Category Archives: Politics

Starmer Swans Off

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It was announced yesterday that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had appointed Sir Keir Starmer, MP for Holborn & St Pancras, to be Steward & Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern. This, as my regular readers should well know, is the traditional legal fiction to allow Members of the House of Commons to resign their seats.

Almost exactly ten years ago, David Cameron was appointed Steward & Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead in order to resign as MP for Witney. He, like Starmer, had resigned as Prime Minister in the month of July and initially indicated that he intended to remain a backbench MP until the next general election, but the changed his mind in September.

In an interview at the time Cameron said “I’ve thought about this long and hard over the summer and I’ve decided the right thing to do is to stand down.”, which I remember being quoted on BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz with a remark that what he’d actually done was take the paid holiday then quit before he had to go back to work.

I had a look through the lists of holders of these two “offices of profit” to see how many Prime Ministers have taken them. In the whole of the twentieth century the only example I could find was Sir Anthony Eden on 11th January 1957, his premiership having ended two days earlier. Both resignations were triggered by a health crisis.

In the twenty-first century it became more normal, with four examples so far: Cameron and Starmer as already mentioned, but also Tony Blair on 27th June 2007 and Boris Johnson on 12th June 2023. The former quit Parliament on the same day he quit Downing Street, the latter intended to stay on but then resigned in protest at an investigation by the Privileges Committee.

That got me thinking about the Parliamentary careers of Britain’s leaders, specifically the total length of time that they spent in the House of Commons. Rounding to the nearest month (there may be rounding errors), I came up with this table for all those whose premierships began after the end of Victoria’s reign.

Prime Minister

Time in Commons
Arthur Balfour 48 years, 3 months
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman 39 years, 5 months
Herbert Asquith 37 years, 6 months
David Lloyd George 54 years, 10 months
Andrew Bonar Law 22 years, 9 months
Stanley Baldwin 29 years, 3 months
Ramsay MacDonald 27 years, 6 months
Neville Chamberlain 21 years, 11 months
Winston Churchill 61 years, 11 months
Clement Attlee 33 years, 1 month
Sir Anthony Eden 33 years, 1 month
Harold Macmillan 37 years, 1 month
Sir Alec Douglas-Home 25 years, 11 months
Harold Wilson 37 years, 10 months
Edward Heath 51 years, 3 months
James Callaghan 41 years, 10 months
Margaret Thatcher 32 years, 5 months
John Major 22 years, 0 months
Tony Blair 24 years, 1 month
Gordon Brown 31 years, 10 months
David Cameron 15 years, 3 months
Theresa May 27 years, 1 month
Boris Johnson 15 years, 1 month
Elizabeth Truss 14 years, 1 month
Rishi Sunak 11 years, 4 months
Sir Keir Starmer 11 years, 4 months
Andy Burnham 16 years, 2 months

(Of course, several of these people had considerable time in the House of Lords as well, but that’s another story.)

Note that Sunak and Starmer both began their careers at the 2015 general election and thus were tied until yesterday, but the latter’s resignation means that the former will now pull ahead. Starmer therefore has the shortest tenure in the Commons of any Prime Minister in well over a century.

The overall trend has notably been downward: Of the nine premiers who have served during my lifetime, only two have tenures over twenty years. Of those who served before my time, all had twenty years at least, with eleven of the seventeen having tenures over thirty years and four of those serving over forty. The kind of long service that was normal in the previous century feels unimaginable in the current.

Of course, premierships themselves have also been shortening: The ten premiers from Churchill to Major served over a period of fifty-seven years, whereas the nine from Blair to present have only managed twenty-nine. It remains to be seen if Burnham will be able to avert this trend, but to balance it completely he or his immediate successor would need to serve until 2054, which seems unlikely. It is also worth remembering that Lloyd George, Churchill, Heath and Callaghan all went on to be Father of the House of Commons, with Campbell-Bannerman uniquely managing to achieve that distinction while he was Prime Minister. A repeat of that phenomenon the foreseeable future feels unlikely too.

UPDATE (6th September)

The podcasts Parliament Matters and Since Attlee & Churchill have both put out episodes discussing Starmer’s resignation, and both comment on his admission that he prefers Davos to Westminster.

UPDATE (8th September)

Dr Richard Marc Johnson, co-host of the latter aforementioned podcast, has Tweeted about this article. This marks the second time that a senior academic has discovered my blog, the first being last year when Dr David Torrance cited my article about the dissolution proclamation.

Acts and Arms

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This month came an important stage in the slow roll-out of Timothy Noad’s illustration of the British royal arms: It has started appearing on Acts of Parliament.

The standard version of the British royal heraldic achievement appears on Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Acts of the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly and Measures of the General Synod of the Church of England. It is not used on Acts of the devolved Scottish or Welsh Parliaments, the former using the distinct Scottish arrangement of the arms and the latter a the Welsh royal badge. I have previously pondered whether Northern Ireland ought to have its own arrangement of the royal arms, but that’s another story.

More than a year after Noad’s graphic was unveiled, the three aforesaid legislatures were still using the old version with St Edward’s Crown, designed by Reynolds Stone for Elizabeth II in 1955. In the past thirty days all three have switched over.

The Westminster Parliament had a slight gap in legislative output due to the start of the new session. Those acts which received assent at prorogation on 29th April (cs. 15–23) still used the Stone version. The first Act to receive assent in this session was the National Security (State Threats) Act (c. 24) on 8th July, which used the Noad version. The Clergy Conduct Measure (No. 1) also received assent that day and also debuted the Noad version. The Synod’s puts out far fewer Measures per year than Parliament does Acts, so their last use of the Stone image was the Abuse Redress Measure (2025 No. 4) all the way back on 18th December.

Stormont’s output is somewhere in between. By chance they put out two Acts close together which narrow down the changeover point: The Renewable Heat Incentive (Closure of Non-Domestic Scheme) Act (c. 5) on 17th June and the Insolvency (Amendment) Act (c.6) on 24th June. Clearly a week is a long time in politics!

I should note that this only applies to the paper and PDF (King’s Printer) versions. The digital versions on Legislation.Gov.UK have the new coat of arms retroactively applied going back many decades. I presume all pages for UK Acts are coded to use the same image in the header so they all change automatically.

Some other recent royal heraldic news: Two years ago the Prince of Wales was appointed Great Master of the Order of the Bath. Last week Alistair Bruce Tweeted this photograph of his stall plate at Westminster Abbey. At long last we have proof that William does indeed possess the full heraldic achievement of the heir apparent, including crest, compartment and supporters.

Those Peers of Sir Keir’s

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June Sarpong, one of Britain’s newest peeresses-to-be. (Photograph by Duk3L1xon, CC-BY-SA-4.0)

After a political saga lasting about two months, we are almost at the official end of Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership. It is expected that Andy Burnham will formally be declared (upon the closing of the nominations deadline with nobody else coming forward) Leader of the Labour Party tomorrow, and then kiss hands at Buckingham Palace on Monday. On what is effectively his last weekday in office, Starmer’s government has published yet another list of new life peers.

This has been styled in the government’s announcement as a list of “Political Peerages”, which has emerged over the past few years as the designation to be used when there is no particular occasion being commemorated with the timing of the announcement. Even so, the exact timing of this particular list has had some commentators wondering if this is not effectively Starmer’s resignation honours list by another name, as he had previously stated he would not issue one. Other sources have speculated that there will be a separate resignation list coming later in addition to this one.

The public have been caught out by this before: A list of political peerages released on 14th October 2022 was initially thought to commemorate the resignation of Boris Johnson, but it was later clarified that these had been drawn up long before the fall of his government, and his actual resignation list arrived the following June.

Properly counting the numbers of peers appointed by each Prime Minister is more difficult than simply counting them by date (as can of course be done through Wikipedia), as the first handful in each premiership are likely to be dissolution and/or resignation honours recommended by the previous leader, and those appointed during the term will include a significant minority recommended by the leaders of the prominent opposition parties as well as the House of Lords Appointments Commission. Perhaps a more meaningful tally would be restricted to those of the Prime Minister’s own party during his term as party leader.

Starmer became Leader of the Labour Party on 4th April 2020 and remained Leader of the Opposition until 5th July 2024. Looking through the lists, it seems the first Labour peer appointed during this time was the Baroness Clark of Kilwinning on 3rd September 2020, as part of the long-delayed Dissolution Honours for 2019. At time of writing Clark has already retired from the Lords. The last to be appointed before the general election was the Baroness Hazarika on 14th March 2024. All in all twenty-two Labour life peers were appointed during Starmer’s time as opposition leader.

The 2024 Dissolution Honours were, as I posted at the time, rather oddly released on polling day itself, though of course the formal created of those peerages did not begin until more than a month after Starmer’s government had taken power. That list contained eight Labour appointees. During that short interval period, Starmer fast-tracked another five peers as direct ministerial appointments. From then until the end of that session I counted another fifty-nine Labour nominations. I won’t count Stansgate and Grantchester because those were essentially retentions of existing members rather than new ones.

Today’s list has a further sixteen. That makes a total of 110 Labour life peers who owed their seat to Starmer’s nomination during the six years and three months he was leader. That works out as about once every twenty-one days. If split by time in and out of government, it comes to one for every fifty-two days as Leader of the Opposition and one for every nine days as Prime Minister. That latter figure will obviously rise further if there is indeed a separate resignation list. Gordon Brown, by contrast, nominated only eleven peers from his own party during his entire premiership, followed by twenty-nine in the subsequent dissolution list. That averages about one for every twenty-six days.

Even as someone who has followed the upper house intently for over a decade, I’m still a little confused about the significance of a peerage, or indeed any other honour, emanating from one type of list rather than another. Torrance’s briefing from two years ago, itself derived from an explainer by the Institute for Government two years prior identifies six different routes to a life peerage, but this still does not provide perfect clarity and there have been many peers appointed who could have fit into more than one of those categories. This also applies to other honours, and this confusion is exemplified when more than one honours list is published simultaneously.

On 29th December 2023, for example, the New Year Honours for 2024 were published alongside Liz Truss’s long-delayed resignation list and a list of “political honours” recommended by Rishi Sunak. Karen Bradley, David Davis, Liam Fox, Sajid Javid, Siobhain McDonagh, Jackie Doyle-Price, Jeremy Quin and Alec Shelbrooke were all appointed various forms of knight or dame. Does anyone now remember or care who came via which process? Once you’ve got your title, the reason for getting it no longer matters. Certainly from the perspective of what Bagehot calls the dignified part of the state it makes no difference what bureaucratic apparatus was used to recommend you for whatever token the Crown bestows upon you; a baron is a baron and a dame is a dame, your patent or warrant, your robes or regalia, your investiture or introduction, your entry in Debrett’s and the Gazette will all be the same irrespective of whether you are getting it in reward for good deeds or ill.

Even so, it would be interesting to discover if, among Parliamentarians themselves, there is a practical difference in social prestige between members with the same accolades depending on who got theirs at which time of year. I would also be interested in a study by Torrance or some other researcher which analysed long-term trends in peers’ Parliamentary activity, stratified according to the type of process by which they were appointed, to see if that makes a practical difference either. In the meantime, however, I look forward to seeing today’s twenty-six take their seats, if only to get a look at James Peill appearing as Garter for the first time.

UPDATE (18th July)

Yesterday the Hansard Society put out this podcast discussing this recent list, and also referencing this speech by the Lord Speaker.

UPDATE (24th July)

Anas Sarwar and Ruth Mackenzie have both been appointed as junior ministers in the Burnham government, to serve in the Lords. Both have been nominated for life peerages, which will presumably have to be fast-tracked ahead of all those on Starmer’s list, the Gazetting of which has not even started yet. Luckily the upper house is now rising for the summer recess (the lower house having already done so last week) so there is no hurry to introduce them.

Reap-peer-ances

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Two weeks after the publication of the list, the life peerages promised to expelled hereditary peers have begun to actually take effect. In line with the resolution I mentioned in my previous post, these peers are simply taking the oath and resuming their seats without the full introduction ceremony.

One downside to this approach is that we do not hear the letters patent being read out, so the only evidence of the member’s new title apart from when they say it themselves upon taking the oath. Life peerages under the 1958 Act are always baronies — the lowest degree — and these ones are obviously later created than the ones their recipients had before, so they are subsidiary to the titles by which these peers were already known. Both Hansard and Parliament.UK refer to a peer only by his highest title even if it is not the one by which he sits, to to know the full spelling of the life peerage, and its territorial designation, one has to wait for the notice to be published in the Gazette. As usual, there is a few days’ delay before this happens.

Those whose full titles have been availed thus far are:

  • Charles Wellesley, 9th Duke of Wellington as Baron Wellington of Stratfield Saye (of Stratfield Saye in the County of Hampshire and of Colomnell in the County of Ayrshire)
  • Godfrey Bewicke-Copley, 7th Baron Cromwell as Baron Cromwell of Tattershall (of Misterton in the County of Leicestershire)
  • Sebastian Grigg, 4th Baron Altrincham as Baron Altrincham of Islington (of Holland Park in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea)
  • Edward Howard, 8th Earl of Effingham as Baron Effingham of Bookham Commons (of Effingham in the County of Surrey)
  • Stephen Benn, 3rd Viscount Stansgate as Baron Stansgate of Holland Park (of Stansgate in the County of Essex)
  • Thomas Galbraith, 2nd Baron Strathclyde as Baron Strathclyde of Barskimming (of Barskimming in the County of Ayr)
  • Colin Moynihan, 4th Baron Moynihan as Baron Moynihan of Purbeck (of Leeds in the County of York)
  • Nicholas Trench, 9th Earl of Clancarty as Baron Clancarty of the Hangers (of Petersfield in the County of Hampshire)

These titles and their territorial designations are, quite literally, all over the place. In six out of eight cases the peer’s main title is a place name instead of his surname*, and in all six of these cases the life peerage ignores the surname in favour of repeating the main title followed by an unrelated second place name, then having a territorial designation which is different yet again.

Altrincham, for example, is actually a town in Greater Manchester (though originally in Cheshire). It is nowhere near the London Boroughs of Islington or Kensington, and to make matters worse the territorial designation of the hereditary barony is “of Tomarton in the County of Gloucester”, which is wrong again! Purbeck isn’t in Leeds, either, and I’m not sure why the County of Ayr has a “shire” on the end of it for Wellesley’s peerage but not for Galbraith’s.

This doesn’t matter much in practice as the new titles will never actually be used to refer to their holders in everyday practice, but the odd constructions indicate to me that the present Garter King of Arms has a quite idiosyncratic sense of Britain’s geography.

In Cromwell’s case it’s someone else’s surname, as the barony was created by writ and descended to his grandfather through the female line after four centuries’ abeyance.

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 will need to take the oath again, though a resolution of the House last month spared them the obligation of the full introduction ceremony. 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.

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.

The Tudor Crown in the Indian Ocean

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https://web.archive.org/web/20260322090207im_/https://www.biot.gov.io/wp-content/uploads/BIOT-Flag-Tudor-Crown.jpg

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.

Notes on the England Coast Path

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The King, fresh off his farewell to President Tinubu, made headlines on the cliffs of Seven Sisters, Sussex, on Thursday by officially opening what may physically be his largest namesake, the King Charles III England Coast Path.

Charles’s coat looks quite like the sort of thing my grandmother would have worn.

As the government’s press release explains, the project actually long predates his reign, his name being appended to it in 2023 as part of his coronation celebrations. It resulted from the Marine and Coastal Access Act passed all the way back in 2009 and, as all the updates on this other government webpage indicate, it was supposed to be completed by 2030, then optimistically brought forward to 2020, then pushed back again during the pandemic.

The ambition was to link up all the existing footpaths, as well as carving out new ones where needed, to create a continuous walking trail which covered the entirety of the English coast line. Of course, the English coast line itself is not continuous, as England has sizeable land borders with Scotland and Wales. A Wales Coast Path, proposed in 2006 and completed in 2012, links up to the English one in two places and there is also a Scottish Coastal Way in the pipeline. As this is a devolved matter, the institutions are not entirely alike and it is not certain if the other two will ever bear the monarch’s name, or if Northern Ireland will attempt something similar. Even now, despite the official opening this week, the English path has 20% still to go and is expected to be completed at the end of 2026. “Coast” is also being used in quite a broad sense, as the path incorporates trails along not only the seas, but also the rivers — including the Humber, which runs quite close to my house and along which I walk fairly regularly.

The situation with the naming and timing has some echoes of the Elizabeth Line, the commuter railway through Greater London from Reading to Shenfield, which likewise was a combination of new paths built from scratch and old ones appropriated. The proposals had been floated as far back as the 1940s and work finally began in 2009. The construction project was called Crossrail, and this by default might have become the name of the completed railway. It was only in 2016, in the run up to Elizabeth II’s ninetieth birthday, that the line was named after her. The name was slightly controversial as it gave the false impression of being part of the London Underground rather than a different railway in its own right. The completion was originally scheduled for 2018 but, inevitably, there were delays and services did not run until 2022. The repeated schedule slips raised concerns over whether Elizabeth herself would live to open her namesake line. In the event she did open the first section in May that year, but had died by the time the rest opened in November.

Hopefully His Present Majesty will not exhibit the same phenomenon.

 

 

Commonwealth Day 2026

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The Commonwealth of Nations traditionally has its annual day of celebration on the second Monday in March. This is marked in many ceremonies around the world, but most prominent is a special service at Westminster Abbey, put on by the Royal Commonwealth Society, attended by the Head of the Commonwealth and several members of his family, along with diplomatic and cultural representatives from the various member countries. The service includes some speeches, some religious readings, a parade of member states’ flags and a series of musical performances from groups representing different global regions.

For all of this century so far the Abbey service has been broadcast live by the BBC (specifically “BBC Studio Events”), and the last few have been archived on iPlayer, as well as the Corporation’s YouTube channel. This year, however, the highly controversial announcement was made that the service would not be aired, the time-slot being given instead to a rerun of Escape to the Country. Allegedly this was made on cost grounds. Although the headlines initially only referred to live broadcasts, it later became apparent that the service had not been properly filmed at all. This is a rather baffling decision on the embattled BBC’s part. Given how much experience they have shooting in the Abbey — not just for these services, but also for weddings, coronations, funerals and military commemorations — it really should be second nature by now. Also, given that they have recently lost the rights to broadcast this year’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, as well as some other high-profile sporting events, one might have expected them to defend their remaining prerogatives with all their might.

The service did not go totally unrecorded: There are stills available on Getty Images, the order of service can be read from the Abbey’s website and the ITN Royal Family Channel has a 25-minute montage. Unfortunately the latter does not compare to the BBC productions of previous years, being rather crudely shot from a handheld camera and focusing more on the arrivals and departures at the doorway than on the event itself.

While those interested in the content of the speeches can obviously read them from the handout, and those wishing to inspect the outfits of the royals and dignities in attendance can do so from the stills, the elaborate music and dance routines cannot really be enjoyed in this manner. The whole experience is akin to watching a Telesnap reconstruction of a missing Doctor Who episode.

If the BBC does not reverse this decision next year, perhaps the Society (or whichever body is actually in charge of this decision) will offer it to another broadcaster, or even setting up their own in-house film unit to either sell to the networks or publish online. The knock-on effects for the airing of other royal events could be severe.

UPDATE (16th March)

Happily it turns out at least some of the event was professionally recorded, as the RCS’s website has released a handful of clips. Even more happily, my comparison to missing Doctor Who turned out to be apt as it was revealed on Friday that two more episodes have been found.