Boris Johnson leads in trotting out the tropes about a polymath with a sense of service and selflessness
With only a few standard clips – “he leaves a huge void”, “he just slipped away” – on offer from members of the family who actually knew the Duke of Edinburgh, nearly all the eulogies elsewhere in the media have come from professional royal-watchers who have quickly mugged up on HRH’s Wikipedia page. Prince Philip would have been gratified that his real friends had kept their silence and astonished by the number of strangers who claimed to have some insight into his personality.
MPs hate to feel excluded from any national event and so, naturally enough, the House of Commons was recalled a day early from recess to allow the politicians to have their say. Even when they hadn’t really got anything to say. Especially when they really hadn’t got anything to say. So as ever on these occasions, the interest was less in what MPs had to say about the duke and more in what their speeches said about themselves.
