In today’s Times Michael Savage writes (£):
The fact that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had a baby boy will not derail plans to introduce new laws ending gender discrimination in the succession to the Crown.
Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, steered legislation through Parliament earlier this year that stopped the royal succession from bypassing an eldest daughter. Old rules had seen it passed straight to an eldest son.
…..
British ministers have already made clear that when new laws are eventually agreed, they would be applied retrospectively to the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess should she have been a girl.
This point appears not to have weighed much with Joan Smith in comments she made last night on Newsnight. There she said (see, in turn, 7 minutes 10 seconds and 15 minutes in) that it was weird, given that equality is one of our core values, that for the rest of the 21st century, unless something unexpected happens, there will be no head of state who isn’t a white male, since the position of head of state in this country ‘absolutely excludes women’; and, again, that no woman can be head of state for the next century.
I find this a rather eccentric way of putting things. Let’s say that for the next 50 years there isn’t a hope in hell that the voters of Muggledychurch will elect for their MP anyone but a Conservative. Does this mean that our electoral laws absolutely exclude Labour or any other parliamentary representation for Muggledychurch? Or that no Labour MP can sit in parliament for the said constituency? Evidently not.
Returning to the case of the monarchy, suppose that something unexpected did happen: that the Prince of Cambridge decided, on reaching the age of majority, that he would prefer the life of a Formula One driver to being king, and so ceded his title to the throne to the second-born, who had, as it happened, turned out to be a girl and then woman. This would show that the position of head of state in this country didn’t absolutely exclude women – as the intention is that it no longer should.