Ladies turned lords

The Earl of Balfour has four daughters, which means none of his children can inherit the title. This is quite wrong, he thinks, and he has thought up a wheeze to redress the injustice. Now that the eldest child of the heir to the throne, male or female, will in future become monarch, thanks to the Succession to the Crown Act 2013, the system of male primogeniture in the peerage sticks out like an even sorer thumb. Why not use a change of the law announced by the Government, by which people would be able to choose whether to be men or women merely by declaring their gender? Then Lady Willa, the Earl’s eldest child, could, if she wished, declare herself male and bag the title, just like that. It may sound like one of AP Herbert’s misleading cases, but a piece of sharp satire could prove the cutting edge of change.