Monthly Archives: May 2026

Notes on the 2026 State Opening

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The State Opening of Parliament took place today. This opens the second session of the fifty-ninth Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the third of the new Carolean era. There was not one in 2025*, but at least Their Majesties got to open the Canadian parliament instead.

Notes on the Ceremonial Elements

  • The King has a new Parliamentary robe (and Dr Allan Barton has already made a video about it). Previously he wore the one made in 1937 for his grandfather.
  • The Queen, having worn something different in 2024, seems to be wearing her coronation gown as she did in 2023, albeit without the gold highlights this time.
  • Ed Davis had his first state opening as Black Rod. He addressed the Commons as “this Noble house” rather than “this Honourable house”. Nobody pulled him up on that, at least publicly.
  • David Lammy attended his first state opening as Lord Chancellor. He revived the tradition of walking backwards down the steps of the throne having handed the speech to the monarch.
  • The Duke of Norfolk, the Lord Carrington and the Lord de Mauley all took part in the royal procession as Earl Marshal, Lord Great Chamberlain and Master of the Horse respectively. They still have access to Parliament for these purposes, but are no longer actually members of the upper house as a legislative body (though de Mauley will shortly be reappointed).
  • The Duke of Norfolk did not wear his Parliamentary robe (with its characteristic four strips of miniver) over his uniform. Having been removed as a legislator he can likely never wear it again. He last wore it in 2022, omitting it in 2023 and 2024.
  • The Princess Anne, as Gold Stick-in-Waiting, did not attend this state opening or that in 2024, but did in 2023.
  • The choreography was a little different this time: In 2022 and 2023 Charles entered the Lords chamber through the door on the government side and departed through the door on the opposition side, Camilla vice-versa. This time they entered as normal but both departed through the opposition side, walking adjacent.
  • One again Charles had four pages holding his train while Camilla only had two, so the end of her robe trailed along the carpet.
  • Dennis Skinner last attended a state opening in October 2019. Since then nobody else has picked up his tradition of jibes at Black Rod. This time somebody (not yet identified) shouted “Not Now, Andy!” as the door was knocked, referring to Andy Burnham’s attempts to get back into the lower house.

Notes on Photography

Both of the Parliamentary Flickr accounts uploaded a good selection of stills from the event. Unfortunately neither set used a Wiki-compatible licence this time, so they can’t be moved across. On the other hand, the government website’s page about the speech decided to illustrate it with not with a photograph from today’s event, but rather what is clearly a crop of one of the post-coronation portraits at Buckingham Palace on 6th May 2023.

Previously the copyright on these portraits was very tightly controlled, but by using it here HM Government may have inadvertently released it under OGL3. It has already been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and will probably stay there until someone clarifies otherwise.

The Political Element

Of course, we must not forget that the event is not pure theatre: The actual speech is the most important part as that lays out the government’s agenda for the next year. This, however, assumes that there will actually be a government.

The fallout from Labour’s poor performance in the local elections is still raging and the night before the state opening four junior ministers had to be replaced because they resigned in protest at Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership. So far this is nowhere near the scale of what happened to Jeremy Corbyn in 2016 or Boris Johnson in 2022 but for this to happen at all on a day like this is still very concerning for any government. At time of posting there are rumours circling that Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, may be about to resign from the Cabinet and begin a leadership challenge. If this does occur, it will be interesting to see how much of today’s speech ever actually gets implemented. Watch this space, I suppose.

An Expulsion, and Afterwards an Encore

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At the end of the previous Parliamentary session late last month, those members of the House of Lords sitting by virtue of hereditary peerages lost that membership. Today, on the eve of the new session, the government announced that twenty-six of them will be given life peerages to allow them to be reintroduced. Fifteen of these are Conservatives, nine Crossbenchers and two Labour. There were no Liberal Democrats on the list, though two of their hereditary representatives — the Earl Russell and the Lord Addington — had already received the same gift in a different honours list in December.

The timing of this has some interesting implications: As Addington and Russell received their life peerages before their hereditary tickets were annulled, their membership of the upper house is continuous. The two-dozen reappointed after the event technically have had a break in service, so may need to undergo the introduction ceremony of a new peer to resume their seats. The standing orders prohibit more than six introductions per week, so re-seating all of these peers could take over a month. Some of the choices are pretty obvious, such as the Conservatives’ former leader Strathclyde and current deputy leader Howe. Others are less obvious. I presume there must have been a lot of backstage haggling between parties over how many life peerages would be awarded, as well as within parties to determine who would get them. In recent years the government has tended to publish “citations” for new life peers, including those who were peers already, but that element was absent from this list.

In 1999 when the bulk of hereditary peers were removed to leave only 92 elected representatives therefrom, a handful of such peers were given life peerages to exempt them from having to seek election. This broadly amounted to those who were former leaders of the house (such as Cranborne and Longford) and those who were the first of their title (such as Snowdon). I cannot work out any specifics that this rump-of-a-rump have in common, so I assume there was an informal ballot among the group or they were chosen at the leader/convener’s discretion.

Notably absent were the Duke of Norfolk and the Lord Carrington, who hold respectively the offices of Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain. The 1999 Act had a special provision for these two to remain ex officio. The Earl Marshal is a hereditary title entailed to the Dukes of Norfolk since 1672 whereas the Lord Great Chamberlain position has, since Edwardian times, rotated at each demise of the crown. During Elizabeth II’s reign it was held by the Marquesses of Cholmondeley. David, 7th Marquess, held the tole from the death of his father in 1990 to the death of Queen Elizabeth in 2022. Parliament.UK makes clear that he lost his membership of the upper house on Charles III’s accession. Carrington assumed the office at that point, but he had already been elected as a Conservative peer in 2018. After 2022 he appears to have been occupying two seats at once as there was not a by-election for his previous position. On a similar note, it’s not clear if Addington and Russell (or, for that matter, Kinnoull) continued to be counted as representative hereditary peers after their life peerages had been conferred. The only meaningful way to test this would have been to call by-elections, but these had all been suspended when the recent legislation was been processed during the 2024-6 session. A handful of hereditary peers died or retired during this time without being replaced, so that the delegation was substantially below strength by the time the session ended.

There is, of course, already a Wikipedia page under construction for this list.