From radicals to royalists, Labour always falls in line

Culture secretary Lisa Nandy came right out with it. I’m not afraid to say when I change my mind, and I have changed my mind about that,” she said when asked yesterday on ITV’s Good Morning Britain about her assertion during the 2020 Labour leadership campaign that she would vote to abolish the monarchy if such a referendum was held.

- JOHN RENTOUL

“In principle, I believe that people should have the power to decide who rules them,” she said. “But I think the monarchy under the Queen and under this current King commands strong public support. If you look at the turmoil going on in the world, then we do need a royal family who are able to help us to deliver the benefits to Britain.”

As she spoke, King Charles was doing some of the government’s diplomatic donkey work, meeting Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, on a state visit to Rome. He also helped Keir Starmer on his mission to the White House, where the prime minister brandished an invitation from the King to Donald Trump for an “unprecedented” second state visit to the UK.

It is funny how the radical egalitarians of the people’s party become ardent royalists in office. Nandy said she had changed her mind since becoming a cabinet minister because she had worked with members of the royal family on tackling knife crime and projecting Britain’s cultural soft power abroad.

Keir Starmer’s conversion has been less explicit. He is haunted by a video clip of him from a 2005 documentary, in which he smirks about his elevation to the barrister elite: “I got made a Queen’s Counsel, which is odd since I often used to propose the abolition of the monarchy.”