Charles at Seventy

by Robert Jobson

  This case, of course, highlighted the danger the prince faces just through the nature of his position, which brings him into contact with prominent people who have subsequently been accused of serious wrongdoing. Rather than rushing to private judgement, he has always, and rightly, taken the view that the judicial process should take its course first. Inevitably, his private correspondence on a whole variety of matters can come back to haunt him.

  That said, is it perspicuous that the prince continues to engage with people on a whole range of issues and in so doing continue to make unfeigned interventions that could be interpreted as political, even when king? Royal courtiers exist to protect the ‘Boss’ they serve and the institution of monarchy itself. The official line is that the moment the prince ascends the throne he will cease to exist as the man we have known on the public stage. He will, some officials suggest, simply wrap a giant ribbon around his life work as the Prince of Wales and consign it to history. Then he will continue, anointed as if reborn, to become a new person, our king. He will, they say, avoid issues that have been at his core all his adult life. That will not happen.

  Not even the prince himself believes he will be overly constrained by the top job as monarch. He intends to make it work for him – for the good of his future subjects and his country, realms and wider commonwealth. To suggest he will not change his character and passions overnight is to fail to appreciate the man. He is more than capable of conducting himself properly as a constitutional monarch and still have passions about particular causes. ‘He is bigger than that,’ a senior inside source said. The prince has also decided that, unlike some monarchs, such as his grandfather George VI (who was Prince Albert, Duke of York, before ascending the throne), he will not change his name to become George VII, as has been speculated. He will be King Charles III, as he feels he is too old and too well known to be called anything other than Charles. Perhaps more importantly he will not change his style. As one close source put it, ‘He will want a seat at the table, not just to be briefed or rubber-stamping the decisions after they are taken.’

  When king, Charles will continue to lead as he always has: from the front. He will of course operate within the confines of our unwritten British constitution, but always ‘thinking ahead’. For, just like the role of the heir, that of monarch is not set in stone. Although constitutional monarchy is a system of rules, controlling what a monarch can do personally and constitutionally, each king or queen regnant has largely been at liberty to adapt those guidelines as to how they see fit.

  If they overstep the invisible line, it is for the sovereign Parliament to act and put a stop to it. Charles indubitably grasps the limitations placed on a constitutional monarch. In fact, there are few people better placed than he who appreciate the role, given his decades serving as the heir apparent. When his time comes to reign, he will patently be inspired by his mother’s and grandfather’s periods of so doing, but certainly not as a carbon copy. Essentially, however, it will be up to him to define those limitations and, in doing so, define the nature of his reign.

  Predominantly, the public role of a king or queen of Britain (or the Commonwealth realms where many of the functions will largely be carried out by the governor general on behalf of the monarch) is to serve as constitutional head of state. That involves carrying out a number of ceremonies deemed essential to the existence and fabric of the government and can be performed only by the person who is the king or queen regnant. These formalities include the appointment of a prime minister to head up a government, the dissolution of Parliament prior to a general election as well as Royal Assent legislation. They appear to be redoubting powers but, in reality and explicitly, they do not allow for the personal views of the sovereign.

  Other formalities include the business of the Privy Council, such as proclamations or legislative orders, passing into law appointments of new peerages in the House of Lords and Anglican bishops. The monarch also carries out a ceremonial role on state occasions such as delivering a speech at the state opening of Parliament at the start of each annual session. Again, even though it is called the king’s or queen’s speech, there is nothing personal about this, either, and simply has the sovereign reading out a speech written by Downing Street as a reminder that it may be his or her government, but in this case said monarch is little more than a figurehead.

  The monarch is also expected to preside over state banquets and meetings with other visiting heads of state in a sort of benevolent diplomatic role. These functions are all carried out at the ‘request’ of the government, usually at Buckingham Palace, the official residence of the British monarch. Hence, during her reign the Queen has paid host to a number of despots and tyrants as well as great leaders and presidents and shown them all the same level of courtesy. The monarch also, in an extension of that diplomatic role, is expected to travel the globe on so-called state visits.

  The Queen’s age means these visits, such as the autumn 2017 Commonwealth tour starting in Singapore, opening the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast and the visit to Vanuatu, in April 2018, are now undertaken by Charles. During these visits, unlike other members of the Royal Family, the prince, as heir apparent, is not only representing the Queen but, effectively, assumes her role.

  As well as being head of state, the sovereign holds two further roles of constitutional substance: Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces. It would be wrong to assume that the prince is planning wholesale change to the monarchy when he ascends the throne. It would also be wrong to assume Charles is not obliged to reign in exactly the same way as his mother. She has updated the institution and made it sensitive to a changing public whilst maintaining its traditions. Charles knows that a modern monarchy must never be behind the times, but it must never be ahead of them, either. While heir apparent, he has always avoided running commentaries on how his reign will take shape. After more than half a century of public service, the prince believes few are better placed than he is to appreciate requisite and appropriate constraints on the role of a constitutional monarch. If fate calls upon him to serve, the prince will draw on his own experiences but also act within what he understands as the confines of the constitution.

  The RAF Voyager on which I was travelling with the heir apparent and his team was flying towards RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. I had typed up notes gleaned from the short chat I had about the prince’s ‘red spider memo’ across my newspaper report. As I looked at the notes on my screen, one word kept jumping out at me: ‘leadership’. Written at 30,000 feet in the air whilst the rest of the passengers tried to catch up with some sleep, it seemed to me that the prince’s scribbled words over my commentary article had hit the nail on the head. His reaction could be seen as a barometer of how he intends to reign.

  Leadership for the prince is pre-eminent. This is a man who intends to lead as monarch, not just follow. A constitutional monarch is, after all, defined as a sovereign who reigns but does not rule, but there is nothing to prevent them from leading. What makes Charles a good leader? Ostensibly, he has no fixed agenda, certainly not a partisan one, and is a good listener who takes enormous trouble to be on top of global affairs, different cultures and religion. ‘He knows he has a unique ability as somebody who can convene important people who would not otherwise sit in a room together,’ a close source said.

  An example of his ability to convene powerful world figures with opposing agendas would be COP21, the UN conference of Climate Change held in Paris in 2015, not to mention his highly valuable tours of the Middle East and Gulf States. The Foreign Office has repeatedly asked him to visit the region to make use of his great understanding of the region and the respect in which he is held by the royal leaders there, perhaps more than any other member of the Royal Family.

  With the prince’s interventions on climate change, innercity deprivation, architecture, alternative medicine and organic farming, he intentionally strayed into what could be deemed the party-politic
al. His critics believe he has sailed too close to the wind. On occasions they have had good reason. His description of the proposed National Gallery extension during a speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1984, calling it, ‘a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend’, drew widespread criticism from the industry and politicians, but, it seemed, received general support from the public.

  The prince was condemned, too, when, on 11 December 1987, he forthrightly denounced plans for Paternoster Square beside St Paul’s Cathedral saying, ‘You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble.’ And, in the case of the National Theatre building on the capital’s South Bank in 1988, he referred to ‘a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting’.

  He was even more scathing about plans for a skyscraper to replace the Victorian Mapping & Webb building in 1984. ‘It would be a tragedy if the character and skyline of our capital city were to be further ruined and St Paul’s dwarfed by yet another giant glass stump, better suited to downtown Chicago than the City of London.’ It seems it is a battle the prince has lost, for, thirty-four years on, the modernists, led by his architectural nemesis Sir Richard Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside, appear to have won. For today Sir Christopher Wren’s great work, St Paul’s Cathedral, is indeed overshadowed by a host of giant glass edifices such as the Shard, the Heron Tower, the Cheesegrater (the Leadenhall Building), the Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe) and the Walkie-Talkie (20 Fenchurch Street). What the prince often finds difficult to fathom is how government-backed ‘monstrous, elephantine building projects’ that suck exchequers dry – such as the ‘Scottish Parliament, the Parliamentary Offices in Parliament Square, and the Dome’ – manage to achieve planning permission when they overrun costing and more money is needed.

  The prince is not intentionally partisan in the way he approaches the causes he champions. He has always acted for the greater good. After the 2017 ten-day Commonwealth tour of Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia and India, Charles was off again on a solo mission to see at first hand the damage caused by the devastating Hurricane Maria in the Caribbean. Speaking to The Sun’s photojournalist, Arthur Edwards, he warned of a pending ‘Armageddon’ as he surveyed wreckage in Dominica. ‘It is extraordinary people can’t “read the tea leaves” and understand just what mankind is facing,’ he told Mr Edwards. The recognition of climate change and global warming is a massive subject that the prince has made one of the core battles of his life. That is hardly likely to change when he is king.

  On that visit in November 2017, he went to the remains of the home of local Sarah Charles. She and twelve members of her family had cowered there as Maria had struck just weeks earlier. Winds ripped off the tin roof and the house was flooded as a nearby river burst its banks. Visibly moved by the visit, the prince said, ‘It looked like Armageddon had struck. But what I can never get over – and it fills me with immense admiration – is the way people are so courageous and so resilient.’

  For Charles there is no choice for humanity to make, as we are already living on borrowed time. He went on, ‘Some people seem to think it’s somehow a threat to undermine capitalism if you mention climate change. It isn’t. The whole point is to achieve a circular approach which enables us to work with nature. At the moment we are still fighting a battle against nature. You can’t do that.’

  He added, ‘We have to remember there are so many people around the world in other parts who are suffering hugely from the accumulating effects of putting all this CO2 into the atmosphere from all kinds of pollution – from coal-fired power stations to cars, and goodness knows what. All I have tried to do over the years is, along with others, draw attention to the fact that there is not a convenient series of holes in the atmosphere from which all this stuff can escape. So we are heating up everything and the more you warm it up the more you warm the oceans as well.’

  It would never occur to the prince to make personal gain from any of his interventions. He is simply taking the initiative, passing on to those with influence to effect change. It shows, too, that when his chance comes Charles will reign in the best interests of the entire country his way.

  Critics of the prince often quote passages from the work of Walter Bagehot as if that Victorian writer’s work were gospel and cannot be questioned. It is as if, to them, nothing had changed with regard to the monarchy in the years since Bagehot penned his treatise. He wrote in his 1867 pamphlet The English Constitution, ‘The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights – the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.’ This is often quoted and rarely challenged. He goes on to add, ‘A king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.’

  Bagehot’s thesis rightly still gets traction. But, considering how the world and institutions, such as the monarchy, have changed since then, it should be put into context. Bagehot, after all, was a lucid political thinker of his time, a time when the working man or woman didn’t even have a vote in the UK. His conclusions, perspicacious as they are on Queen Victoria, her family and her monarchy, are not necessarily relevant when examining our evolved monarchal system today. It was after a time of empire, deference and a rigid class system.

  One must remember, too, that he also wrote of the British monarchy, ‘Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants.’ He penned this when he could not have possibly envisaged the internet, television and twenty-four-hour news media when modern royals, with the notable exception of Queen Elizabeth herself, are expected to give interviews, to explain themselves on camera and give reaction to events happening around them. Could Bagehot have imagined his queen with a Facebook or Twitter account? It would all have been alien to him.

  As for ‘daylight’, it was Elizabeth who said sagaciously in the modern era, ‘I have to be seen to be believed.’ Encouraged by Princes Charles, William and Harry, the Queen has realised the influence of social media when it comes to getting one’s message across. The monarch, unlike US president Trump, has posted on Twitter personally on only two occasions. For her aides, social media has become as important as the royal walkabout, the garden party and her Christmas broadcast in promoting the monarchy brand. Buckingham Palace, Charles at Clarence House and his sons at Kensington Palace use Twitter feeds for today’s announcements and reports of audiences and ambassadorial hand-kissing, as well as Instagram timelines of followers, almost before bowing guests have departed the Queen’s white drawing room. Images are swiftly pinged out into cyberspace – and without the sometimes unflattering filter applied by mainstream media.

  For the royals, social-media platforms are a huge success. Harry’s ‘mic drop’ antics with the Queen and the Obamas, promoting his Invictus Games, went viral on Twitter. Harry has also broadcast live on Facebook being tested for HIV, generating an enormous audience reach. Currently, the @RoyalFamily Twitter account has 3.7 million followers. The palace team also coordinates @KensingtonRoyal, which has 1.6 million followers, keeping abreast of the engagements of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The Prince of Wales is the social-media pioneer. His @ClarenceHouse Twitter account, which has more than 789,000 followers, and his Instagram page, which has 491,000 followers, were royal firsts and are both enjoying 20 per cent year-on-year growth.

  For all three palaces, the aim is to increase engagement, particularly with a younger audience and overseas, too. There is no desire to hide away like Bagehot’s queen/empress. This twenty-first-century monarchy seems to be doing the precise opposite of what Bagehot advised in Victorian times.

  Today it is essential that royals have a voice on all media platforms, in newspaper interviews and in television interviews, too, to remain relevant and to show that, despite being part of a hereditary and unelec
ted institution, they have evolved over the years into one that exists to serve. The Prince of Wales and his sons want to be seen and heard and feel they must embrace new technology and new communication platforms to stay relevant. Charles, after all, was also one of the first senior royals to try Google Hangouts: in 2014 he took part in a live webchat with young volunteers. William and Harry had already tried out the technology, speaking from Buckingham Palace to youngsters from five Commonwealth countries. This is a new Royal Family which, unlike widowed, reclusive Victoria, actively wants to engage with society and to have a loud voice.

  Many constitution experts still bow too readily to Bagehot and his astute observations of his Victorian age and his Victorian monarchy. Republicans often quote passages of Bagehot’s work as incontrovertible proof to make a point about the prince’s so-called meddling. Times change and institutions, such as our monarchy (as well as the unwritten constitution of this country that embraces it) have evolved over time in order to stay relevant to the people who sustain it.

  Half a century after Bagehot penned his famous thesis, monarchy was still by far the predominant form of government in Europe, with only three republican governments in place in France, Switzerland and Portugal (whose monarch was deposed in 1910). There were constitutional monarchies in Britain, Italy, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. There was also the constitutional state of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the less ‘constitutional’ empires in Germany, divided into princely states with a Kaiser and Tsarist Russia. During and after World War I, most of these monarchies were deposed and, as result, today most European states remain republics.

  Of the surviving European monarchies, with the exception of perhaps the Danish, the British monarchy is by far and away the oldest. Our Queen can trace her ancestry back to Egbert, King of Wessex, in the ninth century. Except for Oliver (and Richard) Cromwell’s interregnum of 1649–60, the royal descendants of Egbert have reigned in England and then Britain for 1,200 years. The concept of constitutional monarchy, in fact, dates from the Magna Carta, drawn up by the barons and accepted by King John at Runnymede on 15 June 2015. But the significance of the Magna Carta lies less in its detailed provisions and more in the two implied underlying propositions. First, a king or queen regnant must rule according to the law and, crucially, must also be answerable to the way he or she rules; second, and equally as important, an individual’s rights transcend the personal desires of the monarch. These fundamental principles have echoed through the ages.