Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a weekly podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tollust, and to mark the coronation of King Charles, we've got a special episode

looking at the complex and evolving role of the monarchy in our politics.

With me to discuss the relationship between the two palaces, Buckingham and Westminster,

I'm delighted to say we've got Dr Michelle Clement Clement, research and residence at Nobethan Downing Street, and a lecturer at King's College London. Dr. Robin Eagles from the History of Parliament Research Project, as well as Dr Bob Morris from the UCL Constitution Unit, and Chris Hopkins, a former Tory MP, who served as Vice Chamberlain of Her Majesty's household in the Government WIPPS office.

So I'll start by talking, obviously, we're on Thursday now, we've got the coronation

in a couple of days.

The kind of relationship between Parliament and politics, I suppose, has evolved massively

over the years.

We had the King and the Queen Consort came to reception in Westminsterstall Hall.

It's kind of huge intrigue for a lot of those

MPs, certainly who haven't got that invite to the coronation itself on Saturday. It was kind of a

bookended, I suppose, the kind of the process that began, obviously, with the Queen's death and the funeral

and all, all kind of the involvement that Westminsterstall Hall had in now. So let's start with you, Robin. What was the role of MPs in

previous coronations? Well, one of the key roles they played was in bearing the canopy. So we

won't have that this time, of course, but normally monarchs processed under this rather

wonderful gold canopy held up by eight staves, so two at each corners and two along. And that

fell broadly to MPs to fulfil the

role. So certainly through the reigns of James II, William and Mary, you see key MPs undertaking

that role. You've also got MPs for particular port towns. This was thought to be tremendously

significant. And so they had a particular role in the coronation. So the MP for Dover

and other significant port towns would actually have a role in the coronation. So it went beyond the sort

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