More arguments about what to put on the empty plinth.
The monuments in Trafalgar Square tell the national story, and the monument on the Empty Plinth is no exception. But there is no monument on the Empty Plinth, you will object, for surely otherwise it would not be the Empty Plinth. Aha, but on the Empty Plinth we have seen in the last years a series of contrasting objects: this is a very good monument to diversity, multiculturalism, postmodernism, the hermeneutic of suspicion, mistrust of history, and the fear of being one thing rather than another: our national story in the modern age.
But like Nelson's Column, the national story this monument tells is not a neutral story. It is a story with a point of view. The idea that every idea about what we are like should have equal play is itself a very specific idea: an idea that contradicts and seeks to exclude some other ideas.
Of course, there are other good reasons for wanting to vary the subject matter of our monuments. To be blunt, most central London statuary is of military men. You may want to have less of that because you don't like military men: then I would disagree, for I think Nelson and General Roberts and Viscount Slim served us well. But I do also think Britain is about more than succesful defensive warfare.
That said, there are limits to what Britain is about. Britain is about something, not everything. The polymorphic diversity of the Empty Plinth is a monument to a Britain that has lost its sense of itself. So it may catch the mood of the times, but it's nothing to be complacent about. And by putting jokey impermanence at the head of the list of virtues, it rules out filling the Empty Plinth with something that would last.
When this damp island has sunk again beneath the waves, level-headed historians in summary mode will remember us for two things: fighting and writing. Trafalgar Square is replete with monuments to fighting. What the empty plinth needs then is a permanent bronze group sculpture of Shakespeare, Milton and Jane Austen, over the motto "peach hath her victories no less renowned than war".