A Dukedom for your Birthday
A few weeks ago Charles announced a new line of members of the Order of the Thistle, an honour considered to be the highest possible in Scotland. Sue Black, Helena Kennedy, and Geoff Palmer were all given the award. But let’s not forget the fourth award – to this brother, Edward, as a 60th birthday present.
This comes only one year after Edward was given another Scottish gift for his 59th birthday – the title of Duke of Edinburgh.
Does Edward live in Edinburgh, or even Scotland? Does he have any connections to local communities, does he work here? No. In fact, previous to this new title he was given the title of Earl of Wessex as a wedding gift. As far away from Scotland as you can get and still be on the mainland. He lives in a 120-room mansion in Surrey with his family and shows no sign of budging north of the border to lend any credibility at all to his shower of Scottish honours.
His new title relegated the other three to a side-note, a treatment replicated by our media. The BBC dedicated an entire article to Edward’s birthday present and reduced the others to a passing mention in a single sentence. Not one mention of their achievements that might have inspired such an honour… to be listed beside a man who has done absolutely nothing.
The King has made clear just how valuable nepotism and favour is, whilst himself being a member of the private men-only club for the rich and powerful in London, the Garrick Club. A club where only members can nominate other members, and everyone from Conservative Ministers to senior judges to BBC presenters rubs shoulders – as long as they’re a man and they know and are liked by the right people. That’s the price of access to a man who will gift you the most prestigious honours of Scotland if you’re close enough.
With that example set, that our honours system is little more than a feeble cloak over a system of nepotistic gifts – why shouldn’t our Prime Ministers cast around knighthoods to whoever gives him enough money to buy one?
Why shouldn’t Boris Johnson have handed one to his dad, and sent his brother to the House of Lords (itself a barely veiled destination for anyone willing to do favours, grant donations, or do lucrative deals with the Prime Minister of the day) when the entire concept of honours and titles are reduced to presents exchanged by the family at the head of our entire political system?
All whilst Andrew clings to his own gift of Earl of Inverness years on from having the Royal Family bail him out from having to settle claims of sexual assault with his pal Jeffrey Epstein out of court.
They have demeaned the entire system and made a mockery of the concept of being honoured in Scotland. Every dodgy deal and favour between friends and family of those in power is legitimised by the royalty doing the same at any opportunity they get.
It’s about time we put the whole rotting edifice behind us, in the past where it belongs. Scotland deserves better than this family, and it deserves an independent system of honours which cares more about what you have done for your community, and less about which family you were lucky enough to be born into.