hatever your thoughts on Prince Philip, it can’t have been easy trudging in the Queen’s shadow all those years. A few careful steps behind, but a galaxy away in status. He famously erupted (“I am nothing but an amoeba”) when at first he couldn’t give his children his own surname. For a man of that generation and temperament, you can see how it must have been frustrating, even maddening. You can understand how sometimes he may have felt emasculated by his secondary supportive role. Despite everything – despite himself – perhaps we could cast Philip as an early prototype of the “new man”. His great achievement was that, all things considered, he bore it well. And while occasionally he lost it, he could have lost it more often. Was this the triumph and the tragedy of Philip – that he was a born alpha forced into a lifetime role as a beta? A square peg rammed into a round royal hole, who committed wholeheartedly to duty, service and, let’s face it, frequent staggering tedium. Even the most ardent of anti-monarchists would have to acknowledge that royal life can be drenched in unimaginable privilege and yet still be the soggiest and heaviest of straitjackets. Not that this excuses those infamous outbursts of “casual” racism and sexism that Philip seemed to enjoy directing at people who couldn’t answer back. Those weren’t “gaffes” – they were deliberate, a triumphant internal bark of “Look what I can get away with!” I don’t buy this as “banter” or that that side of the duke was “refreshing”. For a more intriguing view of his essential character, the key lies with the Queen. Much continues to be made of Philip’s role as the Queen’s rock, her supporter, confidant and sounding board. Many women have done this for their husbands with nowhere near as much swooning praise and reverence, but still, indisputably, he did it and for more than seven decades. Give him that. In fact, give him more, for, crucially, wasn’t he also the Queen’s rebellion? She chose him as a young teenager and wouldn’t budge, despite the fact that he was distrusted and disliked by many in the influential inner circles for being too foreign, too rootless, too broke – or, as one detractor put it, “rough, ill-mannered, uneducated”. Clearly, young Elizabeth wanted her Bad Boy, her love match, and wouldn’t be put off having him, showing off a quite different, daring and defiant side to her character, a world away from her well-honed mask of stiff, ribbon-cutting paragon of monarchy and duty. Just as she was the key to his essential character, so he was to hers. This was another way he supported her: stopping her collapsing with boredom, relieving and lifting the grim weight of the crown. The rest of us may or may not miss the Duke of Edinburgh. The Queen will miss the man for whom she was a real woman and not just an image on a stamp. No chair for Ursula von der Leyen, but at least she had her dignity Ursula von der Leyen is one classy dame. The European commission’s first female president was left without a chair during a meeting in Ankara with the former Belgian prime minister and now president of the European council, Charles Michel, and the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Von der Leyen responded with an icy “ehm”, before sitting on an adjacent sofa. Her composure was even more admirable considering that an issue scheduled for discussion was equal rights, following Turkey’s withdrawal from a convention on gender violence. Bravo to Von der Leyen for behaving with dignity. But how I wish she’d told those self-satisfied oafs to “shift!” or insisted that an extra chair be found. This wasn’t about gallantry (or lack of it), this was an abuse of power, showing the “little lady” who was boss. It was high-stakes political chauvinism played out as musical chairs with a dash of “a cup of tea would be nice, love”. The fact that Michel and Erdoğan didn’t care about coming across as ill-mannered boors was a major part of the theatre. The result: a key European power hub came across like a scuzzy locker-room with towel-flicking jocks in charge. Nice work, gentlemen. Von der Leyen should be congratulated on keeping her cool. I’m not sure I’d have managed it. What kind of society leaves a disabled person with £3 a day? As if life weren’t tough enough for disabled people, some are being subjected to a stealth “care tax”. A number of English councils are quietly increasing charges to people with learning difficulties and mental illness, including autism and cerebral palsy. These charges (contributions to their care) are generally taken from their benefits, with people now facing shocking and unmanageable increases. One contribution rose from £5.59 to £83 a week, another from £40 to £151. A family with adult children with learning disabilities received a backdated bill for more than £20,000. This is proving catastrophic for the people affected and their families, causing acute distress and anxiety. One man with bipolar disorder is being forced to consider putting his dog down if he can no longer afford to keep her. Vulnerable people are being left with barely enough money – little more than £3 a day – to pay for essentials, which is in direct contravention of Care Act guidance. Some claimants are considering legal action. Mental health charities and support groups lay the blame at the door of the ever-worsening government funding of social care. Put simply, certain councils appear to be trying to retrieve some of the money paid to disabled people (such as with Personal Independence Payments) by vastly increasing their care contributions. The official line is that people can appeal, but everyone knows how long and complicated such actions can be. Are mentally ill people supposed to go through all that? How long before physically disabled people find themselves targeted by a “care tax”? Is this a taster of how people with mental health conditions associated with long Covid will be treated? There are serious issues regarding the long-term financing of social care, but disabled people shouldn’t be the ones to suffer. If this isn’t a national disgrace, what is? Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist