Politicians’ tribute to Duke with rousing tales
Parliament resounded with laughter as anecdotes were shared by MPS to celebrate a ‘life well lived’
TOLD that Ghana’s parliament had only 200 MPS, the Duke of Edinburgh mused: “That’s about the right number. We have 650 of them and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”
Regardless of what he thought of them, the current crop of MPS cut short their Easter holiday to pay their respects, sharing with delight personal memories of the times he had pricked the pomposity of politicians.
It was very much a celebration of what was described as “a life well lived”, rather than a sombre moment of remembrance, and the Duke would surely have approved of the laughter in Parliament that stories of him prompted.
Theresa May recalled one of her visits to Balmoral as prime minister, during which the Duke “very kindly” suggested a walking route to her and her husband Philip, both keen hikers.
“We were very grateful for this suggestion and we set off,” Mrs May told the House of Commons. “When we got back to the castle – several hours later – we were told that Prince Philip did indeed enjoy this walk, but he normally drove round it in a car. I’m not sure if it was a test and, if it was, if we passed it.
“But I also remember on my last visit when I went to say my farewell and initially we couldn’t find Prince Philip, and eventually I caught up with him, he was watching the cricket. How I would have loved to have stayed watching the cricket with him.”
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory Party leader, recalled meeting the Duke together with Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, who at the time in a previous role had been put in charge of nuclear submarines but admitted to the Duke: “I don’t know anything at all about them, Your Royal Highness.”
The Duke bellowed with laughter and said: “How typical of politicians – in charge of something and not a single clue about it.”
Hour after hour, MPS lined up to recall with affection and respect a man who “made this country a better place”, in the words of the Prime Minister.
Some experienced his famous sense of humour long before they entered politics. Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, received his gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award from the man himself, and told him he had learnt to drive as part of it. “Four horses or six?” the Duke mischievously inquired.
Sir Ed also recalled how one of his predecessors, Sir Nick Clegg, attended a state banquet for the King of Spain and told the Duke he was there not in his own right, but as the plus-one of his high-flying Spanish wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez. “I know the feeling!” the Duke told him.
Ian Blackford, the SNP’S Westminster leader, in kilt and black tie, remarked there was “no shortage of material” when it came to remembering the Duke’s life.
In common with his many Scottish friends, the Duke “wasn’t a
‘[The Duke was] without doubt the father of the nation... impossible to replace’
man for drizzling honey on his words”, said Mr Blackford, and one particular piece of advice was particularly pertinent to the occasion.
When it came to the length of a speech the Duke advised that: “What the backside cannot endure, the brain cannot absorb.” And so Mr Blackford said he would keep his speech short, though with more than 130 MPS speaking in the debate, it went on well into the evening.
For Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, the Duke was “without doubt the father of the nation... impossible to replace”, a man who “for most of us has always been there, providing this nation with a reassuring presence”.
The House of Lords held its own day of tributes to the Duke, though as Lord West of Spithead, the former head of the Royal Navy, admitted, the Duke would surely have winced at the endless tributes being paid to him. “He despised flattery and flimflam,” said Lord West. “He enjoyed the ebullient repartee of the wardroom.
“I can hear Prince Philip in my ear saying ‘West. It fills me with despair that I’ll have to listen to another eulogy from you’.” He told the chamber that the Duke’s no-nonsense approach “did not mean he didn’t feel the pain and poignancy of wartime and other losses. He just came from a generation that didn’t emote madly over them”.
Back in the Commons, Boris Johnson also noted that the Duke might have been “embarrassed or even exasperated” at Parliament spending an entire day paying tribute to him, but promised that Parliament and the country would want to honour him with a permanent memorial.
Whether or not that might be a new Royal Yacht Britannia is yet to be determined, but Tory MP Sir Roger Gale said he could think of “no finer tribute” than building a replacement for the ship retired in 1997 and naming it after him.
Mr Johnson’s personal memories of the Duke included barbecues at Balmoral, cooked “on a large metal contraption that all prime ministers must have goggled at for decades, complete with rotisserie and compartments for the sauces” that was, like so many other things “a product of his own invention and creation”.
Mr Johnson said it was fitting that on Saturday the Duke’s coffin will be carried on a Land Rover hearse, which Prince Philip had designed himself, “because that vehicle’s unique and idiosyncratic silhouette reminds the world that he was above all a practical man, who could take something very traditional – whether a machine or indeed a great national institution – and find a way by his own ingenuity to improve it, to adapt it”.
That inventiveness helped save his comrades during the Second World War when he improvised a floating decoy to draw enemy fire away from HMS Wallace, “complete with fires to make it look like a stricken vessel”, so that the Wallace was able to slip away in the darkness and the enemy attacked the decoy.
With a nod to the Duke’s hobby of carriage driving, Mr Johnson admitted “he occasionally drove a coach and horses through the finer points of diplomatic protocol”, telling a British student in Papua New Guinea he was lucky not to be eaten, that the people of the Cayman Islands were descended from pirates, “and that he would like to go to Russia except that, as he put it, ‘the bastards murdered half my family’”. But, said Mr Johnson: “The world did not hold it against him. On the contrary, they overwhelmingly understood that he was trying to break the ice, to get things moving, to get people laughing and forget their nerves.”
While the Duke was not, as the Queen once said, a man who received praise well, he would surely have allowed himself a contented smile at the number of MPS whose characters had been built, at least in part, by taking part in his eponymous awards scheme.
They included Sir Keir Starmer, who recalled his childhood pursuit of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards, starting when he was 14.
He volunteered at a local mental health hospital, which made a deep impression on him, and for his expedition “wandered around Dartmoor in a small team, with just a compass and a map in the pouring rain, trying to find our way... if that doesn’t prepare you for coming into politics, nothing will”.
The Duke’s lifetime of public service deserved nothing less than a Gold Award from the British people, he said. It had been forged from his “ceaseless optimism about the country Britain can be, and what the British people can achieve”.