A selection of Lord Lexden's letters this year to The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The New Statesman, The Spectator and others. You can read letters from previous years in the menu to the left.
01/12/23 - Ancient robes but no coronet
The Spectator
Sir: It was fortunate that Lord Roberts of Belgravia did not need a coronet along with the venerable robes lent to him by the Ukip peer Lord Willoughby de Broke for the State Opening of Parliament (Notes, 11 November). They would have been ill-matched. The de Broke family’s ancestral coronet was in 1852 ‘placed on a shelf in the family vault on a coffin covered with red velvet studded with brass nails’ containing the mortal remains of the 16th Baron. The 19th Baron was not pleased to ‘have to go to the expense of a new coronet’ for George V’s coronation in 1911, exactly 420 years after the creation of his title.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords, London SW1A
17/11/23 - Labour's education tax
The New Statesman
Melissa Denes (“The 7 per cent question”, 10 November) writes about her visits to “three of England’s most exclusive schools” in the independent sector. She should have chosen a more representative sample. She could have found it among the 650 schools belonging to the Independent Schools Association, of which I am President. These schools account for nearly half the total membership of the Independent Schools Council (ISC). They are virtually unknown outside their own local communities, which they serve faithfully alongside colleagues in the state sector, in some cases as part of organised partnership projects in music, drama, sport, the arts and specialist subject teaching (there are nearly 9,000 of these altogether involving ISC schools).
The hard-working families without large incomes who send children to these mainly small (some with no more than 150 pupils), unpretentious, but highly successful schools do not deserve to be hit by the brutal tax increase that Labour propose. Some will be forced to move their children to schools in the state sector. It cannot be right that they should be uprooted in this way. Has any significant support for Labour’s punitive tax proposal been voiced by state schools?
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords
10/11/23 - Churchill and immifration
The Daily Telegraph
SIR – Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, was unwise to invoke Winston Churchill in support of his view that the European Convention on Human Rights needs “serious reform” to curb immigration (report, October 25).
Churchill had nothing but praise for this common European “charter of human rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law”, as he put it in 1948. He would have approached reform cautiously, after careful private discussion with fellow signatories, instead of making wild public statements.
His own record on immigration policy was inglorious. As prime minister in October 1954 he said that "the problems arising from the immigration of people into the UK required urgent and serious attention”. He did nothing, however.
If a coherent, cross-party legal framework for the control of immigration had been established then, this country would have been spared many of the grave difficulties and social strains that have afflicted it since.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
10/10/23 - Was Lord Rosebery gay?
The Daily Telegraph
SIR-- Lord Alfred Douglas and the Liberal prime minister Lord Rosebery were never lovers, as Madeline Grant implies (Sketch, October 5).
It was Lord Alfred’s elder brother, Viscount Drumlanrig, a “very good looking man with fair hair and blue eyes”, who is believed to have had a sexual relationship with Rosebery while working as his private secretary.
Drumlanrig shot himself in October 1894 at the age of 27. The coroner said it was an accident, but suicide was widely suspected, with the protection of Rosebery’s reputation as the motive. No evidence has ever emerged to settle the issue.
Lord Lexden
06/10/23 - Two future kings and their mistresses
The Times
Sir, Mrs Dudley Ward, mistress of the future Edward VIII, is not the woman in the picture between him and his brother Prince Albert, later George VI (“The unseen portraits of a lovestruck future king”, Oct.2). The woman pictured was the latter’s mistress, Lady Sheila Loughborough, wife of the Earl of Rosslyn’s son, when the photograph was taken in the summer of 1919, two years before the future Queen Elizabeth came on the scene. The two couples spent much time together. A letter from “Buckhouse SW” on June 7, 1919, brought Freda Dudley Ward (“precious darling beloved little Fredie”) the news that “Bertie rang Sheilie up this morning & fixed up for us both to go on to Lankhills tomorrow after we have played golf.” In June 1920, however, Bertie was dumped by his lover.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
20/09/23 - It's time to revise the Conservative leadership election rules
The Daily Telegraph
SIR - Sir Jake Berry has revealed that, as party chairman at the time of Liz Truss’s resignation last October, he was put under pressure “for the membership vote to be scrapped” (report, September 18).
In her resignation statement, Ms Truss said that she and Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, had agreed that her successor should be chosen “in the next week”. The 1922 Committee set aside the rules formally agreed in 1998, and decreed that each candidate in the October 2022 election must have 100 nominees. It was assumed at the time that the aim of this arbitrary revision of the rules was to produce a single candidate from among MPs and avoid a vote among the party membership .
Sir Jake’s recollections confirm that view. It also raises the issue of where final authority over the election process lies. Does it rest with the 1922 Committee, or with the much less well-known Party Board, which is supposed to represent the party as a whole?
This point needs to be clarified, and the rules themselves re-examined to produce a clearly defined set of arrangements covering unexpected contingencies which will be faithfully followed when elections take place.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
01/09/23 - Braverman problems
The New Statesman
Suella Braverman, the only person ever to go back to the same ministerial office a few days after being sacked from it, was bound to be not “an asset to the Prime Minister, but a liability” (Politics, 25 August). A colleague said she had “committed multiple breaches of the ministerial code.” They have never been investigated. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee with its Tory majority said the leaking of restricted material which she admitted should have been punished by a “significant sanction.”
These were criticisms of a former attorney general, the government’s legal adviser who is under a special duty to help uphold the rule of law. With such a record it is unsurprising that she is attracted by the idea of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, which one of her distinguished predecessors, David Maxwell Fyfe, drafted. She says our immigration system is “rigged against the British people.” Tories are supposed to amend and improve the institutions under which we are governed, not to undermine them.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords
26/08/23 - A great bishop freed from injustice
The Spectator
Sir: It was with the assistance of repeated interventions from Charles Moore that the reputation of the great Bishop Bell was rescued from the terrible damage inflicted on it by Archbishop Welby and the current Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner. As he says, the return of George Bell House ‘all but completes the formal restoration of Bell’s reputation’ (Notes, 5 August). In Chichester, Its final and absolute completion should take the form of a service of rejoicing and thanksgiving in the cathedral on 3 October, the date of Bell’s death on which he is commemorated in the Anglican calendar.
Bishop Warner should preach at that service, and proclaim the innocence of his famous predecessor, which he has so far failed to do. In February 2019 he said that ‘Bishop Bell cannot be proven guilty’, a shamefully inadequate statement.
One final task would then remain. When Bell was unjustly condemned in 2015, work stopped on the statue of him that is to erected on the west front of Canterbury Cathedral, where he served as dean from 1924 to 1929. The cathedral announced in 2019 that the statue would be completed. Archbishop Welby said he was ‘delighted’. Yet the resumption of this work in his own cathedral is still awaited.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords, London SW1A
20/08/23 - Sir Keith Park: Battling for Britain
The Daily Telegraph
SIR - There can be no doubt that Sir Keith Park’s role in the Battle of Britain “secures his place in history” (report, August 14).
Churchill, who was with him on September 15 1940 - the decisive day of the battle - wrote in his war memoirs that it was on the 25 Squadrons of Park’s No 11 Group that “our fate largely depended. From the beginning of Dunkirk all the daylight actions in the South of England had been conducted by him, and all his arrangements and apparatus had been brought to the highest perfection”. Lord Tedder, who became chief of the air staff, said: “if any one man won the Battle of Britain, he did.”
It should not be forgotten, however, that he added conspicuously to his achievements as the war progressed. As RAF commander in Malta in 1942, he broke the control of its skies that German and Italian forces had gained, and built up a powerful air base of 40 squadrons which gave vital support to the allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. In southeast Asia where he became allied air commander at the start of 1945, he ensured that General Slim’s “forgotten army” had the provisions it needed as it advanced through Burma. Few made so great a contribution to victory.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
26/07/23 - How Archbishop Laud ended canine profanities
The Daily Telegraph
SIR -- Archbishop Laud would have been furious at the suggestion that he belonged in the Tudor era (Letters, July 24). That was a period in which the Church tended to adopt a broad, tolerant approach.
Laud was the architect of the dogmatic high Anglicanism of Charles 1’s reign. Many churches in the 1620s had mere communion tables in their naves, where on weekdays churchwardens did their accounts and dogs relieved themselves. Laud decreed that every church should have an altar at its east end with rails around it “neare one yard in height, so thick with pillars that dogs may not get in”, creating “an uniformity in this respect in every church.”
As Hugh Trevor-Roper put it in his marvellous life of Laud, “railed off in the east end, the table was free from those profanities to which it was otherwise sometimes subjected.”
Lord Lexden
London SW1
10/06/23 - Double coronations
The Times
Sir, For centuries no one would have agreed that “the monarch cannot be crowned twice” (leading article, Jul 6). It happened in medieval times. Richard Coeur de Lion had a second coronation in 1194 on his return from the Crusades. Henry VI was crowned for a second time as king of France.
Stuart monarchs had coronations in both Scotland and Westminster Abbey after the Union of the crowns in 1603. The last was Charles II who was crowned during the civil wars in a Presbyterian ceremony at Scone in 1651, ten years before his Westminster coronation after the Restoration. The Union might today have been stronger if double coronations had continued.
Lord Lexden
House of Lords
26/06/23 - How can public confidence in the House of Lords be increased?
The Daily Telegraph
SIR – It is good news that a respected Commons select committee is to conduct an inquiry into the Lords appointment system (report, June 21).
The prime minister of the day has always had unfettered control over it. That must change if public confidence, gravely damaged by Boris Johnson, is to be restored. We need a statutory body that can stop wholly unsuitable people being given peerages by an irresponsible premier. There is a widespread view that the House of Lords is too big, though it was larger in the 1990s (with over 1,200 hereditary and life members in all) than now.
The Upper House itself has approved a plan to get the total down to 600. Mr Johnson ignored it. The Commons should commend it strongly to Rishi Sunak. There may well be a case for going further, particularly if a large creation of new peers on a change of government is to be avoided. The fundamental issue is whether members of the Upper House should in future be required to turn up and do serious work in it. That has never been the case at any time in our history. Should such a requirement be introduced?
Lord Lexden
London SW1
26/06/23 - How can public confidence in the House of Lords be increased?
The Spectator
Sir, I suspect that few members of the Lords will share Charles Moore’s regret that Nadine Dorries will not be joining the House (The Spectator’s Notes, 17 June). Is it not natural and right to feel a preference for new colleagues who command wide respect? HOLAC, on which Lord Moore once served, should be empowered to comment on the suitability of those nominated for peerages, and not just on their propriety as at present. There is now sharper public scrutiny than ever before of the quality of those who benefit from prime ministerial patronage. Boris Johnson has ensured that. Unless public confidence in the appointments process is strengthened, the Lords will not enjoy the respect to which the success of its work as a revising chamber entitles it.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords, London SW1
17/06/23 - Johnson: unfit to be a Privy Counsellor
The Times
Sir, In June 1963 Jack Profumo was removed from the privy council for giving a false statement to parliament. Exactly sixty years later Boris Johnson should suffer the same penalty, which would stop him calling himself right honourable (which he plainly is not). If some of the many minions he put on the privy council chose to resign in protest, it would not matter in the least. This ancient institution now has over 750 members, some 400 more than sixty years ago. It could do with slimming, like the House of Lords.
Yours faithfully
Lord Lexden
Conservative Party historian
08/06/23 - Politics and princes
The Times
Sir, Members of the royal family have always watched their tongues when speaking publicly about politics in modern times (“Duke launches political attack”, Jun 7). One has to go to the archives to find out what they really thought. George V’s diary abounds with withering criticisms of Lloyd George and his contempt for constitutional conventions in the early 1920s. But not a word was breathed in public. Edward VIII was felt to have strained the customary discretion almost to breaking point when he declared famously on a visit to Wales in 1936 that “something must be done” about high unemployment. Politicians were glad when he went swiftly into exile. It is perhaps a pity that, unlike the Duke of Windsor, Prince Harry is able to return from his exile to go further than any other royal in making political comments publicly.
Lord Lexden
Conservative Party historian
03/06/23 - A neglected hero of the Second World War
The Daily Telegraph
SIR - It is good to read praise for Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (Letter, June 1), who oversaw the Dunkirk evacuation and masterminded all the major Allied seaborne invasions of Nazi-occupied land during the Second World War.
His immense but neglected contribution to victory, largely ignored by Churchill in his influential history of the conflict, was one of the principal themes of a debate in the Lords on June 4 2019, marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day. His death in a plane crash on January 2 1945 was described by Tommy Lascelles, George VI’s private secretary, in his diary as “a great loss to the Navy, and to the world. I liked him particularly.”
Like many heroes, Ramsay was modest about his achievements, writing to his wife after D-Day that the praise he received “only serves to remind one of the many people on whom success depended quite as much if not more than on myself.”
There is a statue of him in Dover. There ought to be another outside Southwick House in Portsmouth, where he planned the greatest armada in modern history and gave the order for its departure. He should also be commemorated in Whitehall like other leading Allied commanders, with whom he belongs.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
15/05/23 - Churchill, human rights and immigration
The Daily Telegraph
SIR -- Chris Skidmore, the former energy minister, claims that the Illegal Migration Bill betrays principles for which Churchill stood (“Churchill ‘would be turning in his grave’ over migrant Bill”, report, 12 May). He thinks the great man would been a champion of the European Court of Human Rights in its current form.
Churchill spoke just twice about the case for a European court. On February 26 1948 he commended the idea because the countries of Europe needed to find a way of submitting disagreements between them “to the test of impartial justice”. On July 23 1951 he said again that a European court should “adjust disputes”. He did not envisage a body with wide powers over a large array of rights.
As for immigration, Churchill said at a cabinet meeting in 1954 that “public opinion in the United Kingdom won’t tolerate it once it gets beyond certain limits.” It is likely that he would have supported legislation more far-reaching in its aims than the current Bill to stop small boats crossing the Channel.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
28/04/23 - Lords family business
The Daily Telegraph
SIR - A number of fathers- and sons-in-law were in the Lords together in the days when the House was an entirely hereditary body (Letters, April 24). In the 1880s, the 1st Duke of Abercorn had no fewer than six sons-in-law with him on the Tory red benches.
Other peers linked by marriage were in government at the same time. The Ist Earl of Durham was Lord Privy Seal in the Cabinet of his father-in law, the 2nd Earl Grey, who passed the 1832 Reform Bill. The 2nd Earl of Selborne served his father-in-law, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, as First Lord of the Admiralty after 1900. Accusations of nepotism did not trouble them.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
09/04/2023 - Queen Camilla's footnote
The Times
Sir, Queen Camilla has contributed an interesting footnote to history. She is the first person to have been officially styled Queen Consort in modern times, including in the state prayers of the Church of England, breaking a custom observed since the Reformation. Her immediate predecessors repudiated any suggestion that they should be styled Queen Consort, none more forcibly than Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, who declared on his accession in 1901, that “she will be Queen or nothing.” Thankfully, a long tradition now been fully restored (“It’s Queen Camilla from now on, Palace decrees”, Apr 5), anticipated months ago by The Times.
Lord Lexden
House of Lords
17/03/23 - Harold Macmillan and his wife's lover
The Daily Telegraph
SIR – Harold Macmillan’s award of a peerage to Bob Boothby in 1958 did not indicate a “contempt for the honours system“ on Macmillan’s part (Letters, 10 March). He had long since come to accept his wife’s relationship with Boothby, and the pleasure that the title would give her was one factor in his decision. He was also glad to remove an increasingly unreliable, maverick MP from the Commons.
It was what Boothby himself wanted. He asked Macmillan for a peerage. In reply the prime minister told him to “enjoy the platform that the other House will give you. It will enable you to put forward your contributions in a much better atmosphere than the House of Commons now has.”
Lord Lexden
London SW1
23/01/23 - Who introduced old age pensions?
The Daily Telegraph
SIR -- Charles Moore (Notebook, February 21) is mistaken in stating that Lloyd George invented old age pensions in 1909 .
Herbert Asquith, as chancellor of the exchequer, devised them in 1907, and, after becoming prime minister the following year, presented the budget that introduced them. Lloyd George, as the new chancellor, attended to the details and stole the credit. Lord Rosebery, a former Liberal prime minister, was filled with foreboding, believing that the scheme would be “so prodigal of expenditure as likely to undermine the whole fabric of the Empire.”
Lord Lexden
London SW1
13/01/23 - Portrait of Boris Johnson at the Carlton Club 'a great mistake'
The Daily Telegraph
SIR - It is a great mistake to install a portrait of Boris Johnson in the Carlton Club (report, 12 January).
He is the first Tory prime minister ever to have been driven from office by scandal and personal misconduct. He is the first to be investigated by a Commons select committee to establish whether he misled the House, an issue of great gravity. At the very least, the Carlton should have waited until the publication of the select committee’s report.
Portraits of all Tory prime ministers since the Duke of Wellington, the club’s founding father, adorn its walls. In view of the discredit that he brought on the highest political office, Mr Johnson should have been not have been included among them at this time.
Lord Lexden
Co-author, The Carlton Club 1832-2007 (2007)
London SW1
