The Times published the following anecdote from a new book about the Royal Family. You need to read it first, but I wonder what Simon Case said to Angela Rayner?
"All but one aspect of the royal succession had been settled immediately: who would now deputise for the King, giving assent to legislation and representing him officially at state functions, if he were abroad or incapacitated? The Regency Acts of 1937 and 1953 decreed that the sovereign’s spouse and the next four adult royals in line to the throne would serve as counsellors of state: Camilla, now Queen, Prince William, Prince Harry, Prince Andrew and Princess Beatrice.
The press made much of the inclusion of Harry, brooding in Californian exile. But Rayner, who was the opposition’s Commons spokeswoman on questions relating to the constitution, was more exercised by Andrew. His desire to play an active role in public life was undimmed by allegations — which he has always denied — that he sexually abused a 17-year-old, his payment of a £12 million settlement to his accuser or the ongoing taint of his long association with Jeffrey Epstein, one of the world’s most notorious paedophiles.
Rayner thought that an outrage. “She was very actively reaching out to the Palace, the upper echelons of the civil service,” an adviser recalled, “and said she thought this was a huge problem, and that the government needed to address this, and that she would offer cross-party support to make sure it happened. That’s — to be stereotypical — her working-class view. She’s not anti-monarchist, but she doesn’t like a paedo.”
In those discussions, she offered the empathy of a mother who knew what it meant to raise a complicated family. Her message, according to her adviser, was: “I know how difficult it is to be in a big, dysfunctional family where you’ve got the black sheep, they’re really damaging to the rest of you but they’re still in your family.” She nonetheless advocated excluding Andrew from royal duties entirely.
That nuclear option proved too much for the Palace and Downing Street to take. Together with the cabinet secretary, the King’s private secretary Clive Alderton alighted on a diplomatic fix: the list would be expanded to include Princess Anne and Prince Edward, so that neither Harry nor Andrew would ever be required to act on the King’s behalf.
Doing so still required new legislation, setting in train an intricate waltz between royalty, government and parliament. Rayner would be required to deliver a statement on the new settlement on behalf of the opposition. Extending the list to add new counsellors of state, however strongly she agreed with the intended effect, would require her implicit endorsement of the existing cohort. That proved too much. With negotiations ongoing she walked indignantly into her office and told her team: “I’m not going to vote to keep that nonce on … I can’t go back to my constituency and say, yeah, I support that.”
After the deep state learnt of her disquiet, Rayner was summoned for a Zoom meeting with Simon Case, the cabinet secretary and former courtier to Prince William. She made her point with no less force but emerged from the meeting chastened. “After that conversation, she went quiet,” an adviser said. “She never, ever spoke about the royals like that again.”"