Category Archives: Politics

A Note on the Honours Given to Prime Ministers

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Cameron’s ennoblement got me thinking about the general trend of honours given to former prime ministers. Combing through Wikipedia, I have produced a list of them. To keep it from becoming overly long (and to avoid ambiguities about who counts as a prime minister), I have restricted it to honours conferred after the end of Victoria’s reign.

Although their legal status is much the same, British orders of chivalry can be politically divided into two categories: The Baronetage, Knights Bachelor, the Orders of the Bath, St Michael & St George, the Companions of Honour and the British Empire are appointed on the advice of government ministers, while the Royal Victorian Order, the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem and the Order of Merit are conferred at the monarch’s personal whim. The Orders of the Garter and Thistle fell into the former category in the early eighteenth century but were changed to the latter in 1946. Peerages both life and hereditary are presumed to be in the former category.

Here is a simplified list of who received which kind of honour and when. Honours which a person held before ascending to the premiership are not included:

HONOURS IN THE MONARCH’S GIFT

Garter (post-’46)

  • Churchill in 1953 (while still prime minister, in advance of the coronation)
  • Attlee in 1956 (resigned as Labour leader the previous year)
  • Wilson in 1976 (three weeks after leaving office)
  • Callaghan in 1987 (three weeks before stepping down from the Commons)
  • Thatcher in 1995
  • Major in 2005
  • Blair in 2021 (New Year’s Eve)

Merit

  • Balfour in 1916
  • Lloyd George in 1919 (while still prime minister)
  • Churchill in 1946 (while opposition leader)
  • Attlee in 1951 (while opposition leader, ten days after premiership’s end)
  • Macmillan in 1976
  • Thatcher in 1990 (nine days after premiership’s end)

St John

  • Thatcher in 1991 (Dame of Justice)

HONOURS ON MINISTERS’ ADVICE

Garter (pre-’46)

  • Balfour in 1922 (backbench MP) (adv. Lloyd George)
  • Asquith in 1925 (adv. Baldwin)
  • Baldwin in 1937 (adv. Chamberlain) (immediately after resignation)

Companion of Honour

  • Attlee in 1945 (adv. Churchill) (shortly after resigning as Deputy PM)
  • Major in 1998 (adv. Blair)

Hereditary peerage

  • Balfour in 1922 (adv. Lloyd George)
  • Asquith in 1925 (adv. Baldwin)
  • Baldwin in 1937 (adv. Chamberlain)
  • Lloyd George in 1945 (adv. Churchill)
  • Attlee in 1955 (adv. Churchill)
  • Eden in 1961 (adv. Macmillan)
  • Macmillan in (adv. Thatcher)

Life peerage

  • Douglas-Home in 1974 (adv. Wilson)
  • Wilson in 1983 (adv. Thatcher) (dissolution honours)
  • Callaghan in 1987 (adv. Thatcher) (dissolution honours)
  • Thatcher in 1992 (adv. Major) (dissolution honours)
  • Cameron in 2023 (adv. Sunak)

It may also be worth considering honours given to the spouses of prime ministers, whether for achievements in their own right or by right of marriage.

  • Margaret Lloyd George: GBE in 1918 (adv. her husband)
  • Lucy Baldwin: GBE and DStJ in 1937 (former adv. Chamberlain)
  • Clementine Churchill: GBE in 1946 (adv. Attlee), life peer in 1965 (adv. Wilson)
  • Dorothy Macmillan: GBE in 1964 (adv. Douglas-Home)
  • Denis Thatcher: TD in 1982, baronet in 1990 (adv. Major), CStJ in 1991.
  • Norma Major: DBE in 1999 (adv. Blair)
  • Cherie Booth/Blair: CBE in 2013 (adv. Cameron)
  • Philip May: Knight bachelor in 2020 (adv. Johnson)

Unless I’ve missed any, no current or former prime minister (or their spouse) has, from 1901 onward, been appointed to the Order of the Bath, the Order of St Michael and St George, the Order of the Thistle or the Royal Victorian Order.

UPDATE (August 2024)

Theresa May has received a life peerage, for which she was nominated by Rishi Sunak in the dissolution honours last month.

FURTHER READING

Chipping off the old block

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One week after the announcement of his appointment, David Cameron took his seat in the House of Lords today. Although there is still no update on the London Gazette (their website tends to be quite slow in these matters), he was shown Parliament.UK as a member of the house from Friday and today the reading clerk confirmed he had been created Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton, of Chipping Norton in the County of Oxfordshire on 17th November.

Cameron is the fifth former prime minister to be ennobled in pursuance of the Life Peerages Act 1958 – the others being the Lord Home of the Hirsel (1974), the Lord Wilson of Rievaulx (1983), the Lord Callaghan of Cardiff (1987) and the Baroness Thatcher (1992).

Of those, only Thatcher had her introduction ceremony recorded for television. Hers was the older style featuring bicorne hats, bowing, and the reading of the writ of summons after the letters patent, all of which were omitted from 1997 onwards. Cameron’s is the post-2020 version which retains some changes to the choreography meant to comply with COVID-era social distancing requirements. His supporters, the Lord True and the Baroness Williams of Trafford, are both incumbent ministers (Leader of the House and Chief Whip respectively) and both were appointed to the upper house during Cameron’s premiership. Thatcher, in her maiden speech, remarked that some 214 then-members of the house were her own appointments. I don’t know quite what the present figure is for Cameron (though I do remember the late Lady Boothroyd complaining in 2015 about it being too high).

Cameron’s choice of territorial designation is slightly surprising – most would likely have expected him to choose Witney, his old constituency, rather than Chipping Norton, a fairly small town within it. Simply being “The Lord Cameron” without further specification would not have been allowed as there are already several other life peers and a Scottish clan by that surname. The prior example of a two-word location which comes most prominently to mind (at least as far as senior ministers are concerned) is the Lord Butler of Saffron Walden – though that had been Rab’s constituency name as well.

Curiously, it is not clear yet if Cameron has been properly appointed to the office of Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs as the latest Privy Council minutes do not mention him.

UPDATE (23rd November)

Cameron’s peerage was Gazetted on Tuesday, and his ministerial appointment was formalised on Wednesday. He also made his maiden speech on Tuesday.

Sir David’s Day

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Just over two years have passed since the murder of Sir David Amess, MP for the town (now city) of Southend-on-Sea. It was announced at an intermediate point that he would have his shield of arms fixed to the wall of the Commons chamber, in the manner of other murdered MPs – the most recent example being Jo Cox.

Now, at long last, the shield has been revealed.

Sir David was presumably non-armigerous during his lifetime, with this being a posthumous grant arranged through his widow Julia. So far no news source that I can find (and certainly not the College of Arms) has published the blazon, which I would guess is something like Azure on a chief conjoined to a pale between two talbots rampant Or five roses Gules barbed and seeded Proper. According to press releases the roses represent his five children as well as his gardening hobbies while the talbots represent his animal welfare campaigns and his time at Bournemouth University.

Most intriguing is the motto of His Life Remains, which Julia chose because “wherever I go, I am reminded of him in some way: someone he has helped, a charity he has supported and people whose lives he has touched”. It is unusual for a heraldic motto (unless referring to God, of course) to use third-person language and this decision wouldn’t really make sense except in the concept of a memorial for the deceased.

On an aesthetic level I would rate this achievement higher than Cox’s, due to the superior tincture contrast, although the arrangement of elements is a little unsatisfactory and requires a slightly more rectangular shield shape.

The details of his crest remain unknown.

Everyone on the Same Page

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Minutes of His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council usually make for quite dry reading. Despite the speculations of conspiracy theorists, and apart from grand occasions such as the accession of a new king, plenary sessions are mainly filled by the appointments of new officeholders (especially in recent years, as ministerial churn as grown), amendments to charters of public bodies, closures of overcrowded graveyards, and the designs of commemorative coin series.

The formatting is similarly dull, being little but a list of links to PDFs, in which each order in council has its own A4 page with the main text in what I presume is Times New Roman with St Edward’s Crown (surrounded by the national floral badges) in the header. Beginning each document is a contents list typed in a sans serif font (most likely Arial).

Last month, though, a small change was seen – the individual orders in council now have page numbers in their footers (in the sans serif font, and clearly not actually part of the order) while the contents pages now have hyperlinks in their right margins. A new front page has also been added, with the Privy Council Office prominently featured. The PCO’s logo is slightly different to that used by most other government departments – it features the royal shield encircled by the Garter and ensigned by the crown, but without supporters or motto. An interesting thing to note here is that although this stylistic modernisation debuted more than a year into the New Carolean era, the depiction used on the front page and in the orders themselves is still St Edward’s Crown and not the Tudor Crown as the current monarch apparently prefers.

EXTERNAL LINK

Some News At Last!

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Long-time readers will be familiar with my frustrations in discovering the heraldic achievements of former ministers and recent Garter companions Lady Amos and Sir Tony Blair. Now, at last, some progress is being made.

My guess at Amos’s lozenge.

Almost a month ago the Right Reverend Graham Usher, Bishop of Norwich, Tweeted a photograph of the inside of St George’s Chapel. Among the familiar Garter banners I noticed one I had not seen before – per saltire Gules and Or, two of the sections charged with counterchanged circular devices. Presumably the other two sections had them as well, but Sir Thomas Dunne’s banner obscured them. I wasn’t entirely sure what the symbols were – Jukudlick, another Wikipedian, reckoned they were gyroscopes. Without any specific, reliable matching of the arms to the person I was not prepared to add the graphic to her page.

Today’s update comes from the website of Ian G. Brennan, the man who actually constructs the wooden models of knights’ crests to go above their stalls. He includes a photographic gallery of all the crests he has made… and now Blair’s is among them. I had not been paying much attention to his website as it did not look to be frequently updated – indeed the overall design looks to be stuck around the middle of Blair’s premiership. Judging by what I saw when checking the Wayback Machine, this update happened within the last ten days.

No blazon is given, but my best guess for Blair’s crest is a mute swan’s head erased Proper holding in the beak a rose Gules seeded Or barbed slipped and leaved Vert.

The torse is depicted as Azure, Or and Gules, which gives some hints as to the principal tinctures of the shield. The red rose is almost certainly a reference to his thirteen-year leadership of the Labour Party.

 

The website also has a photograph of Amos’s crest. Whether this actually is a crest or just a badge is yet to be seen – I note that the photograph is framed so as not to reveal the presence or absence of a torse. Here the round object looks more clearly like a gyroscope, while the beast holding it is, I would say, a panther sejant guardant Proper. As always with heraldry, you can’t be sure until you’ve read the blazon.

This year’s Garter ceremony was held on Monday. Blair and Amos attended for the second time, as did first-timers Lady Ashton of Upholland and Lord Patten of Barnes. Ashton is already King of Arms for the Order of St Michael and St George (even attending the coronation in that capacity), yet her own bearings are not recorded in any issue of Debrett’s I’ve seen. Patten has no record either. Based on this, I don’t expect any revelation until 2025.

Armory and Architecture

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This evening I attended a virtual lecture at Arts University Bournemouth. The presenter was David Lund and the subject was the history of architectural model-making, particularly that of John Brown Thorp.

Modelling is an invisible profession to most people as the model-makers are largely executing the ideas of architects, who thus take all the credit for the design. British model-making kicked off in the late sixteenth century with the arrival of trends from Italy. The earliest record is of a 1567 model of Longleat House, made for Sir John Finn. Sir Christopher Wren would go on to commission architectural miniatures on a regular basis.

Originally timber was favoured for model-building, but card proved to be more adaptable. Thorp is considered the grandfather of architectural model-making. He had his headquarters near to the Inns of Court, and his extremely-detailed scale models were used in court cases. By 1940 his firm was employing forty other modellers. The emergence of modelling as a dedicated profession allowed an increase in the size and standards of their creations.

Modelling boomed in the 1950s and ’60s, with the material fashions of the models changing in line with those of the buildings themselves – card representing brick was replaced by perspex representing glass and steel. The economic slump of the 1970s caused a change in clientele, with modellers working for private developers instead of state architects. Nowadays it is common for models to be designed on computers and then 3D-printed, incorporating lighting and even animation.

In the Q&A session, Lund was asked about the phenomenon of public disappointment when a finished construction fails to live up to what the model promised. Lund conceded that models and artistic renderings often gave a sanitised, optimistic prediction of the built environment, replete with happy people and clean surfaces, whereas the reality (especially in modernist constructions) proved quite different. Developers and the public often unfairly blame the artists and modellers for this, even though they are only following what the developers tell them to do.

On an entirely unrelated note, late last night I discovered that Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the House of Commons since 2019, has finally been granted a coat of arms. I was relieved to come across this news at all, yet also a little perplexed to realise that the news articles were from almost a month ago. I don’t know how I missed this, given that I have been obsessively looking out for this ever since his election. The not-so-grand reveal came at the unveiling of a new set of stained-glass windows in the Palace of Westminster, the other panels of which were decorated with the arms of British Overseas Territories.

None of the news articles I have uncovered so far gave the blazon for the new achievement, so my illustration for Wikimedia Commons is based on visual inspection of the artwork in the photograph. It indeed includes the red rose of Lancaster, “busy bee” and rugby references as Sir Lindsay hinted two years ago. The use of the parliamentary mace Or on a fess conjoined to a bordure Vert is almost certainly copied from the arms of Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, who became speaker sixty years before Hoyle did – though one has to hope that Hoyle does not end his tenure quite so abruptly. The window shows mantling Gules and Argent (rather than Vert to match the shield), so I have copied that. It is not clear exactly when the grant was made, nor whether the grant was to Sir Lindsay himself or to his noble father (the mace makes the latter seem unlikely).

The search for other new grants continues. Last month I got a pretty strong hint about the arms of Lady Amos, but those of Sir Tony Blair remain as elusive as ever.

She Spoke to Serve

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The late Baroness Boothroyd has fascinated me for as long as I have followed British politics, and hers was among the deaths I most dreaded.

Just last October, with my newly-registered library card, I took out her autobiography. There are eighty pages before she actually becomes an MP (and she goes into detail of her multiple failed attempts), describing her childhood in impoverished Dewsbury, then her time as a Tiller girl, then going into politics as a secretary to two Labour MPs, then going overseas to work for JFK. Even when she gets into parliament, her struggles are as within her own party as against the others – this being the age of entryism by Militant, which she was instrumental in rooting out.

Before the release of the 2018 parliamentary portrait series ,(and note that her image is the one used on the PDS blog) Boothroyd was one of the many prominent politicians for whom I struggled long to find a free photograph to use on Wikipedia. The only one on which I could lay my hands was a poor-quality screenshot from President Obama’s speech in Westminster Hall in 2011, published on the White House channel and thus public domain. The baroness is shown looking the wrong way, sandwiched awkwardly between George Osborne and Douglas Alexander. For the top (indeed, only) illustration in a prominent online biography it just wasn’t good enough.

The other big challenge was her coat of arms – one of my earliest such works. Unlike her successor Michael Martin, Boothroyd’s arms were widely photographed and shown online. Recreating the lozenge visually was easy enough, though it wasn’t until years later that I tracked down the text of the blazon to go with it. My first attempt was not well-received by the residents of r/heraldry, so it was one of the few of my graphics which I completely remade.

I never got to see how the community (or anyone else) viewed my second attempt, for within hours of her death being announced another user, ProfAuthor, had replaced it with his own vector graphic. It is technically superior, of course, but still it is disappointing to know that my own efforts are made redundant. Something similar happened with Sir Ernest Shackleton the last time he was in the news.

A New Regency Bill

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Ever since the state opening earlier this year, the topic of counsellors of state has been prominent in my mind, and in the minds of many others. Just as Elizabeth II’s health was failing and the necessity of this constitutional device was more pressing, so the actual availability of counsellors was at its lowest since the device was invented. Many in academic and political circles were discussing possible updates to the legislation. I even had a go at drafting a new bill myself. As the original 1937 Act had already been amended twice, and as I wanted to avoid a confusing change of pronouns mid-paragraph, I did consider neatening things up by repealing it wholesale and typing out most of its provisions again, but that version turned out to be too long-winded for the amount of actual change I needed to effect. By early September it was nearly in a presentable state, but then Her Majesty’s death seemed to render the matter moot for a while.

Today the Lord Chamberlain of the Household announced that King Charles wished his siblings Anne and Edward to be re-appointed as counsellors. This will require new legislation, which we can expect to be brought forward swiftly. I hope it’s not too late to send in my own.

A

BILL

TO

Amend the provisions for a regency in the event of the incapacity of the sovereignty due to illness or minority, and for the performance of certain of the royal functions in the name and on behalf of the Sovereign in certain other events.

BE IT ENACTED by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

1. The Regency Act 1937 is amended: –

  1. In subsection (1) of section two, replace “Lord Chancellor” with “Prime Minister” and “Chief Justice of England, and the Master of the Rolls” with “Speaker, and the President of the Supreme Court”.
  2. In subsection (2) of section two, replace “His Majesty’s Dominions and to the Government of India” with “His Majesty’s Realms and to the Commonwealth Secretariat”.
  3. In subsection (1) of section five, replace “mother, if she is living” with “living parent”.
  4. In subsection (1) of section six, replace “by telegraph” with “electronically”.
  5. For all of subsection (2) of section six, substitute “The counsellors of state shall be any five persons of His Majesty’s choosing, appointed by Statutory Instrument under this Act and subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.”.

2. The Regency Acts of 1943 and 1953 are repealed.

3. This Act may be cited as the Regency Act 2022, or it and the Regency Act 1937 may be cited as one.

4. This Act takes effect upon the approval by both Houses of Parliament of the first statutory instrument passed under section one.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

This bill updates the Regency Act 1937, as well as repealing the 1943 and 1953 Acts which had amended it already.

Section 1 (1) changes the list of persons empowered to determine the monarch’s absence or incapacity. It adds offices whose jurisdiction encompasses the whole United Kingdom (Prime Minister, Lord Speaker, President of the Supreme Court) and removes those whose roles are only applicable to parts of it (Lord Chancellor, Lord Chief Justice, Master of the Rolls).

Section 1 (2) removes reference to defunct bodies and adds reference to current ones.

Section 1 (3) updates the list of potential counsellors of state. The original text specified the consort and the first four adults in line to the throne. In early 2017 this would have meant Princes Philip, Charles, William, Harry and Andrew. By 2022 the former had died and the latter two had withdrawn from royal duties, leaving only two counsellors still active: the minimum for this provision to be used. The accession of King Charles III dulls the urgency of the situation by adding Queen Camilla and Princess Beatrice to the list (as consort and fourth adult in line respectively) but the current arrangements are still less than ideal. The new text allows for counsellors to be added or removed as necessary without the burden of new primary legislation each time.

Section 2 repeals intermediate legislation whose provisions are now redundant. The 1943 Act lowered the age of eligibility for the heir-apparent to be a counsellor, but that is negated by this Bill. The clause regarding counsellors’ absence is also covered by the revised wording. The 1953 Act anticipated minority reigns by persons who have since reached the age of majority and gave powers to persons who are now deceased. The sole active provision of the latter Act is to reduce the age at which the heir-apparent could be regent from twenty-one to eighteen years, but as the present heir-apparent is over the higher age that point is likewise moot.

Section 4 delays implementation of the legislation until His Majesty’s appointments have been approved, to avoid an interim situation in which there would be no counsellors of state at all.

Link

Today’s virtual event was by the Foundation for Integrated Transport, and its content is adequately explained by the title.

“Car dependency” is a term used in the urban planning community to mean the inability of a resident (or visitor) to move around a settlement without the use of a personal motorcar. It is often cited as a defining (and damning) feature of suburban environments, particularly in the United States following the Second World War. As their name implies, urban planners (and urbanists more generally), tend to focus their attention on cities and dense conurbations, with comparisons made to the suburbs. Smaller towns and rural environments are often overlooked, hence the theme of today’s seminar.

Though interested in the premise, I was a little disappointed by the format – although the participants spoke to each other over Zoom, the guest attendees were made to watch it through YouTube, so other than the chatbox (only available to those who had YouTube accounts) there was no meaningful interaction with the hosts.