The mistakes of King Charles

Marooned in London for a day between meetings, I walked for miles in an attempt to find something good to say about the city. This was not a wholly unsuccessful expedition — those Nash terraces have an allure, Regent’s Park has been cutely de-manicured to encourage the wildlife and it was possible to buy a plastic replica of Big Ben almost every fifteen yards, which came in handy. It was the Londoners I found problematic. Smirking rat-faced hipsters and man-bunned bike dweebs, buzz-cut, granite-headed lezzas, the performative callisthenics of middle-class thirty-somethings who believe they will never die, Arabs flogging tat every five paces, lithe, snake-hipped homosexuals having a pleasant lunch of kale with yeast extract at one of a million cafés with the word “plant” somewhere in its name, overconfident, braying gap-year yankees, Afghans driving Uber cars as if they were in the Lashkar Gah Grand Prix, desperate, half-dead, joggers, young white businessmen jabbering to themselves like psychos as they stepped over the sprawled bodies of dozing Romanian beggars. London — all of human life is here. Except the good bits.

A king should be kingly: he should be distanced from his subjects. Otherwise he is not a king at all

There were, to my slight surprise, plenty of Union flags on display, although I couldn’t work out if this was for the tourists or to remind the locals of King Charles’s forthcoming big bash. Coronations have become a once-in-a-lifetime event, but even outside London, where both tradition and the monarchy have more of a pull, there seems to be little appetite for celebration. There are no street parties planned in my little northern town and I know of nobody who is planning a trip to London to watch the proceedings. That might be simply because everybody is skint, but I don’t think so. Maybe they should have invited the ghastly Meghan so at least we’d have something to boo.

We are all expected to swear our pledge of allegiance to our new King: “I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law — so help me God.” To which I can only say: “Up yours, jug-ears.” I wonder how many people will do it? Perhaps 25 percent of the population? I might have sworn a pledge of allegiance to his mother when she was alive. But then she never felt the need to ask for one, did she? This fatal misstep by Charlie is an intimation of why the coronation has not quite captured the hearts and minds of the population. Perpetually convinced that he is ahead of the curve, Charles stakes out his territory, but is wrong on almost every count, even if — to a certain degree — he means well.

Take, for example, his commitment to a slimmed-down monarchy and therefore a slimmed-down coronation. There are very good reasons for abolishing the monarchy: it is anachronistic and undemocratic. There are also good reasons for keeping it: it is anachronistic and undemocratic. But if you keep it, then all the stuff that surrounds it must be kept as well. You cannot run a monarchy on a shoestring, because it is an exemplifier of great wealth. It cannot be made democratic, precisely because it is the antithesis of democracy and no matter how fervently the sovereign might wish to be in closer touch with his subjects, that is the thing which kills the monarchy. A king should be kingly: he should be regal, he should be distanced from his subjects. Otherwise he is not really a king at all, just a kind of unaccountable and wholly unqualified president — which is what I suspect King Charles would really like to be. His coronation, therefore, should be a lavish affair and no expense should be spared. There may be joy in it, but it is a ceremony of great solemnity — one which, I would gently suggest, is not entirely enhanced by having Lionel Richie singing at it. That’s what they do at the Super Bowl. A monarchy speaks of history — and is proud of that history. It does not cower before the tyranny of now: it ignores the tyranny of now. Which is why, I think, the King’s decision to make his coronation and thereafter his reign “diverse and inclusive” is another misstep.

He has already put his foot in it, of course, by signaling his support for an investigation into the links between the royal family and slavery — and therefore, perhaps, the payment of reparations further down the line. Listen, Chas. How about you open an investigation into the monarchy’s links, down the years, with the oppression and subjugation of the poorest of our people, the theft of land and money, the persecution and murder of people for their religious beliefs, the expulsion of Jews from London, serfdom… hell, I could go on all night about the cruelties and iniquities visited upon the people of Britain over the years by their sovereigns.

What sort of stunted intellect does Charlie possess if, in an attempt to right wrongs and make amends, he thinks the only thing the royals have done wrong is to have profited from slavery? He cannot be quite so dim as to think that — the answer is that slavery has become, among a certain section of our liberal elite — very au courant, very much the flavor of the day. In other words, he is paying obeisance to the views of the liberal middle classes when he should, if anything, be a counterweight to those views.

And what will he do, I wonder, if when asked to sign up to a pledge of allegiance, the vast majority respond much as I did? The latest opinion poll suggests that only 9 percent of Brits care very much about the coronation and 60 percent don’t give two hoots. If democracy is your way forward, Charlie, then look what it is telling you…

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.