Nigel McEvoy’s team have been handed detailed printed instructions. At the top table, the Queen will be served first, President Zuma second and Prince Philip third. There are plenty of special dietary requests at all nineteen service stations. A senior financial figure should not be served red peppers and his wife is allergic to salmon. One politician is ‘no meat, no wheat’ while another is ‘no pork or melon’. The wine waiters are laying out a selection of non-alcoholic drinks – Diet Cokes, Malvern Water and Sandringham apple juice.
The international media arrive before any of the guests and are shepherded through to the South Drawing Room. Tonight, once again, it reverts to its original role as the old Palace cinema. A large television monitor will relay proceedings back to the press.
Every guest is introduced to the Queen, the Duke and the Zumas before making their way through to dinner in little groups. They all know where they are sitting because they are handed a little booklet with a list of all the guests and a seating plan. Even so, it can be a little unnerving being one of the first guests into a huge Ballroom so the band strikes up a series of jaunty numbers, starting with ‘Out Of The Blue’ – otherwise known as the theme tune to the BBC’s Sports Report. The Palace staff know that they can always rely on the Archbishop of Canterbury to lead the way like a good shepherd. There is an air of informality. The South African delegation are not wearing their football scarves tonight but cheerfully strike up conversation with footmen and butlers who are waiting to push in ladies’ chairs and start serving. Samantha Cameron walks through talking to one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, Mary Morrison. David Cameron chats to Paddy Harverson, the Prince of Wales’s Press Secretary.
Once all the non-royal guests are in, the Royal Procession forms up in the Music Room for the principal guests to come into dinner, men on the right, women on the left, with the Queen and President Zuma in front. Leading the way is the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Peel, alongside the Lord Steward, the Earl of Dalhousie, an entirely honorary figure who only appears at state occasions.
Until a few years ago, it was traditional for these two most senior courtiers to walk backwards into banquets. The practice was always a source of much mirth in the media and, to general relief, the Queen eventually took the view that her people could walk forwards. But reversing officials had their uses because it meant that they could keep an eye on the Queen and her guests and keep the procession moving at the correct pace for everyone. And since that is still useful, someone still has to walk backwards. It’s another job for Ray Wheaton, Page of the Chambers. ‘If we’re going too fast for the Queen and the visiting head of state, then Ray will put his hands out and say, “OK, just slow down a bit,”’ says Lord Peel. ‘It’s very funny but it’s done for a very good reason.’
Tonight, Ray Wheaton steers the royal convoy into dinner right on time. The Queen is wearing a Stewart Parvin white satin dress and this, of all nights, is an occasion for what the Queen calls her ‘best diamonds’. These are the twenty-one diamonds arranged into a necklace and bracelet and presented to Princess Elizabeth on her twenty-first birthday by the people of South Africa. She is also wearing Queen Alexandra’s Russian Fringe Tiara and her new chain of the Order of the Companions of Oliver Tambo. The President is in white tie and the red sash of the Order of the Bath. However cold he was feeling earlier, he is now a little on the hot side. As he takes his seat next to the Queen, he repeatedly and nervously mops his brow. At least, he is spared the old routine for state banquets – speeches at the end of dinner.
The Queen has no need of her gavel. A short drum roll brings silence to the Ballroom. She touches briefly on her 1947 tour but focuses on the present and the future. Her speech has been written by the Foreign Office, hence a workmanlike text full of clunking phrases like ‘a strong commitment to tackling together the global challenges of poverty, development and climate change’. But she concludes with an old African proverb: ‘If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together.’ She toasts her guests and the people of South Africa but the canny guests know not to drink their champagne just yet. The lengthy, two-part South African national anthem must be played first and then glasses are raised. The Queen and President Zuma both choose to sip glasses of water rather than Pol Roger champagne. The President then speaks, paying tribute to Britain’s place at the ‘forefront of a global movement for a free South Africa’ in the days of the anti-apartheid movement. He points out that Britain is the largest investor in his country but this is a relationship built ‘on the rock of human solidarity’. He toasts the Queen and the Duke and, this time, everyone knows that they have to wait until ‘God Save The Queen’ has finished. Finally, the banquet begins. Mark Flanagan’s salmon is served by Nigel McEvoy’s men and women. Air Vice-Marshal Sir David Walker keeps a careful eye from the far end of the table as all the senior members of the Royal Household turn to their guests, Prince Philip turns to Mrs Zuma and the Queen asks Mr Zuma how he is enjoying what will probably be one of the most memorable days of his life. And up in the dimly lit recesses of the balcony, two dozen onlookers sit and watch the new model twenty-first-century Court effortlessly deliver a thoroughly modern royal production which would have made the Georgians feel at home.
* The Lord Chamberlain is not to be confused with the Lord Great Chamberlain, an entirely ceremonial and hereditary post which involves escorting the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament. The present Lord Great Chamberlain is the Marquess of Cholmondeley.
* Marie-Antoine (Antonin) Carême, founder of haute cuisine and Royal Chef in the early nineteenth century, once produced a banquet of 909 different dishes. He invented George IV’s favourite dish, Potage de Tortue à l’Anglaise (turtle soup), eighty tureens of which were served at his Coronation in 1821. Another formidable Frenchman was Réne Roussin, chef to George VI. Even a dish as elementary as kippers would have to be sieved, spread on toast and served on a folded napkin.
* Miller, who had a superstitious streak, would never sleep the night before a state occasion. He was particularly worried ahead of the Queen’s Birthday Parade in 1981 – scheduled for 13 June. He would feel vindicated. Not only did a man fire (blank) shots at the Queen in the Mall but the Queen Mother fell and damaged her leg after the parade, the Duke of Edinburgh’s horse went lame and his groom was injured in an accident.
* The GCVO, Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, is the highest rank within the order, a decoration bestowed only on members of the Royal Family and a handful of the most senior and trusted officials.
* For the state visit of President Barack Obama, the display included some of Queen Victoria’s diary entries deploring the slave trade (‘To what can human nature descend …’), George III’s handwritten lament that ‘America is lost!’ and a delightful letter from Queen Elizabeth to Princess Elizabeth describing a picnic lunch with the Roosevelts in 1939: ‘HOT DOGS too!’
5
Her Politicians
‘It’s what she’s for.’
It is alternating between drizzle and a late spring sunset as a handful of selected television crews excitedly uncoil electric leads and set up their equipment in the Buckingham Palace Quadrangle. Plugs are passed through open windows to connect to ancient sockets within. The Palace wiring hasn’t changed since George VI was on the throne but there’s enough juice to fire up a few television lights and monitors. Normally, news crews are obliged to report from outside the Palace walls. But this is very different. After four days of post-election horsetrading, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has realised that he is not going to be able to form a government and has finally decided to resign. But he has to get a move on if he is going to do it tonight, because he has to resign to the Queen and she has a dinner engagement.
Tonight is a dinner in honour of the Queen’s Gentlemen Ushers at the Turf Club and it has been in the book for a very long time. The Gentlemen Ushers are among the most loyal honorary members of the Royal Household, retired officers from all three Services
who help orchestrate big royal events in return for little more than the train fare. The Queen is not going to let them down. It has been business as usual at the Palace all day. Earlier, the Queen had invited the 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards, fresh back from Afghanistan, to parade on her lawn where she presented them with a new colour. While she prepares to head out for dinner, a steady flow of smart cars is coming the other way beneath the archway and crunching to a halt in the Quadrangle. The Princess Royal is hosting a dinner for supporters of one of her leading charities, Save the Children. Her guests at the Palace tonight will be received through the Grand Entrance, just like state visitors. If any politicians do decide to turn up, they will be steered to a side entrance called the King’s Door. That’s just the way it is. It may be the most important political moment of the twenty-first century so far but that is no reason to tear up longstanding engagements. If Brown does not want to prolong his own agony for another night and end up looking like a lonely loser clinging on to power, he needs to get himself down to the Palace – fast.
All of a sudden, people around the country are realising that the monarchy is not the rubber-stamping irrelevance its critics would have us believe. True, the Queen hardly has to make a decision. Once Brown has resigned, there will only be one candidate for whom she can send – the Conservatives’ David Cameron. He may not be ready since he is still negotiating with the Liberal Democrats. But the Queen does not want the country left without a government all night.
The monarchy has already played an important role in this process. It has helped to fill the political vacuum of recent days simply by being there, waiting in the wings. The markets have remained stable. The public sector has got on with its job. Nothing has happened and, in these circumstances, nothing is preferable to something. ‘We have a system where a change of government – or a lack of one – doesn’t lead to a constitutional crisis because the monarchy plays its part,’ explains Cameron.
Although we will not even see the Queen during the climax of this saga, the fact that the central players have to enter and exit the highest office in the land via her gates underlines the entire point of the monarchy. As one former Private Secretary puts it, this is ‘the grit in the constitutional oyster’. There is real drama as the news choppers hover in the middle distance. The fourteen media representatives in the Palace Quadrangle crouch over portable monitors on the gravel, waiting for indications of what will happen next. Producers frantically call up colleagues standing outside Downing Street asking for estimates – or even guesstimates – of what will happen and when. There is more rumour than fact stalking these precincts. Suddenly, on crackly screens, Brown emerges from Number Ten Downing Street and announces that he is off to tender his resignation. His wife, Sarah, appears and the couple walk a short way down the street, hand in hand with their two young sons who are making the first public appearance of their lives. It’s a highly charged, emotional moment for the Downing Street staff. But it’s the cue for action at the Palace. The reporters leap into position in front of their cameras, commentating on what happens next and the progress of the Brown motorcade through the rush-hour traffic, its path cleared by police outriders. He is still Prime Minister – for the next few minutes. He still gets the full treatment.
At 7.27, the Queen’s Private Secretary, Christopher Geidt, her equerry, Wing Commander Andrew Calame, and tonight’s Lady-in-Waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, appear from the King’s Door to welcome Mr Brown and his wife out of their blue Jaguar Sovereign. Lady Susan is a picture of sympathy. She almost looks sadder than the soon-to-be-ex-Prime Minister. These are human moments, devoid of politics (Lady Susan appeared equally downcast when John Major departed). Mr Brown is escorted upstairs and straight in to see the Queen while Mrs Brown waits in an ante-room. She will be presented at the end. Word comes down that the children, sitting patiently in a blacked-out Ford Galaxy, have been invited in, too. There is an outbreak of melodramatics. A police driver moves the Galaxy right up to the King’s Door as if depositing a master criminal at the Old Bailey. One of the Queen’s pages comes marching across the gravel towards the cameras flapping his arms at the television crews in a way that clearly states: ‘Thou shalt not film.’ Two little boys who, moments earlier, were being paraded in front of the world’s cameras in Downing Street, are now smuggled inside the Palace like a pair of secret agents. No one films them.
At 7.43, the now ex-Prime Minister walks out trying to smile. It is self-evidently a wrench. In the process of holding his head up high, he forgets himself, gets in the car first and leaves Mrs Brown to walk round and get in on the other side herself. As the Browns leave in their two-car motorcade, Mr Brown probably doesn’t notice a parting gesture from the royal side. The Queen’s equerry, standing on the gravel, performs a valedictory bow (even though there is nothing in the equerry training manual about bowing to ex-prime ministers).
Moments later, the Queen’s (then) Press Secretary, Samantha Cohen, hands round notices on thick cream paper embossed with the Crown. They declare: ‘The Right Honourable Gordon Brown had an audience of the Queen this evening and tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, which Her Majesty accepted.’ For the next half an hour, Britain has no Prime Minister at all. Should a meteorrite land or enemies invade, it’s down to the Queen to take the initiative. David Cameron receives the call from the Queen’s Private Secretary and begins the journey from the House of Commons to the Palace with his wife, Samantha. Reflecting on it all a year later in his Downing Street study, Cameron thinks that Brown rather rushed things. ‘My view is it would have been easier if he’d spent the night here and had gone the next morning. But I think he felt “I don’t want to stay here any longer than I should” and everyone at the Palace was very accommodating. From my point of view, it felt as if it was all happening in a tearing rush when it didn’t need to.’
There is a sudden change of mood in the Quadrangle, bolstered by the weather. The drizzle subsides, the evening sun peers out and bathes the inside face of the East Front in a honeyed glow. But David Cameron is not yet Prime Minister. He does not yet enjoy the trappings of office. For the moment, there is no police motorcade for him. And so, while Britain and the Queen sit in limbo, the news choppers hover overhead transmitting pictures of the future Prime Minister sitting at traffic lights in Trafalgar Square. On he travels, stuck behind a commuter on a Vespa and a chap having a lesson in a BSM car. ‘It was wonderful,’ Cameron recalls. ‘It was just terribly British. There’s no other country in the world which has this sort of changeover. In America, they have this grand occasion weeks later. But we have a vaguely farcical moment where you’re stuck in the Mall with people taking pictures, traffic blocking the car and I’m desperately wondering what I am going to say on the steps of Downing Street.’
As the traffic stops and starts, the reporters in the Palace Quadrangle are earning their keep, filling in time with every bit of trivia they can muster. The BBC Radio Five Live reporter tells her listeners that Cameron will be the first Prime Minister who is younger than all the Queen’s children. BBC Television’s royal correspondent, Nicholas Witchell, informs viewers that Mr Cameron will become the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812.
Cameron’s silver Jaguar sweeps in at 8.10, followed by a couple of plainclothes policemen in a BMW. ‘As the car turns into Buckingham Palace, it’s totally surreal. You can’t believe it’s happening,’ Cameron recalls. ‘You’ve seen this on the television so many times and you can’t believe you’re actually doing it.’ The equerry and the page greet Mr and Mrs Cameron and usher them inside. He is taken up to the Private Audience Room where, officially, he ‘kisses hands’. Except that he does not. ‘It’s a myth,’ says Cameron. That will all happen the next day in a formal ceremony when everyone has a little more time and is a little less stressed. The Queen asks Cameron if he can form a government. Yet he has no overall majority and is still in discussions with the third-place Liberal Democrats. She has asked an
interesting question. Looking back, Cameron jokes that it was not a straightforward answer. ‘I like to think I was one of the first prime ministers in a long time who, when asked to form a government, instead of saying, “Yes, Your Majesty,” said: “Well, I’ll do my best. I’ll get back to you!”’
It’s not a long audience. As Tony Blair recalls in his own memoirs, new prime ministers tend to be tired and preoccupied and, in his own case, ‘looking a trifle manic’. Before Cameron leaves, the Queen invites his wife, Samantha, to come in for a brief but friendly chat (Tony Blair recalls the Queen ‘clucking sympathetically’ with Mrs Blair about the sudden upheavals for the family). At the same time, the Queen’s page comes out into the Quadrangle to alert Cameron’s driver and policemen, who are chatting on the gravel, to snap into action. They’re rapidly discovering a different pace of life already. The Queen’s Private Secretary, Christopher Geidt (he has yet to become Sir Christopher), knows that the new Prime Minister must now face the world and offers him a short breathing space. As Cameron recalls: ‘He kindly said: “If you want to use my office, there’s time to collect your thoughts before the next step.” So I popped into his office and thought a bit more about what I was going to say.’
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