Monthly Archives: Apr 2026

End of Session, End of Service

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The ceremony of prorogation was carried out this afternoon, ending the first session of the fifty-ninth Parliament of the United Kingdom, which has sat for nearly two years since the general election in July 2024.

Prorogation kills any bills which have not yet reached the point of passing. Notably, the highly-controversial Terminally Ill Adults End of Life) Bill ran out of legislative time and therefore will not become law.

This prorogation was authorised by an Order in Council at the start of this month. As is usual for these instruments, one specific date is named for the opening of the new session but a range of a week is offered for the closing of the old one. In practice governments nearly always go for the earliest day in the range. In this case it was widely speculated that the Starmer ministry wanted to close Parliament as swiftly as possible to halt an investigation over Lord Mandelson, which has been causing them humiliation for some weeks now.

Today is also the last day in Parliament for many of those elected hereditary peers, as the Act removing their right to representation was scheduled to take effect at the session’s end (although a handful are expected to receive life peerages in compensation). The significance of this occasion is likely the reason that the upper chamber was packed to the rafters today, in contrast to most prorogations when attendance is usually quite low.

There were quite a few changes among the principal players here, partly because of the long time this session lasted:

  • The Baroness Smith of Basildon, Leader of the House, was naturally the lead among the Lords Commissioners. She has been performing this role for over a decade now.
  • The Lord Forsyth of Drumlean took part as Lord Speaker for the first time, replacing McFall of Alcluith.
  • The Earl Howe, Shadow Deputy Leader of the House, and a member of the Conservative frontbench for a record-breaking thirty-five years, represented his party in lieu of the True. He is the first hereditary peer to take part in a royal commission since Strathclyde in 2012, and the first Earl since Ferrers in 1992.
  • Another earl, Kinnoull, the Convener of the Crossbench Peers, has still not been made a Privy Counsellor so his place was taken by the Baroness Hayman, the original Lord Speaker.
  • The Lord Purvis of Tweed, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Peers, is not a Privy Counsellor either so was represented by Beith.
  • Sarah Mullally was named in the commission as Archbishop of Canterbury for the first time (replacing Justin Welby) though the Archbishop hasn’t actually taken part in this ceremony for centuries and I didn’t see her in the chamber.
  • David Lammy was named in the commission as Lord Chancellor for the first time (replacing Shabana Mahmood), but Lord Chancellors haven’t taken part in prorogations since 2006.
  • Jo Farrar appeared for the first time as Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, reading the short titles of the Acts receiving royal assent, replacing Antonia Romeo.
  • Chloe Mawson appeared for the first time as Clerk of the Parliaments, pronouncing (perhaps mispronouncing) “Le Roy Le Veult”, replacing Simon Burton.
  • Ed Davis summoned the Commons for the first time as Black Rod, replacing Sarah Clarke.

The purpose of the Lords Commissioners is to carry out these Parliamentary ceremonies in the absence of the monarch himself. Today that need is particularly urgent as Charles III is about 3500 miles away visiting New York City. When Lady Smith read out the pro-forma line “My Lords, it not being convenient for His Majesty personally to be present here this day…” there was an eruption of laughter from the chamber and she had to then say “Settle Down!”. At the end of the ceremony, the gracious speech in “The King’s Own Words” was obviously rather less enchanting than those which Charles had actually given in Washington D.C. recently. It mentioned all the inbound state visits since the general election (Qatari, French, American, German and Nigerian) as well as the current outbound one, but curiously not those to Samoa, Italy, or the Vatican.

This prorogation was the only business conducted in the upper house today, but in the lower house there was time for a final round of Prime Minister’s Questions (meaning Starmer didn’t entirely escape further grilling on the Mandelson scandal) and the first reading of a bill regarding banking services. The latter was for a commendable cause but the effort was clearly purely symbolic given the timing.

The state opening will take place on 13th May. It will be interesting to see what roles the Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain can now play.

New Garter Knights for 2026

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There were no new appointments made to the Order of the Garter in 2025, the most recent addition being the off-cycle appointment of the Emperor of Japan as a Stranger Knight on his state visit in 2024.

Today three new Knights Companion were announced, leaving just one vacancy among the ordinary category: Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, Lord O’Donnell and Lord Burnett of Maldon. All three are crossbench life peers. Actually, all of the non-royal recipients of the Garter so far this reign have been life peers. By contrast, the fifteen still-living members added by Elizabeth II comprise seven life peers, four hereditary peers and four commoners. It may be too early to determine if this represents a significant trend.

O’Donnell was Cabinet Secretary from 2005 to 2011. From lectures and documentaries I get the sense that he was a particularly-revered holder of that office. It is also notable that he was the last in a long string to be simultaneously Head of the Home Civil Service, Cabinet Secretary and Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office, after which there was an attempt to split these into three separate roles (though the first two were reunited not long afterwards). His first name is formally Augustine, but in practice is nearly always given as Gus, giving him the initials G.O.D. Ironically, while he is now a Knight of the Garter and has since 2005 been a Knight of the Bath as well, he has not been appointed to the Order of St Michael and St George, which denies him the opportunity to live out this classic joke from Yes, Minister.

Burnett was Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales from 2017 to 2023, his six-year tenure making him the longest-serving LCJ since Geoffrey Lane (1980-1992).

He doesn’t seem to be as famous as O’Donnell, though I note he was part of the divisional court of the Queen’s Bench Division for the Miller 2 case in 2019. After retiring from the English judiciary he became Chief Justice of a commercial court based in Kazakhstan.

Both Burnett and O’Donnell are the sort of people one could expect to receive the Garter based on their offices as the existing membership included Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, though neither office guarantees the award and there are plenty of emeriti from each who have not received it.

Hennessy is the exception here, as although a parliamentarian he does not seem to have held any particular public office, whether governmental, ministerial, diplomatic, judicial or vice-regal. There have been a handful of people like this, like Mary Soames and Edmund Hillary, but they are definitely a rarity. He co-founded the Institute of Contemporary British History in 1986 and has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History since 1992 at QMUL since 1992. He has written at least two-dozen books on history and politics, making him the most (first?) prominent academic to receive the nation’s highest order. Norton must be quietly seething.

I illustrated Hennessy’s shield for Wikimedia Commons in 2022. It is about what one would expect for a man who has worked in academia. I suspect that Rs-nouse will be re-illustrating it in his characteristic style fairly shortly. Neither O’Donnell nor Burnett had arms listed in Debrett’s 2019, so the hanging of their banners in St George’s Chapel will be an exciting revelation.

Garter appointments are traditionally announced on 23rd April because it is St George’s Day, St George of Lydda being the patron saint of the Order of the Garter since its inception in 1348 and of England more generally thereafter. In modern times, today is also the eighth birthday of Prince Louis of Wales. I can’t help wondering if the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge quietly kicked themselves for having already given the name George to their July-born first son, thus missing another chance for poetic alignment.

Louis & George in June 2023

On another note, we are approaching the tenth anniversary of the EU Referendum, and with it the tenth anniversary of when Theresa May succeeded David Cameron as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It is also the year that he turns sixty and she seventy. Both have been ennobled relatively recently but neither has received any British order of chivalry. I had thought that this would be a good occasion for one of them to receive the Garter, but evidently that will have to wait for some time yet.

The Tudor Crown in the Indian Ocean

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The British Indian Ocean Territory, the entity governing the group of islands known collectively as the Chagos Archipelago, was formally created on 8th November 1965, but the territory’s flag and heraldic achievement were not granted until 1990. The flag technically was intended only to represent the office of Commissioner rather than be a civil flag in the normal way, as the Territory has no resident civilian population, instead existing mainly to house a joint United Kingdom-United States military facility.

The field of the flag is Argent charged with six bars wavy Azure. In the principal quarter is the Union Flag, and in the right half is a palm tree erect Proper charged on the trunk with the Imperial crown Or. Originally the depiction of the crown was, of course, St Edward’s Crown, but very recently it has joined the trend of changing to the Tudor Crown, in line with the preferences of the present sovereign. Checking the BIOT government website on the Wayback Machine shows the old illustration still on the homepage as late as 25th February, with the new version in its place by 22nd March. The entire flag has been redrawn in a different artistic style, probably created digitally this time instead of drawn on paper then scanned.

The flag as it appeared before.

The new image was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons earlier today. The territory’s heraldic achievement, which features a crown on the escutcheon as well as replicating the flag in the crest, is still using St Edward’s.

While I have blogged many times since 2022 about the transition between crown types, this one is particularly significant because of its political implications: Until recently, the British government had been planning to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to the Republic of Mauritius. This would likely have resulted in the BIOT ceasing to exist as a political entity with the effect that both flag and arms would be defunct.

The treaty is highly controversial and it has been challenged many times, including by the community of displaced Chagossians themselves who have appropriated the territory’s flag as a symbol of their protest movement. Last week it was announced that, due to a loss of support from the President of the United States, the ratification of the treaty had been indefinitely postponed.

The change to the Tudor Crown is therefore indicative of a change in mindset: It wouldn’t have been worth redrawing unless the polity was expected to continue to exist for an appreciable time to come.

Charles III and Artemis II

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At time of writing, the world is eagerly awaiting the launch of the Artemis II mission, a planned flight around the moon and back. As is so often the case in astronomy, the facts of this excursion ruin one’s sense of perspective: Although humans landed on the moon itself all the way back in 1969, all of the great many manned flights, both state and commercial, since 1972 have only been as far as Low Earth Orbit. This mission, if successful, will take its crew further away from this planet than any human has ever previously ventured. Though this is a great achievement for humanity as a whole, and although it makes the Earth (with all the various human-made satellites surrounding it) look pathetically small, there is still a nationalist element to be considered here: While lots of countries have a space programme of some description, only the United States of America has ever achieved manned flights of these distances, and every human thus far to travel beyond LEO has been American.

That will change with Artemis II, as one of the crew is Canadian: Colonel Jeremy Hansen, part of the Canadian Space Agency since 2009 and a veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force. He appeared as flag-bearer as part of the Canadian delegation at the coronation in 2023 and was subsequently awarded the British version of that year’s coronation medal.

Yesterday His Majesty sent an open letter to Hansen specifically concerning the upcoming launch. I have not seen any photograph of a paper version, but the text has been uploaded to the Royal Family website, as well as the Firm’s Twitter account and that of the Canadian Space Agency. The letter says that “as the first Canadian to venture to the Moon, [Hansen] carr[ies] not only the hopes of [his] fellow Canadians and the Commonwealth, but also the aspirations of humanity itself” and also makes references to the Astra Carta programme. It should be clear that Charles here is writing principally in his capacity as King of Canada (as emphasised by the fact that it’s in French as well as English), and indeed the CSA’s Tweeted version explicitly credits him as such, yet as I have remarked before (posts passim ad nauseam) both images show the new illustrations of the British royal arms with the Tudor crown.

Arms of the Canadian Space Agency, granted in 1991

All the photographs of Hansen in his space suit show St Edward’s crown featured prominently on his name badge, suggesting that the “Trudea crown” has not yet been rolled out to that extent. This flight could therefore represent the furthest that anyone wearing an official representation of said crown has ever travelled, which ought to be a good story for the heraldic record book.

UPDATE (2nd April)

The Canadian Armed Forces Cyber Command has unveiled its new heraldic badge, which does indeed use the Trudeau crown.