Ephraim Hardcastle
ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury Justin Welby offers ‘remorse’ for the violence suffered by Roman Catholics during the Reformation 500 years ago – a pointless gesture, says RC convert Ann Widdecombe. But royal watchers wonder if it’ll prompt Prince Charles to ask Welby’s advice about amending the Accession Declaration. As a new monarch, he’ll be obliged to say: ‘I do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God profess, testify and declare that I am a faithful Protestant, and that I will, according to the true enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the Throne of my Realm, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of my powers according to law.’ The text was altered in 1910 (for George V) from being virulently anti-Catholic to being pro-Protestant. Might a new toning-down be on the cards?
FORMER prime minister David Cameron quit the gentleman’s club White’s in 2008, supposedly over its ‘no women members’ policy, of which he’d been aware when he joined. It’s said he now wants to rejoin, usually a formality for an ex-member. However, a source says the club is ‘sound’ on Brexit – ie, many members want to quit the EU. Surely they won’t try to ‘blackball’ Remainer-in-chief Dave!
THIS year’s London Marathon will support the mental health charity Heads Together, led by Princes William and Harry as well as the Duchess of Cambridge. Will any of them run the 26-mile course? Harry has said he’s trying to fix a running slot, and William and Kate are up for it too. Another possibility: Fit friends such as Pippa Middleton, pictured in action, and Sophie, Countess of Wessex could run in their place.
FORMER justice secretary Michael Gove recalls in The Spectator how prominent Remain supporters delighted in Barack Obama’s threat that Britain would be at the ‘back of the queue’ for future trade deals if we left the EU, adding: ‘I don’t know what the precise term is for someone who actively wants their country to be punished for asserting its own autonomy…’ Traitor?
AS President Donald J Trump is inaugurated, some wonder why the outgoing Barack Obama supported 2008 rival Hillary Clinton instead of backing vice-president Joe Biden last year? Friends say Biden thinks Obama ‘had grown fond of the bright mark he could leave on history by passing the baton from first black president to the first female president’. Popular Biden might have done better than distrusted Hillary.
HAVING quit as a Labour MP and somehow become the BBC’s £295,000 director of radio, James Purnell, 46, hopes to win a vacant management seat on the corporation’s new unitary board. It’s between him and director of content Charlotte Moore, 49. ‘She has none of his political baggage,’ says my source. Meaning? ‘In 2006, Purnell held a Labour fundraiser at which Alastair Campbell and Cherie Blair autographed a copy of the Hutton Report into the death of Dr David Kelly, raising £400.’ Dr Kelly killed himself after being identified as the source of the BBC report that Labour ‘sexed up’ the Iraq dossier to justify war.