Such an alien concept

The insurmountable problem with a citizenship ceremony for school-leavers is that it is disastrously un-British. The proposals to create "a sense of shared belonging in Britain" from Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, are alien to our way of doing things, yet they conjure up a combination of Yes, Minister and Alice in Wonderland that is such a gift to the comedy circuit that it could only be British.