Labour sees surge in anti-Monarchy members as new MP joins calls to oust King | Politics | News

A newly elected MP joined with anti-monarchy campaigners yesterday to demand an end to Britain’s 1000-year-old historic institution.

Neil Duncan-Jordan, elected as Poole’s MP in July, voiced anger at having to pledge an oath of allegiance to the King when he entered Parliament, and backed calls for wider changes including a cut to the royal family’s funding.

The event by Labour for a Republic came amid rising anti-monarchy sentiment in the Labour Party, with the group’s chairman delightedly claiming they are now awash with more funding and members than ever before.

The rally saw the group launch a new manifesto with four demands beyond ending the monarchy, including removing the royal family’s exemption from the equality act, making the royal subject to the Freedom of Information Act, cutting their funding and changing the oath of allegiance for MPs.

Mr Duncan Jordan rallied: “As a brand new MP I was sort of vaguely aware of what I was needing to do and I was told I would have to make either an oath or swear depending on whether you are religious or not.”

“And I wrote to [fellow republic campaigner] after I wrote to the procedure office and I said ‘I don’t really want to either of these two things, can I do something else?’

“As a brand new MP I thought that was a reasonable honest request. They wrote back to me and said ‘no, you can’t, you can’t change from one of these two things’.

“[Fellow campaigner] then wrote to me and said that even people who had tried in the past to get out of saying it, Hansard always recorded that they had actually done so. So even if you try to make a process or a statement before you made the oath, Hansard doesn’t record, it recorded that you made the oath.”

He also made the incendiary argument that tradition “is peer pressure from dead people”, dismissing arguments made by those in favour of the monarchy.

He added: “When you talk about the workers who work in the palaces not being able to take up cases of discrimination whether it be on their race or their gender, that is outrageous that we can allow that to go on, even if the monarchy stays.”

Chairman of the group Nick Wall boasted that membership of the organisation has grown “significantly” in recent months, to the point that for the first time ever they were able to afford an official stand at Labour conference.

He said they’ve received “fabulous support” for the campaign which says it wants “democracy”.

The event was also endorsed by the former Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford, who was meant to attend in person, but who sent a message of encouragement to the movement and issued his “best wishes for a successful fringe meeting”.

Mr Duncan-Jordan’s anti-monarchy speech came just months after fellow Labour MP Clive Lewis sparked fury by launching a protest in the Commons ahead of his oath of allegiance.

Mr Lewis said ahead of his declaration of loyalty: “I take this oath under protest and in the hope that one day my fellow citizens will democratically decide to live in a republic.”

He was later hauled back to the Commons for a second time, having forgotten to address his oath of loyalty to King Charles’ heirs and successors too.

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