Category Archives: Wikipedia

Articles relating to Wikipedia and its associated enterprises.

Canada, Carney and Commonwealth

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Sixty-two days after Trudeau announced his intention to step down, the leadership contest for the Liberal Party of Canada concluded last night. The winner, to the surprise of almost nobody, was former bank governor Mark Carney. He garnered 85.9% of the vote, albeit on only a 37% turnout, which really shows how uninspiring the other candidates must have been.

Carney’s Wikipedia page is already describing him as “Prime Minister Designate”, though the exact date at which the Governor General will formally appoint him to that office has not yet been decided. Canada tends to do governmental transitions at a rather slower pace than Britain does, with the time between leadership elections (or indeed general elections) and ministerial appointments often being measured in weeks rather than hours, but most indications are that this one will take place unusually quickly.

That the leadership election should eschew two experienced cabinet veterans in favour of someone who isn’t even an MP is a little surprising. In the Canadian constitution, as in the British, it is not illegal for a non-Parliamentarian to be appointed to a ministerial office, but it is considered improper and, above all, politically impractical. The nearest British precedent for Carney’s situation, and even then it is a very poor one, would be the much-discussed case of Sir Alec Douglas-Home disclaiming his peerages to jump back to the Commons in 1963. A more thorough comparison of these two situations may be worth a separate article.

Accession to the premiership will, of course, give Carney the right to constitutionally advise the King of Canada, including advising him to speak on Canadian matters.

For the moment, Charles continues in a state of political limbo. Following a long-established royal tradition, he must express himself in a cryptic, plausibly-deniable way, often through subtle sartorial cues.

Today is Commonwealth Day, which includes a service at Westminster Abbey and the publication of a message by His Majesty. As the position of Head of the Commonwealth has no formal powers at all, it is not subject to “advice” from the secretariat in the way that ministers advise their monarchs, and thus this is a rare opportunity for Charles to speak his own mind. Of course, the message is meant to broadly encompass all fifty-six-and-counting members of the organisation, so is still a poor venue for a determined diatribe about any particular one of them, so any comment about the defence of Canadian sovereignty must again be inferred rather than stated outright.

Sir Keir Starmer has been similarly cautious, Tweeting about “further deepening the UK-Canada relationship together” but not saying anything specific about what that would entail. It was also announced two days ago that the Department of National Defence had commissioned a fleet of new destroyers based on a British design, but this is likely unrelated to the state of relations with the White House.

Returning to more familiar territory, I notice that where the Commonwealth Day message has been quoted in photographic form, the coat of arms in the letterhead is now the new Timothy Noad illustration with the Tudor crown. Said illustration has also now replaced the earlier versions on the royal website as well. As I noted to Sodacan, the change was done at some point in the morning of Wednesday 5th March.

During the abbey service itself, I distinctly noticed Their Majesties sitting behind ornate wooden faldstools with what looked like the old-style royal arms of Canada on them. This is not in itself the cryptic clue that it might seem – they were donated by the Canada Club in 1949.

The most surprising recent development in the past few days has been the launch of another royal podcast. Whereas Camilla has been patronising The Queen’s Reading Room (of which a podcast is but one part) for some years, Charles has only just announced The King’s Music Room (probably named that way for congruence with his wife’s project), but it has already generated a lot more headlines. The format is very different from the Reading Room, being very explicitly the product of a partnership with Apple and only available to their subscribers, among which I am not.

Starmer’s Sunday Surprise

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I wonder how long it took to get those signs printed.

International affairs continue to move at a dizzying pace. Far from being able to write comprehensive essays about events, it’s as much as I can do to keep up with the photographs being uploaded.

Shortly after meeting President Trump individually, Starmer, Macron, Zelenskyy and many other heads of government met at Lancaster House for an emergency summit on the Russia-Ukraine war. This was sometimes described in the press as a European leaders meeting, but that was not strictly true as it also included Justin Trudeau, a North American.

Back in D.C., Ambassador Mandelson has already caused a minor diplomatic row by airing a view on the Trump-Zelenskyy negotiations which contradicted British government policy.

The Downing Street Flickr account uploaded many photographs of Starmer’s bilateral meeting with Trump as well as of the conference he hosted. The White House also released photographs of the former and the European Commission of the latter. This presented a challenge for me when organising the files on Wikimedia Commons. For the scenes at the White House I decided to use “Trump-Starmer bilateral” for the American photographs and “Starmer-Trump bilateral” for the British ones. For the summit I put (UK pic) and (EC pic) in brackets. Further complicating matters is that London, Brussells and D.C. all sit in different time zones so that the meta-data on different cameras are inconsistent.

Following the meeting, Zelenskyy flew to the Sandringham estate for a meeting with His Majesty. Today Trudeau did the same. The choice of Sandringham for this part was confusing for three reasons:

  1. Sandringham is a privately-owned property, yet clearly matters of state were being conducted.
  2. The King’s main London residence at Clarence House is only a minute’s walk from where the summit took place, whereas the journey to Sandringham is over a hundred miles.
  3. Sandringham is normally only used by the royal family from Christmas to early February, not into March.

Sadly, no government photographs of the royal meetings were taken, only commercial ones. Although this could be considered a private rather than an official visit (and certainly not a state one) I was a little disappointed that the Ukrainian president was not appointed an honorary GCB.

The presence of the Prime Minister of Canada at an otherwise-European conference may seem a little strange, but of course Canada is a nation directly adjacent at the opposite end of the main adversary, as well as bordering the United States. Among the proximate causes of this summit is that the latter, long considered the keystone of any global military policy, may now me as much an antagonist as Russia is.

Given the great affection in which Canada is held by the British public, as well as the long-standing cultural and constitutional links between the United Kingdom and its former dominion, many viewers expressed disappointment that Starmer, whether in his meeting with Trump or at the subsequent summit, did not explicitly push back against Trump’s threats of both economic and actual warfare against Canada, which they interpreted as indifference to attack on a senior Commonwealth partner. That our shared monarch did not comment on the matter either was also of grave concern.

The King, of course, can only make an official statement on such a politically-charged issue on the formal advice of his Canadian government. It is yet to be confirmed if any such advice was given at today’s meeting. I can only hope that when such a statement is made, it comes with the correct coat of arms to hammer the point home!

Then again, it is also worth remembering that we are only a week from Commonwealth Day, and with it the annual Commonwealth Message. As the position of Head of the Commonwealth is one which has no formal powers even in reserve, it is one from which His Majesty can speak without ministerial advice. While a dedicated diatribe in such an instance would be inappropriate, a coded reference or two would not go amiss.

I’ve Been Promoted

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One of a great many images which I’ve recently requested be renamed

On Wikimedia Commons, unlike on the English (and some other) Wikipedias, moving a page from one title to another is not something any registered user can do. To rename an image file requires higher-than-standard access levels, which currently are held by under two thousand accounts.

Applying for these rights – or nominating someone else – turned out to be pretty simple. Another user, Shaan Sengupta, nominated me on the basis of how many requests I’d recently made for the renaming of British government Flickr photographs. This nomination was approved almost immediately. I was also – though this had not been requested – granted Autopatrol rights.

This present comes slightly late for my eleventh anniversary as an editor, but is welcome nonetheless.

The Dark Lord Rises

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A longstanding frustration of British heraldists and constitutionalists is the misuse of the word “Lord” in conjunction with a person’s given name. “Lord” can, of course, have many different meanings depending on context. In particular, its placement before or after a person’s first name.

When “Lord” is placed before a person’s first name and surname (i.e. the place where a knight would put “Sir”) it indicates said person to be the younger son of a marquess, duke or occasionally prince – e.g. Lord Nicholas Windsor, son of the Duke of Kent; Lord Ivar Mountbatten, son of the Marquess of Milford Haven. When placed directly before the surname (or territorial title) omitting the first name, it indicates that the person is a baron, viscount, earl or marquess (most usually the former) in his own right – e.g. Lord Winston, Lord Stansgate, Lord Attlee and Lord Lothian.

Sometimes, where it is necessary to preserve the first name, the word Lord can be written between the two – most famously in the case of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It is also possible for the same person to occupy both states – the two-time Victorian prime minister John Russell was the younger son of the 6th Duke of Bedford and was later created an earl in his own right with the earldom using his surname as the title, thus going from “Lord John Russell” as a commoner to “John, Lord Russell” as a peer. If the use of commas between parts of a person’s name is not practical, especially in long lists of names where it may cause confusion, then one can sometimes get away with using brackets for this purpose instead e.g. Lord (Andrew) Lansley.

I bring this up due to the recent appointment of Peter, Lord Mandelson to be His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States of America. His page on Gov.UK and the titles of a series of recent Flickr photographs both incorrectly call him “Lord Peter Mandelson”, thus greatly elevating the prestige of his parentage.

(Just to confuse you, Mandelson actually does have noble heritage on his mother’s side, but only from another life baron – Lord Morrison of Lambeth – whose own origins were distinctly proletarian.)

Once these photographs had been transferred to Wikimedia Commons, I made sure to change the names and captions to something more suitable.

Thankfully the Court Circular for 3rd February does better, stating that

The Lord Mandelson was received in audience by The King and kissed hands upon his appointment as His Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States of America.

On the day of his arrival, the British Embassy in Washington D.C. Tweeted a video of him giving a fluffy speech about his new role, accompanied with a sickeningly-dreamy montage and backing tune. Interestingly, the Tweet and the speech simply call him “Peter Mandelson” without mentioning his peerage at all. Since there did not appear to be a text copy anywhere, I have typed out his speech based on the subtitles. I have copied the punctuation exactly as it appeared there, despite this not always matching the way Mandelson actually spoke the words. Actually, given the syntactical incoherence of some of the sentences, I suspect he spoke in free-form and the written version came later. I have numbered the lines for ease of analysis.

  1. Hello, I’m Peter Mandelson, and I’m proud to serve as His Majesty’s British Ambassador to the United States of America.
  2. It’s great to be up and running in the US, a country in which I have spent so much of my adult life and admire so much.
  3. I’m speaking to you from the Ambassador’s Residence, a building that symbolises decades of friendship, hosting countless presidents, prime ministers, politicians, royalty, and many ordinary American citizens.
  4. I’m crystal clear: the UK has no closer ally than America.
  5. And no one does more than our two countries together in intelligence sharing and defence.
  6. With our jet fighters, our naval missions, and army special forces operating together in the world.
  7. Our deep economic and cultural ties are unrivalled.
  8. Looking ahead, President Trump’s administration is shaping up to be one of the most consequential periods in modern America.
  9. I feel energised by the opportunities opening up to work more closely together in tackling threats to our security, and collaborating together in exploiting new technologies to boost jobs and higher living standards.
  10. I was born in London to a middle-class family.
  11. My father was from Jewish parents whose own father helped found a local synagogue.
  12. My loving mother was always there for my older brother and me, and my father worked hard to send us both to university.
  13. At Oxford University, my passion for learning and to drive change was ignited.
  14. I’ve served as a legislator, elected first to the House of Commons, and more recently, in Parliament’s upper house.
  15. I’ve also helped found and grow a successful international business, promoting market access and investment around the world.
  16. I’m ready to bring my policy knowledge, entrepeneurial spirit, and experience at the highest levels of government to this role.
  17. As Northern Ireland Secretary, I was responsible for implementing the Good Friday Agreement, which finally brought peace to that troubled part of the United Kingdom.
  18. Today, the UK Government’s number one priority is economic growth.
  19. More than 1 million Britons work for US companies, and a million Americans work for UK firms.
  20. The UK and US already have $1.5 trillion invested in each other, and I’m confident we can go even further and faster together.
  21. I’m hugely grateful for the warm welcome since our arrival, Reinaldo, with whom I have lived happily for 28 years and I are so happy to be here making our home in the great United States of America.
  22. We look forward to exploring this magnificent country, from coast to coast, from state to state, and meeting many new friends along the way.

The montage includes a close-up shot of the pediment on the southern facade of the residence, as well as a clip of Mandelson speaking behind a podium (location unknown, but presumably within the embassy itself). Both the pediment and the podium feature the British royal arms, the former (built in 1928) using the Tudor crown and the latter (made at some point in Elizabeth II’s reign) using St Edward’s crown.

Lines 10-14 are most in need of analysis: His reference to “a middle-class family” overlooks that his grandfather, though not yet ennobled, was already a Companion of Honour and had been an MP for decades with several cabinet posts under his belt. Line 11 should really be split up to read something like “My father was from Jewish parents. His own father helped found a local synagogue.” as the single-clause formation he actually used implies his paternal grandparents were siblings! Line 13 is a little confusing – if he didn’t already have a passion for learning then how did he get into Oxford in the first place?

The inconsistency in line 14 is especially frustrating – he refers to Parliament’s lower house by name but its upper house merely by that description, despite the montage including a clip of his introduction ceremony. The verb “elected” obviously only applies to the former. The sentence would work better as “I’ve served as a legislator, first elected to Parliament’s lower house, then appointed to the upper house.” instead.

The assertion made in line 4 could also be a little disappointing to some of Britain’s European and Commonwealth allies – especially, given recent events, the ones in Canada.

UPDATE (11th September)

Whoops, that didn’t last long, did it?

Update Regarding Government Photography

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Over the course of last year I and other contributors furnished Wikimedia Commons with a large number of photographs taken from the Number 10 Flickr account.

These uploads were legally justified under the declaration on the account’s About page which said all photographs were released under the Open Government Licence. After enough photographs had been uploaded this way, a dedicated licence tag was created for it.

Late last year a deletion request was raised over a shot I had uploaded of Prince Louis of Wales at Trooping the Colour. This let to a rather long and complicated discussion over the validity of our interpretation of the government’s many varied and often contradictory statements regarding its intellectual property.

Eventually someone raised a Freedom of Information request over the matter. The Cabinet Office replied, confirming that the OGL was the licence applicable.

I am glad that this dispute has been resolved with reasonable speed and look forward to harvesting a great many more such photographs in the future. I only wish C. Smith had worded the question a little more broadly so it covered all departments of His Majesty’s Government instead of just one.

Extracting the Anthem

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Many times I have written about the travails involved in finding free-licence images for Wikimedia Commons, but this time it is sound files that concern me.

When Charles III acceded to the throne two years ago, the royal anthem of the Commonwealth Realms changed from “God Save the Queen” to “God Save the King”, having been in the feminine form for longer than the internet had existed. Extant recordings of the masculine form were hard to find, and those that did exist were inevitably very old.

Lacking the budget to form my own choir or hire a recording studio, I went looking for recordings of the song in the place it seemed most likely to find them – videos of His Majesty’s outdoor accession proclamations.

Of the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of these which actually took place, I managed to find just four for which either the venue host or a charitable bystander had uploaded the video to YouTube under Creative Commons. I firstly copied these videos themselves to Wikimedia Commons, then set about extracting the audio of people singing. Both of these involved a bit of a learning curve and the use of some third-party tools.

The Royal Exchange in the City of London (by Alison Pope)

This is the most high-profile of the four, and the one with the best sound quality. The band are playing (I think) Sir Henry Wood’s arrangement of the anthem (which is good because the composition itself is public domain) and the crowd are all in time. There is some noise due to wind, local dogs and the sliding of camera shutters.

Cornwall St Ives (by Cornishpastyman)

This version is sung a cappella. Most of the crowd have picked up by the third syllable and stay remarkably in time for the rest, though not necessarily in tune – one in particular says “noble” and “victorious” in a way that sounds almost like a dog yawning.

Charnwood (by Crep171166)

Music is provided by a lone trumpeter. Almost nobody picks up singing until the second line, and even then they all sound a bit low on energy.

Chatteris (by Chatteris Watch)

Again a lone brass-player and really only one voice is heard singing, picking up midway through the first line.

None of these are studio quality, of course, and none go beyond the first verse. Still, it’s a start.

UPDATE (August 2025)

The YouTuber Gobernador-Heneral has put together a 17-minute compilation of public performances of the anthem in the mourning period.

Photographs of the State Opening

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One of the recurrent themes of this blog is the inconsistency of licensing in British governmental and parliamentary photographs. Without rehearsing the entire story again, I will note that yesterday I made a wonderful discovery:

Since the day of the event itself I had thought that the only photograph of the 2024 State Opening of Parliament to be released under a free licence was this one of His Majesty in procession through the royal gallery. It is fairly tightly framed, with only the middle ground in focus so that Charles and the page boys to his flanks appear a little too sharp while the Duke of Norfolk in front and the Marchioness of Lansdowne behind are entirely blurred.

The House of Lords Flickr account had a generous album of high quality shots, but these were released under a Non-Commercial and No Derivatives licence, rendering them useless for Wikimedia Commons*. When this happened last year I was able to get around it by using those which had been re-issued under a looser licence by the Oireachtas, although some other Wikipedians challenged the legitimacy of these. No such republication existed this time around.

Happily, yesterday when strolling through the relevant category on Wikimedia Commons I came across a second photograph of the event, taken from inside the upper chamber and showing the speech being read. The source was given as parliament.assetbank-server.com, and the link revealed a page from what seemed to be an official Parliament-owned website with twenty-eight of the forty-five photographs in the Flickr album, but this time very explicitly licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0), which meant they could be used on Wikimedia Commons. Of course, I took the opportunity offered by the handy “DOWNLOAD ALL AS ZIP” button to transfer the lot of them. I had to give new names to all of them as the file originals were mostly gibberish and I noticed that the metadata were inconsistent as well (some had timestamps and others didn’t, some were taken by Roger Harris and others by Annabel Moeller). Some more editing may well be required in future to rectify this.

Though I am reluctant to look this gift horse in the mouth, I am a little perplexed by the existence of this website, which bears the UK Parliament logo but is not at the parliament.uk domain, and whose individual pages can be seen freely once you have the direct link but which cannot be navigated without a login. It could be the case that the majority – or indeed entirety – of the recent House of Lords photograph collection is actually released under a usable licence and these pages would prove it, if only we ever manage to find them.

*The irritating thing about photographing licensing in a parliamentary context is that one must continually differentiate between Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons and the House of Commons. The presence of Their Majesties in these images means that “royalty-free” isn’t very practical either.

Sightings in the Channel

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A few months ago I noted that, during the illness of her husband, Queen Camilla had been carrying out royal engagements solo, and had been flying the generic ermine-bordered version of the royal banner of arms.

The King has since recovered at least enough to be allowed out, and today Their Majesties jointly visit the Bailiwick of Jersey – a crown dependency in the English channel. Although a self-governing country with its own coat of arms, Jersey is part of the realm of the United Kingdom (i.e. it doesn’t count as a separate crown from the British one) and the sovereign’s heraldic identity is the same as in England.

In the disappointingly-limited series of photographs and videos I have found so far (none of them free-licence) I could not see much evidence of the sovereign’s banner flying over buildings, though I did see it on the roof of the Bentley State Limousine. What intrigued me was seeing (at 2m08s in the video above) some enthusiasts who had brought their own banner of Her Majesty’s arms and draped it over the railing. Based on the art style, I am dead certain it is a printout of this creation by Fry1989. The King actually reacts to it, though I can’t quite make out the words he says. The presumed owner of the flag says to him “I hope you enjoyed France last year.” in what I take to be a French accent.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Passing the Post

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My 2020 article on the Political Colour Wheel has proven to be one of the most popular on this blog, so today I thought I’d try another idea in that vein.

The results of this month’s general election have generated another series of discussions about proportionality, given the historically-low vote share on which Sir Keir Starmer’s party has ridden to victory. I have put together a graph showing how far the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democratic parties have risen or fallen above or below the waterline at the last ten general elections.

The data themselves are scraped off Wikipedia. I have cheated a little by backdating the name “Liberal Democrat” to 1987, when it was still the alliance between the old Liberal Party and the Social Democrats under Davids Steel and Owen. The “divide” column is of course the seat share divided by vote share. The formula to produce the score is a little arbitrary – to make the final numbers a little nicer (and perhaps more memorable) I have subtracted 1 from each answer in the Divide column then multiplied the result by 10.

CONSERVATIVE
Election Parliament Vote Share Seat Share Divide Score
1987 50th 42.2% 57.85% 1.37 3.71
1992 51st 41.9% 51.61% 1.23 2.32
1997 52nd 30.7% 25.04% 0.82 -1.84
2001 53rd 31.7% 25.19% 0.79 -2.05
2005 54th 32.4% 30.65% 0.95 -0.54
2010 55th 36.1% 47.08% 1.30 3.04
2015 56th 36.9% 50.77% 1.38 3.76
2017 57th 42.3% 48.77% 1.15 1.53
2019 58th 43.6% 56.15% 1.29 2.88
2024 59th 23.7% 18.62% 0.79 -2.15
LABOUR
Election Parliament Vote Share Seat Share Divide Score
1987 50th 30.8% 35.23% 1.14 1.44
1992 51st 34.4% 41.63% 1.21 2.10
1997 52nd 43.2% 63.43% 1.47 4.68
2001 53rd 40.7% 62.52% 1.54 5.36
2005 54th 35.2% 54.95% 1.56 5.61
2010 55th 29.0% 39.69% 1.37 3.69
2015 56th 30.4% 35.69% 1.17 1.74
2017 57th 40.0% 40.31% 1.01 0.08
2019 58th 32.1% 31.08% 0.97 -0.32
2024 59th 33.8% 63.23% 1.87 8.71
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT
Election Parliament Vote Share Seat Share Divide Score
1987 50th 22.6% 3.38% 0.15 -8.50
1992 51st 17.8% 3.07% 0.17 -8.27
1997 52nd 16.8% 6.98% 0.42 -5.85
2001 53rd 18.3% 7.89% 0.43 -5.69
2005 54th 22.0% 9.60% 0.44 -5.64
2010 55th 23.0% 8.77% 0.38 -6.19
2015 56th 7.9% 1.23% 0.16 -8.44
2017 57th 7.4% 1.23% 0.17 -8.34
2019 58th 11.6% 1.85% 0.16 -8.41
2024 59th 12.2% 11.08% 0.91 -0.92
COMBINED
Election Parliament Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat
1987 50th 3.71 1.44 -8.50
1992 51st 2.32 2.10 -8.27
1997 52nd -1.84 4.68 -5.85
2001 53rd -2.05 5.36 -5.69
2005 54th -0.54 5.61 -5.64
2010 55th 3.04 3.69 -6.19
2015 56th 3.76 1.74 -8.44
2017 57th 1.53 0.08 -8.34
2019 58th 2.88 -0.32 -8.41
2024 59th -2.15 8.71 -0.92

It is striking that the Labour and Liberal Democrat lines are almost parallel throughout, while the Conservative line neither follows nor mirrors them. The Conservatives fell below the waterline during the Blair years, then were inconsistently high above it from 2010 to 2019, falling below again in 2024. The Labour party were always above except for 2019 (albeit very slightly). The Liberal Democrats have always been below, albeit very nearly touching this year. 2024 is also the first time that they have been less disadvantaged than the Conservatives were. Labour’s score in 2024 is of course a record high.

Washing Up, Washing Out

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Yesterday evening the fifty-eighth Parliament of the United Kingdom was prorogued for the fourth and final time, pending dissolution next Thursday. This meant that MPs had just two days of “wash up” in which any bills already in the pipeline are either hurried to completion or abandoned altogether.

Parliament is not always prorogued before dissolution, sometime it is merely adjourned – in the past fifty years the 46th, 47th, 48th, 49th, 52nd, 53rd and 57th parliaments were all open-ended. Irrespective of whether or not a prorogation was involved, the time elapsed between a parliament’s last sitting day and its dissolution varies highly: For the second general election of 1974 it seems that the 46th Parliament sat last on 31st July before rising for the summer recess then got dissolved on 20th September just before it could convene again, whereas in 1992 the 50th Parliament sat last and was dissolved on the same day.*

Rishi Sunak’s motivation for this particular timetable is unclear – if he had let the legislature sit on 28th and 29th May it would have allowed four days instead of two to finish business, so that fewer bills would have needed to be dropped. Perhaps Sunak felt it would be a waste of commuting time to sit for just two days between the bank holiday and the dissolution. Some have also speculated that he wanted Parliament closed as soon as possible to reduce the opportunity for his backbenchers to unseat him as party leader. A precedent might be found in John Major in 1997, who had the 51st Parliament prorogued more than a fortnight before it was dissolved and was suspected of doing so to block the publication of a select committee report against Neil Hamilton.

When a general election is looming, incumbent MPs have to make a decision: Step down and make one’s valedictory speech in the chamber before prorogation, or stand again and risk having to make it instead from the returning officer’s podium in the early hours after polls close. By the time the house closed more than a hundred members (over seventy of them Conservatives) had chosen the first option. The valedictory debate lasted nearly seven hours and obviously I have not yet been able to properly take in all of the speeches. So far my favourites were Sir James Duddridge (with its interventions by both Alicia Kearns and Dame Eleanor Laing), Julian Knight (who took the chance to lash out at former colleagues who had wronged him) and Tim Loughton (differentiating knowledge from wisdom in terms of putting tomatoes in fruit salads).

The prorogation ceremony was carried out in the usual way. There were two substitutions among the Lords Commissioners – Liberal Democrat leader Lord Newby was replaced by his deputy Lord Dholakia (as in 2019) while Convenor of the Crossbench peers Lord Kinnoull (still not a privy council member) stayed on the crossbenches and left his place on the woolsack to his predecessor-but-two Lord Laming. Eleven acts received assent.

As in the prorogation last November, the letters patent acknowledged that there had been a demise of the crown since the last general election, hence the phrase

…whereas Queen Elizabeth The Second did lately for divers difficult and pressing affairs concerning Us the State and defence of Our United Kingdom and Church ordain this Our present Parliament to begin and be holden at Our City of Westminster the seventeenth day of December in the sixty-eighth year of Her Reign on which day Our said Parliament was begun and holden and is there now holden…

which as Jack Blackburn of The Times aptly pointed out is the last time that the former monarch will be mentioned in Parliament in this context.

As I have mentioned before, the dissolution of Parliament creates a headache for Wikipedia editors as hundreds of people who for years or even were incumbent members of the House of Commons cease to be so for a matter of weeks, then (most of them) become so again after polling day. This time, rather than have many of us hurriedly scouring hundreds of pages to remove any trace of incumbency, I am trialing a solution I piloted at the devolved elections three years ago by placing a disclaimer tag at the top of each affected article. The beauty of this trick is that the template can be centrally edited, so I can go at a more leisurely pace adding it to MPs’ articles in the days before dissolution with the notice written in future tense and then on the day of dissolution change it to present tense. Of course, that still leaves a lot of work making long-term edits to the pages of those members who will permanently leave the house at this election (whether willingly or not) and creating new pages for their successors.

EXTERNAL LINKS

House of Commons Library

Privy Council Office

UPDATE (2nd June)

When looking through the Hansard records for this sitting, I noticed an interesting mistake:

End of the Fifth Session (opened on 7 November 2023) of the Fifty-Eighth Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the Second Year of the Reign of His Majesty King Charles the Third.

The last sitting day before 7th November 2023 was 26th October, and the record for that day says it was the end of the third session. Quite when the fourth session came and went I have no idea.

*The 1993 documentary Days of Majesty covers the prorogation and dissolution process.