Royal family

When I was a lobby journalist, I never went to the State Opening of Parliament. I much regret it, because when I finally went this week, as a peer, there was no Queen. The printed programme on our seats described itself as ‘The ceremonial to be observed at the Opening of Parliament by Her Majesty The Queen’, but in fact the Prince of Wales stood, or rather, sat in, because of his mother’s ‘mobility issues’. He read well, sticking to her understanding that to give any expressiveness to the Queen’s Speech would be to verge on constitutional impropriety. Imagine how inappropriate it would have been, for example, if the phrase ‘Her Majesty’s Government will level up’ had been uttered with any hint of enthusiasm.

Once again, a moment that should be a unifying and celebratory for the Windsors has attracted division and discord. It has been reported today that Harry and Meghan will not appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations. All of this controversy for a fleeting appearance on what someone described on social media as ‘an outdoor patio on the second floor of an old building’. It’s the world’s most famous outdoor patio, utilised first by Queen Victoria in 1851 to mark the opening of the Great Exhibition. Since then, the Buckingham Palace balcony has been a focal point and climax of significant national celebrations and commemorations. Even Neville Chamberlain rocked up there, fresh from signing the Munich agreement.

Common knowledge Tensions in the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Jamaica led some to speculate that the Commonwealth might not long survive the present Queen’s reign. Who came up with the idea of naming the successor organisation to the British Empire after a term first used by Oliver Cromwell? – Lord Rosebery is recorded as referring to a ‘Commonwealth of nations’ in 1884, a decade before he became prime minister. – The term was first used officially in the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, which established a federation of British colonies. – The idea of a British Commonwealth first surfaced at the 1926 Imperial Conference. – The word ‘British’ was dropped in 1949.

Prince Philip’s memorial service yesterday was an affecting occasion. The hymns, including Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer and Britten’s Te Deum In C were well chosen, and the Dean of Windsor’s well-judged sermon acknowledged both the Duke of Edinburgh’s sincere but never pious religious faith and his energetic, at times abrasive personality. The Dean suggested, rightly, that the Duke would never have wanted to be remembered as a plaster saint. After the low-key Covid-necessitated funeral service of last year, it was a public reminder that the royal family can still command both dignity and respect. So why, then, have today’s headlines been so dreadful?

For a tour that should have been an unmitigated success, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s visit to the Caribbean has ended up being surprisingly controversial, described as nothing less than ‘a PR disaster’. Even if some of the negative coverage feels confected, especially in light of the exploits of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry, it seems extraordinary that the supposed outrage could not have been anticipated. It has been an inauspicious curtain-raiser to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June: from the unfortunate images of the Duke and Duchess shaking hands with Jamaican children through a chain-link fence to the protests that have greeted their progress from local republicans.

In some ways, the news is a disappointment. Prince Andrew’s decision to settle the civil case filed against him by Virginia Giuffre has likely deprived the public of weeks of damaging revelations. After much lawyer-led bravado about how the Duke of York was going to fight the scandalous and defamatory claims against him, he has now decided not to. This can only be seen as a terminal blow to what little remains of his public reputation. The statement released by the lawyers suggests that Giuffre will be receiving an undisclosed financial settlement and that Prince Andrew will be making 'a substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victim’s rights'.

Home In a message for the 70th anniversary of her accession, the Queen said it was her sincere wish that ‘when that time comes, Camilla will be known as Queen Consort’. She signed the message: ‘Your servant, Elizabeth R.’ Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the government would pay energy suppliers to discount bills by £200 in October, but customers would then have to pay back £40 a year for five years. People living in houses of the A-D council tax bands would receive a £150 rebate. The regular Ofgem energy price cap adjustment meant that a typical household would pay £693 extra a year, a 54 per cent rise.

Princess Elizabeth was 25 when her father died. She was on the first leg of a Commonwealth tour and she spent the night of 5 February 1952 at Treetops Hotel, set in the branches of a large fig tree in Aberdare National Park in Kenya. ‘For the first time in the history of the world,’ wrote the British naturalist Jim Corbett, who was a guest at the hotel at the same time, ‘a young girl climbed into a tree one day a princess and, after having what she described as her most thrilling experience, she climbed down from the tree next day a Queen.

Justin Webb is normally one of the least self-righteous BBC presenters, but he was out-Maitlising rivals on the Today programme on Tuesday. In that special, shocked tone broadcasters usually reserve for stories about racism or paedophilia, Webb contrasted ‘the final goodbyes not said’ by those who followed the rules with the Prime Minister’s birthday party/gathering in the Cabinet Room. He quoted Adam Wagner, ‘the human rights lawyer and Covid rules expert’, that it had been ‘obviously a birthday party’. It was ‘not denied’, Webb gravely intoned, ‘there was birthday cake’. How does he prevent himself bursting out laughing? The longer this story runs, now with added police, the more preposterous the solemnity becomes.

We're closing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles in 2021. Here's number one: Rod Liddle writing in March on Harry and Meghan.  Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughter of the former mayor of New York, Rudy, has been talking to the press about one of her hobbies. Apparently she likes nothing more than playing the role of a ‘unicorn’ — the third partner in a sexual liaison. She explained: ‘Finding the strength to explore these more complicated, passionate aspects of my personality became the key to harnessing my voice and creative spark, which in turn helped me better cope with depression, anxiety, and the lingering cognitive effects of adolescent anorexia.’ This is a fascinating approach to curing eating disorders, I think.

Last year Netflix refused to add a disclaimer to the beginning of every episode of The Crown, warning viewers that it is part fiction. HBO Max’s new cartoon The Prince, however, had no choice: the series has been sitting on the shelf so long that it was out of date before it was even broadcast, so every episode bears a warning that ‘this isn’t really the royal family. It’s like, a parody, or whatever. And certain recent events will not be reflected in this programme.’ The streaming service’s new cartoon comedy (if one can call it that) is based around an imagined child’s-eye-view of life in the palace. The protagonist is eight-year-old Prince George.

The past week has seen another media splash about the self-exiled Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Following the recent ruckus over the statue of Princess Diana, the latest crisis to come off the royal conveyor belt was news that the Duke has written what his publishers sedately describe as a ‘literary memoir’. Cue general outrage. I was duly put to work by a weekend newspaper on an article that was expected to follow the anti-Harry orthodoxy but somehow it wandered off course. None of us has all the facts about why he and his family have moved to California, yet that hasn’t stopped pro- and anti-Sussex camps mobilising with a fervour more appropriate to a medieval war of religion.