"...But the real answer may lie in New Zealand, where an obscure committee of lawyers and civil servants is currently rewriting the laws of succession to the British throne.
It seemed so simple when David Cameron arrived at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting last October with a proposal to update the rules of royal inheritance in line with modern principles of equality. The idea had originally come from Buckingham Palace; that boys should no longer have precedence in the succession over girls. The throne should go to the firstborn child, male or female.
The assembled premiers of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the dozen other Commonwealth 'realms' who acknowledge the Queen as Head of State all cheerfully signed up to the idea, and New Zealand was assigned the job of turning it into practice. A committee was charged with working out the wording that all the other realms -- Britain included -- would incorporate into their new succession statute.
But the committee is still talking, and until they produce their new wording -- and until every one of the sixteen Commonwealth realms has found time in their busy legislative timetables to get the new law onto the statute book -- the status of William and Kate's firstborn will be in limbo...."
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