by Brian CathcartThe Guardian has corrected a leading article it published on 7 May under the merry title: ‘Press regulation – you couldn’t make it up’. The article was a commentary to accompany the paper’s front-page expose that day of Sir Christopher Geidt, the Queen’s private secretary, who was revealed to have sued a television station in the distant past, and to have spent his life ‘in the shadows’.

A long letter published by the paper on 15 May shows there is more than one view of Geidt, his shadowiness and his case against Central Television, but what provided the grounds for the Guardian to assail this little-known figure was the claim that he would be the ‘one of the final arbiters of press regulation in this country’.

The Guardian has now retracted that. The new wording is that Geidt is ‘one of the people involved in a royal charter to establish press regulation in this country’.

The difference is obviously significant. The Guardian is no longer claiming or implying that the Queen’s private secretary has or will have any influence over the nature of press regulation. The paper is close, instead, to admitting the truth, which is that he is merely a part of the arcane and routine process of royal rubber-stamping of the actions of government and Parliament.

Before any Act of Parliament becomes an Act, it must receive royal assent. As the Queen’s private secretary, Geidt presumably has some ‘involvement’ in that little ritual. It does not mean that he has influence over the laws that govern us, because he definitely doesn’t.

The Royal Charter approved by all parties in Parliament on 18 March is heading, by a different route, towards a similar rubber-stamping, this time by the Privy Council, and Geidt may also be ‘involved’ at the same procedural level.

You may think these formalities ridiculous and mediaeval, indeed you may be a republican who wants the whole pageant swept away, but it is not a matter over which 21st century democrats need lose sleep.

It’s worth remembering that this business of Royal Charters for press self-regulation was not Lord Justice Leveson’s idea, nor for that matter was it something Hacked Off desired. It was suggested by Conservative ministers as an alternative to legislation in a gesture intended to please the press. They have characteristically showed no gratitude.

Brian Cathcart is Executive Director at Hacked Off