Through the Interface

Yesterday was a day of strange coincidences. After several months of heated discussions with His Majesty's Passport Office, I finally received my replacement UK passport in the post.

In a nutshell the problem had come from me sending in a copy of my Swiss passport - with the name "Kean Walmsley" - with the application. HMPO came back with a message saying "you can't have a passport in another name", as my UK passport included by middle name (which I honestly neither use nor particularly care about), while my Swiss one didn't. I'd realised this when I first got my Swiss passport, back in 2018, but chose not to make a fuss about it at the time.

Anyway, HMPO's position was "you need to get a new Swiss passport with your middle name in it." I wasn't hugely in favour of effectively losing 2 years of a still-valid passport and going through all the hassle, but I said "fine, I'll try".

One exacerbating mistake, from my side, was waiting to raise this with the Swiss authorities until I had a break in my travel schedule; the logic being that if I was going to be without both passports (the UK one had expired, and the Swiss one would be cancelled pending the new one) it should be when I didn't need to travel. And I was travelling a lot towards the end of last year. With 20:20 hindsight I should have at least started the discussion sooner - as there was some amount of investigation needed.

My local communal government was quick to refer me to the cantonal government, so that was the first redirect. The cantonal government's first reaction was "why did you send them a copy of your Swiss passport?", my answer being "because they asked me to!". I do love the Swiss.

When I finally ended up speaking to the right branch - the one that had been responsible for tracking my naturalization, etc. - they went down into the archives, and after a couple of weeks said "we have no record whatsoever of you ever having had a middle name." Which was insane, because clearly my birth and wedding certificates would both have shown it, right? Wrong! I checked and - sure enough - the only official name on any document was without my middle name. It seems that middle names are more of a convention than an official thing in the UK (or maybe that was the case back in the 1970s?), so the only document showing my middle name was my UK passport. To get it added to my Swiss passport I would effectively have to change my name officially, which would have triggered a whole load of downstream consequences (as well as being expensive and time-consuming).

In the end I sent my original birth certificate with a letter detailing all this fun to HMPO, and, finally, yesterday I received my passport through the post, including an "official observation" about my Swiss passport being with a different name. The whole thing was a royal pain, but hey, I'm once again able to travel as a Brit, which if I'm honest I'll probably only do when heading to the UK (and it turns out to be just in the nick of time - I might now have to use it when going there!).

Which brings me on to my next point very nicely. On exactly the day I received my passport, I saw the news that the Andrew formally known as Prince (haha) had been arrested at the Sandringham Estate, a 30-minute drive from where I grew up. I'm not going to start commenting on the ins and outs of the whole Epstein scandal, but I could not be more proud that the UK found it possible to arrest a (former) member of the Royal Family. (A royal pain, if ever there was one. 😉 ) It's been nearly 400 years since the last time, so this really is a big deal, irrespective of the eventual outcome.

It actually feels good to be connected with that great nation, once again!