighthood. The advice to remove it came from the Honours Forfeiture Committee, a body which only convenes at the Prime Minister's instigation and which took just 10 days to rubber-stamp the decision to annul. The appropriate government website suggests that the advice will then have been submitted to the Monarch "through the Office of the Prime Minister."

But might you not have thought that out of sheer good manners, the Monarch would have been given the opportunity to carry out her constitutional duty, which is the right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn before the referral was made and once the Committee had made its decision, would you not have expected the Prime Minister to attend upon the Monarch personally, rather than just get his office to send over a memo?

Now perhaps these proprieties were observed, but, if so, why is it that this impeccable Constitutional Monarch, for the first occasion that I can ever recall, is said to have "voiced misgivings" before signing the Annulment because of the precedent it sets. Are we, asks a Royal confidant, to see "incoming ministers stripping their predecessors of their roles as Privy Councillors if they want to make scapegoats of them?"

Mr Goodwin has now resigned as a Trustee of the Queen's Silver Jubilee Trust. "to spare the Queen the embarrassment of his stripped knighthood". It's a reaction that does him credit. What a shame that in the 60th year of Her Majesty's reign, that's not, apparently, a concern shared by the political establishment.