In the end, months of conspiracy theories were silenced by a two-minute video.

After a strict media embargo, on Friday at 6pm, Kensington Palace released the statement recorded personally by Catherine, Princess of Wales.

In it, she revealed that, following her abdominal surgery in January, doctors had discovered cancer, and she was now being treated with preventative chemotherapy. She explained how she had sought to share this news appropriately with her young children, reassured the public that she was growing stronger, and finished with a moving message of hope to others undergoing treatment for the disease.

It would once have been unthinkable for members of the Royal Family to share details of their medical conditions, and yet, this seemed like the least extraordinary aspect of the video.

The closest comparison is perhaps 1997, following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, when public and media disquiet effectively forced the Queen to address the nation.

Commentators have been divided on whether Kensington Palace was similarly forced into the statement as a result of mounting public pressure or if Kate would always have explained the details of her condition and was choosing a moment (the beginning of her children’s Easter holidays) that suited her.

Either way, the intense public and media pressure was undeniable. That tells its own story.

In 1997, the ‘public’ could only make its views known through opinion polls, mass gatherings, direct interventions (such as vox pops or letters) and, ultimately, through its arbiters in the press. Social media has upended that framework.

Newspapers now follow the internet’s lead. For weeks, conspiracy theories around Kate's absence from public life dominated the conversation on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), and ranged from light-hearted nonsense to poisonous defamation.

In two clear ways, that leaked into the mainstream ecosystem.

The first surrounded the Mother’s Day photograph on 10 March, presumably released by Kensington Palace to reassure people that Kate was happy and well, surrounded by her family. UK media outlets published the image as issued and only began discussing the edits made to it after analyses began to trend on social media.

That was followed by ‘kill notices’ issued by multiple international press agencies, effectively declaring the photograph unfit to be used – a damaging rebuke to Kensington Palace and its credibility. That, in turn, led to a highly unusual tweet signed by Kate herself, in which she apologised and claimed responsibility for editing the picture as an "amateur photographer".

The second involved another type of photography: an amateur video at a Windsor farm store, purportedly showing Prince William and Kate in good spirits carrying shopping. Crucially, this video was published by the Sun – providing a key contrast with an earlier paparazzo photograph of Kate and her mother Carole Middleton in a car, which was only published abroad.

Some commentators questioned whether Kensington Palace had tacitly approved the video’s publication. Even more significantly, however, some mainstream journalists – notably Rachel Johnson in the Evening Standard – questioned or openly doubted whether the woman was really Kate at all. This might, once again, have demonstrated an example of social media conspiracy spilling into the mainstream – or, more troubling for Kensington Palace, a new dent in the armour of deference which still pertains to William and Kate in a manner that long ago escaped Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

This notion of deference is important.

In some ways things, have not significantly changed since 1936 when American newspapers openly discussed King Edward’s relationship with Wallis Simpson and the British media remained entirely silent.

Foreign media has aired theories about Kate that would not have been touched here. There still exists in Britain a culture either of widely-known open secrets or of journalists hoarding information about the Royal Family – and either dropping small public breadcrumbs or remaining entirely silent.

In some ways, that is legitimate: members of the Royal Family are human beings with the right to a private life. But they are also public figures with, crucially, public and constitutional roles.

This feeds into the most fundamental tension in our modern monarchy: the codependence of members of the Royal Family and the royal press pack.

William and Kate are considered positive assets by both the tabloid media and the monarchy itself – the press’ treatment of them is a far cry from the hounding of both William’s parents in the 1990s. That is a product of multiple factors: a change in tabloid and paparazzi culture, the fact William and Kate have not yet been publicly linked to a tabloid-friendly scandal, and because the couple cooperates.

The media knows that the Royal Family sells newspapers and seeks access. The Royal Family knows that the media sustains both public support for the monarchy and people’s appetite for information about it, and seeks positive coverage. Underlying both anxious institutions is the British public, on whose patronage both depend.

Ordinary people were concerned about Kate’s welfare, but they also wanted information as they would about any other high-profile celebrity. Kate, in turn, was entitled to privacy as an ordinary human being, but will also one day be Queen. Such is the woozy confluence of soap opera and constitution. These people function both as fodder for national entertainment and as instruments of the state.

During the past three months, the media has performed a strange dance, balancing a mostly justifiable interest in a public figure with a mostly unjustifiable interest in a private one – sometimes, it appears, with the cooperation of Kensington Palace, and sometimes, it appears, without.

The media wanted to push, but not too hard. The Palace attempted to manage the coverage and, in the end, through Kate’s video, resolved to produce its own. This appears to have been a power struggle that ended in stalemate.

Once this story dies down, the most important soul-searching will probably take place not in Fleet Street but Kensington Palace. Insofar as the monarchy is a political institution, it relies on trust, both from the media and public. Credibility is not easily replaced and the photograph incident will have damaged faith in its communications machine. Now Kate has revealed her diagnosis, more questions arise about why the princess was thrown into the centre of a PR storm while receiving treatment for cancer.

And yet perhaps the greatest question centres on Kate herself.

The monarchy is a barer institution than a few years ago, and a weaker one. While the King and Queen are liked and respected, they do not attract either the deference of the late Elizabeth II or the rock-star appeal of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Only William and Kate come close to embodying both the stability and glamour that the institution needs – and Kate above all. She is the most popular member of the family, and so indispensable that the modern monarchy can scarcely be imagined without her.

That, in turn, reflects the vulnerability of the institution: it can only ever be as strong as its cast. It cannot, constitutionally, just disappear – but it can fade into irrelevance or embarrassment. Its sustainability, in current form, can no longer be guaranteed.

Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron – or a more controversial right-wing figure – could oust Rishi Sunak and become prime minister without having to win a single vote, analysis by the House of Lords Library suggests.

The research for former Green Party Leader Baroness Natalie Bennett, seen by Byline Times, comes as Sunak’s approval ratings hit a record low this week. 

While the Conservative Party languishes in the polls, Sunak’s own personal approval rating has plunged to -54%.

The Ipsos Mori poll, released on Monday, shows that support for the Conservatives has dropped to its lowest point since its records began in the 1970s, with only 20% of UK voters currently backing the party.

The 27-point lead for Keir Starmer's Labour Party may well spark murmurings of revolt among Conservative MPs and members, desperate to claw back some support and avoid electoral oblivion later this year.  

The poll suggests the Conservatives could win just a few dozen seats in the next general election – putting them behind the Scottish National Party or Liberal Democrats after an election, and hundreds of seats behind Labour. 

It would mark a catastrophic cut on the 351 seats from its 2019 victory achieved under Boris Johnson. The Conservative right has long suggested ‘bringing back Boris’, though at this stage anyone could be seen by voters as preferable than the current Prime Minister.

On Monday, the Daily Mail reported a confidential gathering of Conservative MPs was held in Parliament last week, where they were presented with the profile of anonymous alternative party leader figures, with one dubbed 'Candidate X' portrayed as the potential saviour for the party in the upcoming election.

Attendees were reportedly told that the profile matched one of the candidates vying to succeed Sunak as leader of the Conservative Party.

This briefing included findings from a survey conducted by Whitestone Insight involving 13,500 voters. Polling based on anonymous untested profiles are very different to real people with skeletons in the closet who have faced opposition attacks. 

However, it does show that some in the party’s upper-echelons are now willing to consider another leadership change before the election.

Former Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost – a net zero critic and so-called climate sceptic – fits the bill for the supposed ‘most popular’ mystery candidate. 

The i newspaper also reported last month that some Conservative grandees were discussing replacing Sunak with Cameron, the former Prime Minister who led the remain campaign into defeat during the 2016 EU Referendum. 

It is often assumed that Cameron – or any other public figure – would have to run for a parliamentary seat in order to be appointed to the top job. But the new Lords library analysis for Baroness Bennett suggests that this is merely a convention, which could be overridden without any change of law. 

Bennett said that the finding highlights the “creaking failure that is the antiquated, undemocratic constitution”.

In his study 'Choosing a Prime Minister’, constitution expert Professor Rodney Brazier highlights that the monarch can appoint anyone as prime minister under the royal prerogative, a power vested in the monarch since at least 1189, which remains unaltered by Parliament. 

There are no formal rules for appointment and no formal legal limits on who can be appointed prime minister.

The title 'Prime minister’ itself wasn't officially used until the late 19th Century; while the role, including its powers and duties, lacks a legal definition – even after the Minister of the Crown Act 1937, which first referenced the position to allow for an enhanced salary.

The roles of the prime minister and cabinet are primarily governed by convention rather than law, as outlined in the official Cabinet Manual. This includes the prime minister being the head of the government due to their ability to command confidence from the House of Commons and, by extension, the electorate. In theory, the sovereign can appoint whoever they wish to this role – though it would trigger a constitutional crisis and undoubtedly legal challenges. 

Although prime ministers largely came from the House of Lords until the 20th Century, modern convention dictates that they should be a member of the House of Commons. The practice was solidified by instances like Sir Alec Douglas-Home renouncing his peerage in 1963 to serve as Conservative Prime Minister from the Commons.

Despite the unlikelihood of a prime minister serving from the House of Lords in contemporary times, analysis in 2023 by Dr Conor Farrington in Political Quarterly suggested that, constitutionally, nothing prevents that from occurring. 

Researchers for the House of Lords Library told Bennett: “It does not appear that, beyond the convention, there is any formal mechanism preventing a member of the House of Lords from becoming prime minister.”  

She told Byline Times: “That the UK’s politics is broken is obvious. It is easy to blame individuals for that, and I do, but at the heart is a broken system, an uncodified constitution assembled by centuries of historical accident, profoundly undemocratic, and incapable, as the past decade has shown so clearly, of delivering stable, secure government.

“You would think that a second Cameron prime ministership would be an impossibility, but it clearly is not, either legally or practically. The Tories, from the shortest prime ministership to the most disastrous referendum, have set new constitutional ‘standards’, so it is impossible to rule them out, returning to 1902, the last time a prime minister was in the Lords.”

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Ministers have been accused of politicising the UK’s independent elections watchdog, as Conservative MPs pushed through a Government-written strategy for the Electoral Commission for the first time in its history. 

This afternoon the Government used its majority to pass a new ‘Strategy and Policy statement’ meant to guide the work and priorities of the UK elections body.

An example of the shift in emphasis might be seen in the fact the new Government-written strategy mentions “fraud” eleven times, but “donations” (e.g. to political parties) just twice. The Electoral Commission’s primary enforcement powers are over breaches of donations rules - for example if a party wrongly accepts a donation from a foreign source.  

Critics of the Government’s “power grab” point out that voter fraud - for example, through the kind of impersonation mandatory photo ID is meant to prevent - is a vanishingly rare occurrence in the UK. Instead, issues surrounding electoral malpractice by candidates and parties, and breaches of political donations rules are more common. 

Local Government minister Simon Hoare opened the Commons debate by downplaying concerns about the government's new strategy for the Electoral Commission, insisting it does not undermine the Commission's independence. 

He claimed the new policy statement, laid before the House on 14th December, is an “advisory” document, without introducing new governmental powers or reporting duties for the Commission.

But Labour MP Clive Betts, the chair of the Commons constitutional affairs committee , expressed his “disbelief” at the claims that the new strategy would not significantly impact the EC’s work - asking what the point of the new strategy was if the Commission isn't required to act on it.

Former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who sits on the Speaker’s Committee which oversees the Commission, raised concerns about the repeated use of the word "should" in the Government document. “If the Commission then ignores that word ‘should’ - what then happens? There’s an implied threat around a ‘should’,” McDonnell told the Commons. 

In comments unlikely to settle nerves, minister Hoare reiterated that the new strategy is not a "revolutionary power grab" but an “augmentation”. He described it as “benign”, aiming to support, not direct, the Commission.

But several MPs noted that future governments may not be so “benign” in their use of these new Government powers over the watchdog. 

Labour backbencher Cat Smith MP, who sits on the Speaker’s Committee, said: “Voters rely on the EC to safeguard democracy itself - not to allow one party to set all the rules. 

“While one party might be in government today, there will have to be an election. Another party could write the next statement…

“The structures we make should be able to withstand changes of party. This structure comes straight out of a Republican party playbook, politicising the Electoral Commission.” 

Fellow Labour left-winger Dawn Butler labelled the strategy a hangover from Boris Johnson's tenure, aimed at undermining the Commission's independence when it ruled against Conservative party or Brexiteer figures. 

Butler noted that the EC itself wrote to MPs this week stressing that the independence of the body is crucial to maintaining confidence in the democratic system. “If they’re saying that, and the Speaker’s Committee is [then the changes] don’t make any sense.

“This is about fulfilling the Government’s priorities. By definition that means it can’t be independent. If a foreign Government was wielding this much power over its elections, there would be calls to send in independent advisers to ensure their elections were being held democratically.

“Do we have corruption? Yes, we do. This is an example of that,” Butler added. 

Clive Betts slammed the new strategy for potentially skewing the Commission's priorities - focusing on registering overseas voters - while neglecting the nine million people missing from the electoral register in the UK.

The Scottish National Party’s Patrick Grady was outspoken in branding the move politically motivated in anticipation of difficult elections for the Conservatives this year. 

Labour's shadow democracy minister, Florence Eshalomi MP, accused the government of railroading the statement through parliament.

Former constitution minister, Tory Chloe Smith noted that 2024 is a significant year for elections - emphasising the role of AI and the necessity for the Electoral Commission to address potential misinformation and election integrity.

However, the Government’s strategy includes not one mention of artificial intelligence, deepfakes or misinformation – issues which could have a significant impact on this year’s votes. 

In closing, Minister Hoare reaffirmed the Commission's independence as "absolutely sacrosanct”. 

But in words that may come back to bite him, he added the Government strategy was  “iterative and organic – and of course, it can be refreshed to deal with issues as they arise…I use the word ‘as’ not ‘if’”.

It was a recognition that the Conservatives – and future Governments - will be at liberty to change the Electoral Commission's strategy however and whenever they wish. 

The new EC strategy passed on party lines by 273 votes to the opposition’s 190. There were no Conservative rebels. 

Lib Dem peer Lord Chris Rennard attempted to launch a 'fatal motion' against the changes in the Lords, but Labour did not get behind the plan. Peers will vote on a non-binding 'motion of regret' over the plans on Tuesday.

Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

January 4, 2024 Samuel Moyn, law prof and historian, on the political and legal dubiousness of excluding Trump from the presidential ballot (article here) • labor journalist Alex Press on the year in labor (articles on that topic here and here)