Her Majesty (30 page)

But why on earth is she expected to do all this? No one doubts the Queen’s devotion to duty, so she will read whatever she is given. But is it really necessary for her to wade through the minutiae of appointments or legislation that she cannot amend? Why must she read obscure diplomatic dispatches or be presented with technical issues which are gibberish to all bar experts in the field? Some have suggested that she sometimes uses the Red Boxes as a diversionary tactic, an excuse to lock herself away. Mary Francis thinks it goes to the heart of what constitutional monarchy
is all about. ‘I often wondered what the point was, to be perfectly frank. But she is a constitutional monarch and there are points at which she has to engage – whether it’s meeting the Prime Minister or other Ministers or making appointments. And it would be strange if the person who was doing those things was being kept ignorant of the workings of government and what was happening generally.’ In other words, it might be a document of stultifying inanity or head-throbbing complexity. But if it passed through the political system without passing beneath the gaze of the Monarch, then she would quite simply feel that she had failed in her duty.

Besides going through new legislation – and turning it into law with a stroke of a pen – there is another political duty at the dustier end of the regal spectrum which the Queen is said to enjoy greatly. The Privy Council is the oldest legislative assembly in Britain and once served as the Monarch’s Cabinet. Today, its work is no longer secret and it remains a means of pushing through a lot of low-level government business without involving Parliament. It can be both a wonderful and tedious hotch-potch of stuff – authorising new laws in the Channel Islands or issuing coins. It involves proclaiming Bank Holidays. Tens of millions of diaries cannot be printed until these are sorted out. The Queen must also approve the marriages of all direct descendants of George II under the terms of the Royal Marriages Act. Many of them will be leading ordinary lives and will never even have met the Queen. Some may not even be aware of the rule. Yet if they do not go through the Queen and the Privy Council, then, according to the law, their marriage is invalid and their children are, technically, illegitimate. Most couples with a royal ancestor are, of course, thrilled to get their union personally blessed by the Monarch but the Privy Council Office is aware of some exceptions. They need not fear a knock on the door from the wedding police, however. ‘We don’t go looking for them,’ says one of the team. ‘We take a pragmatic view. It’s a case of don’t ask, don’t tell.’

A lot of Privy Council business involves amending the statutes of universities or anything with a royal charter (including the BBC). It also has a judicial wing which acts as the court of appeal for Commonwealth countries which have yet to construct one of their own. On rare occasions, one of these sober little gatherings in the 1844 Room of Buckingham Palace can, effectively, send a man to his death. Some countries which retain the Privy Council also retain the death penalty. The Council doesn’t carry out sentencing, it merely judges appeals. But if it rejects the appeal of a murderer on death row in the Caribbean, then a condemned man is on his way to the gallows once the Queen has uttered a single word: ‘Approved.’ And it is her constitutional duty to do so.

There is no debate at these meetings. All the business has been prepared in advance and is usually over in five minutes. But it’s by no means formulaic ritual. The Clerk of the Council always prepares a short explanation of every item of business for the Queen in advance. It might be a couple of sentences explaining the reasons for, say, amending the Charter of the University of Keele or freezing the assets of a terrorist suspect. There might be dozens of items but the Queen reads the lot. It’s just like her Red Boxes. It’s often dense, turgid stuff. But that’s not the point. She believes that she would be falling down on the job if she did not know what it was she was actually approving at these meetings.

The Lord President of the Council – a senior Cabinet Minister who usually has a more onerous day job like Deputy Prime Minister – turns up with a trio of Government Ministers. The minimum required for any meeting is three Privy Counsellors.
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They line up outside the 1844 Room and the Lord President goes in first for a few words with the Queen. When she is ready, she presses her buzzer and the rest of them file in, along with the Clerk, and they shake her hand.

The emphasis is on brisk efficiency, hence the fact that meetings are conducted standing up, a time-saving mechanism famously introduced by Queen Victoria. The politicians stand on one side of the Queen with their backs to the window while the Clerk stands on the other. The Lord President reads out all the orders on each page of what is called the List of Business whereupon the Queen replies ‘approved’ and everyone can turn the page.
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When it’s all done, the President will say: ‘That, Your Majesty, concludes the business of today’s Council.’ The Queen might comment on one of the more interesting orders and then she rings her buzzer, the doors open and the ministers walk out. Because they are all Privy Counsellors, they are not expected to turn round on their way out and bow again like ordinary mortals. These people – with ‘Right Honourable’ before their name and ‘PC’ after it – are, historically, the Sovereign’s trustiest advisers. They just leave.

‘I always had the sense that the Queen really enjoys every aspect of it,’ says former Clerk of the Privy Council, Alexander Galloway. He admits that the details of some rituals are so complicated that they can
fox the most experienced people in the room, namely the Queen and the Clerk. ‘The great thing about being Clerk of the Privy Council is that if anyone asks you a question, it’s almost certain that no one knows the answer,’ he points out.

On half a dozen occasions during her reign, though, the usual calm of the Privy Council meeting turns into a cross between a circus and a medieval homage. It happens when a ruling party falls and a new government comes to power with a lot of first-time ministers. Not only must the Queen swear in a lot of new Secretaries of State but there are a lot of new Privy Counsellors to be created, too. ‘It was like a baptism by hosepipe,’ says David Cameron with a smile, recalling the day when he took his new Coalition to be sworn in. ‘There was this wonderful scene – a lot of people getting into the Privy Council and then a lot of people kissing hands and accepting the seals of office too. So you had someone like the Lord Chancellor, Ken Clarke, who’s had the seals of almost every office [Kenneth Clarke held no fewer than five different Cabinet positions during the Thatcher/Major years] and you had Liberal Democrats like Danny Alexander who never thought they’d ever get the seals of any office! Here was this giant queue of oath-takers. They go down on one kneeler, kiss hands and affirm the oath of the Privy Council and then get on another kneeler to become Cabinet Ministers and do the kissing and swearing again.’ Just to add to the confusion, the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, had to be sworn in ahead of the Prime Minister since he was also the new Lord President of the Privy Council. And without a Lord President no one else could be sworn in. Cameron goes on: ‘My abiding memories of the day are of Nick Clegg going first and all the Lib Dems thinking: “Good God: we’re running the whole country!” and of everyone getting seals of office except me. They come in these huge leather boxes with a key. And everyone gets one except the Prime Minister who just kisses hands. But it was all beautifully arranged, with a rehearsal and coffee and a very nice room at Buckingham Palace followed by a chat afterwards. Like all these things, the Palace do it very well and make everyone feel very special.’ It is always a frantic few days after a change of government. Not only must the Palace round up the victors for swearing in but the Queen will also summon the losers for a formal farewell. By tradition, every departing Cabinet Minister is granted an audience when a government falls. ‘It was a perfectly pleasant ten-minute conversation about the way things were going and then you got the smile and the handshake and that was it,’ says one former Cabinet Minister. ‘But it helps. It produces finality. It’s a very nice recognition and you feel a
little bit warmer that you’ve seen the Sovereign, even if she’s only saying: “Thank you very much. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”’

This complex collection of constitutional duties, conventions, obligations, quirks, anomalies and fathomless rituals is not laid down in black and white, of course. Walter Bagehot might have distilled some of the essentials of constitutional monarchy in his great work,
The English Constitution
, but he never said anything about Red Boxes or the Commonwealth or detachable wands or kissing hands. Yet this entire, often baffling interplay between the Sovereign and the political class is neatly encapsulated in one of the most colourful and spectacular days in the royal calendar.

The Buckingham Palace Billiard Room is packed. Accountants, secretaries, cleaners and several peers of the realm are gathered beneath the naval portraits and the china displays. They are all staring, spellbound, at the table – but no one is playing billiards. Laid out before them is a very handsome cross section of the Crown Jewels.

It is now a ritual before every State Opening of Parliament that Palace staff are allowed a glimpse of the royal regalia which will be used. Some of the old-timers are as captivated as a tourist entering the Tower of London’s Jewel House for the first time to see the Crown Jewels. The Jewel House has a few gaps today. All the items now sitting here at the Palace have been replaced by signs saying ‘In Use’. It may be disappointing for today’s tourists at the Tower but it is a reminder that these treasures are not museum pieces. They are central fixtures in the great constitutional/theatrical production that is about to unfold.

‘You’re looking at over three thousand natural gems – diamonds, sapphires emeralds and historically some of the biggest in the world,’ says the Crown Jeweller, Harry Collins, opening up a deceptively dull box to reveal the Imperial State Crown. In an hour or so, it will be on the Queen’s head in the Palace of Westminster.

The post of Crown Jeweller – the highest accolade in the trade – is a part-time one and comes with a modest ‘E II R’ tie pin plus custody of some of the greatest treasures in the world. Collins was an interesting choice when he was appointed in 2007. He was not running a grand boutique in London’s Bond Street but the family jewellery shop in Royal Tunbridge Wells. His passion for these pieces comes through loud and clear. ‘The sapphire at the top has a lovely story,’ he tells his hushed audience, pointing to the top of the crown. ‘Edward the Confessor wore that sapphire in a ring all his life and he wanted to be buried with it. His wish was granted in 1066, so that stone was buried for a hundred years. It sends a shiver up my spine every time I think of it. And then a
hundred years later, when they were moving his body, they exhumed him and it was decided to make his sapphire a Crown Jewel.’

Collins has similar stories about all the main jewels in this particular crown – the Black Prince’s Ruby, Elizabeth I’s pearls, the 317-carat Cullinan II diamond (itself cut from the largest diamond ever known).

There are so many people in so many different costumes that the Billiard Room could be the backstage area of an opera house or a film set. Two of the longest serving members of staff – chief clerk Paul Almond and stud groom Brian Stanley – will be Serjeants at Arms for the day. Dressed in the Victorian uniform of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, they will carry the two maces, symbols of royal authority, in the Royal Procession.

Several footmen have come out of retirement for the day to serve as State Porters. Dressed in thick scarlet overcoats, they will act as doorkeepers during all the comings and goings.

Four nervous-looking schoolboys are wearing knee-length scarlet coats, white breeches and white stockings. They are the Pages of Honour who will carry the Queen’s velvet robe, eighteen feet long and trimmed with ermine. They are usually the children of royal friends or officials but today’s quartet includes a member of the Royal Family. Eleven-year-old Arthur Chatto is the younger son of Princess Margaret’s daughter, Lady Sarah Chatto. The Queen is his great-aunt and, for now, he is eighteenth in the line of succession.

Conservative MP Mark Francois, the current occupant of the office of Vice-Chamberlain, is here in a morning coat with his black wand of office. He will spend the morning here as the Queen’s hostage until she has safely returned from Parliament. It will be a pleasant captivity. Refreshments and a television have been laid on in the Regency Room. ‘We don’t do manacles any more,’ explains a Palace official.

Suddenly, the atmosphere suddenly switches from coffee-morning banter to action stations. The Sovereign is on her way down from her apartments. No one in history has performed this ritual more often than the Queen. She has only missed it twice (through pregnancy), an attendance record to shame Queen Victoria who managed just seven State Openings in the last forty years of her life. Many of the Palace participants are veterans of this event. Even so, no one is blasé about the constitutional significance of the day and no one wants to make a mistake on live television, least of all the Monarch herself. Dressed in a Stewart Parvin state dress of apricot duchess satin embroidered with Paris beads and gold thread, her solemnity is infectious.

There are two carriage processions, the first one for the crown and the second for the Monarch. Royal Mews staff have been busy all morning
hosing down the gravel to minimise the dust cloud from the two hundred horses passing through the Palace Quadrangle this morning (they include First Love, a spirited ex-racehorse of the late Queen Mother which gave her the last win of her life and which is carrying the Crown Equerry today).

All eyes are on the Monarch as she departs in the Irish State Coach with the George IV diadem twinkling on her head. It is a super-tiara, a substantial piece in its own right, though little more than a hairband in comparison with the Imperial State Crown which has gone on ahead.