Good morning. Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary and candidate for deputy Labour leader, has been doing an interview round this morning. She was meant to be talking about V-levels, a government plan to simplify and improve vocational education in schools in England. It is an important topic, albeit not an exciting one to people who don’t have children that might be affected. Instead, this being Britain, rather than a sensible, modern country, she ended up talking about the royal family.
To recap: on Friday Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Andrew is going to give up using the title Duke of York in response to the revival of the controversy about his friendship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and the claim (which Andrew denies) that Epstein arranged for him to have sex with Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre deied by suicie in April, aged 41, but her posthumous memoir is being published tomorrow.
On Friday this was seen as a significant sanction, and further evidence that Andrew is being disowned by the royal family over the Epstein links.
But, over the weekend, the controversy escalated as people increasinly focused on the fact that Andrew has not lost his dukedom, because that can only be removed by an act of parliament, and that all that has happened is that he as agreed not to go round calling himself a duke. That does not sound like much of a punishment at all. After all, there are also 70 million of us in the UK who also don’t go round calling ourselves.
Given that parliament is the only body that can strip Andrew of his dukedom, this has now became a matter for politics. As the Guardian reports, some MPs want parliament to legislate.
That is why Phillipson got bumped from the 8.10 slot on the programme, which instead went to Rachael Maskell. In 2022 she introduced a private member’s removal of titles bill that would allow the king to removal any hereditary title from anyone, either on his own initiative or following a recommendation from parliament. (It is not just dukedoms that can’t be taken away easily; people calling for Michelle Mone to lose her peerage over the PPE scandal also run into the problem that this requires an act of parliament, and no law has been passed removing a peerage since the Titles Deprivation Act 1917 that was used to punish peers who were supporting Germany in the war.) Maskell used the interview to make the case for this legislation.
One problem is that Maskell is not even a Labour MP at the moment. She was suspended in the summer for rebelling on various welfare issue.
(Another objection might be that, if a progressive government does want to legislate on hereditary titles, it should probably be getting rid of all of them, which would stop all sorts of people growing up with the sort of entitlement that led Andrew to think, in Giuffre’s words, “having sex with me was his birthright”. But that is probably a debate for another day.)
In her interview, Phillipson was asked if the government was in favour of the sort of legislation proposed by Maskell that would allow the king to remove Andrew’s dukedom. She said this was not a matter for the government, but that it supported the action taken by the royal family at the end of last week.
When it was put to her that the government does get involved in royal matters sometimes, she replied:
We would be guided by the royal family in this, and I imagine the royal family would want parliament to dedicate our time to our wider legislative programme. But we will be guided by them on it.
Asked again why this was not a matter for the government, she said:
Because the government, by long-standing convention, doesn’t involve itself in matters concerning the royal family. The royal family don’t involve themselves in the business of government, in terms of inserting themselves into the discussion. And it’s right that we respect that going the other way as well.
This sounded very much like Phillipson saying the government’s reluctance to get involved was at the ‘not with a bargepole’ level. But she did not categorically rule out the government allowing legislation on this to go ahead – if the king were to back the idea.
Phillipson also said that “parliamentarians will always have mechanisms within parliament to find ways in which they can air any issue, including this issue”. Some news outlet have taken that as Phillipson saying she would be happy for MPs to have a debate on this. But that might be an over-interpretation. Direct debate on the conduct of members of the royal family is normally banned under Commons rules, unless a substantive motion on the topic is tabled (which almost never happens).
We will get a line from Downing Street at the lobby briefing.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.30am: Prof Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry as part of its module looking at the impact of the pandemic on children an young people. Martin Hewitt from the National Police Chiefs’ Council is giving evidence in the afternoon.
11am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.
Noon: Tory MP Nick Timothy gives a speech free speech and Islam at Policy Exchange. Words planned
1.30pm: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: MPs debate the remaining stages of the bill approving the deal giving sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Share
