The prince predicted the devastating housing crisis that caused so many difficulties in the United Kingdom in the early part of the twenty-first century. He championed the production of real, properly sourced, organic food when so many scoffed at him. He has reminded us too that the future must have a relationship with the past and that not all change for the sake of it is good.
What is exciting about Charles is that he is a trailblazer, that he is not a figurehead who jumps on bandwagons when they become trendy. He has been delivering speeches for decades on his core subjects such as climate change and polluting our planet. Way back on 6 March 1989, he was addressing delegates at the Saving the Ozone Layer World Conference, where he spelt out the doomsday scenario we faced then when few wanted to listen. ‘Since the Industrial Revolution, human beings have been upsetting that balance [of nature], persistently choosing short-term options and to hell with the long-term repercussions,’ he said. Indeed, he faced an avalanche of criticism in the 1970s for even daring to raise these heartfelt concerns. But raise them he did.
‘Most critics imagined that I somehow wanted to turn the clock back to some mythical golden age when all was a perfect rural idyll. But nothing could be further from the truth,’ he wrote in his tome Harmony.
Nearly thirty years later, he is still using his influence to urge mankind to take effective action to save our sick planet before it is too late; this has been one of the core causes he has championed. Through the tireless work of his charities, in particular the Prince’s Trust, Charles has encouraged social cohesion and social mobility, changing the lives of thousands of young people for the better. He is one of the most successful charitable entrepreneurs of his time.
Over the course of his lifetime, the Prince’s charities have raised billions of pounds and transformed lives for the better. His seventieth birthday on 14 November 2018 sees him already as Britain’s longest-serving heir to the throne. When he eventually ascends the throne on the death of his mother, he will be the oldest person ever to become our monarch. None of this concerns him, or, for that matter, ever has. He has always said his getting the ‘top job’ is ‘in the lap of the gods’.
Some close to the monarch say that, if she reaches the age of ninety-five, she will make a monumental decision and choose to officially allow Charles to take over the stewardship of her reign. She will, they say, officially transfer all executive powers to him as Prince Regent until her death, when he will become king. This would enable her to fudge the issue of her not fulfilling her Coronation Oath to God and her people to serve as queen regnant until her death. Others, who claim to be equally well informed, say that such a move or use of the ‘Regent’ title is not really necessary. After all, the Queen made it clear to the unassuming 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, when he went to see her when he resigned in her Golden Jubilee year of 2002, ‘That’s something I can’t do.’
Times, however, do change. Since then the monarch has marked her Diamond and Sapphire jubilees. She has already surpassed her great-great-grandmother, the Empress of India, Queen Victoria, and become the oldest and longest-reigning monarch. In truth, with the Queen now well into her tenth decade, senior officials within the Royal Household confirm that Prince Charles is, effectively, already our ‘Prince Regent’, a king in all but name. He already takes on many of her responsibilities and, now that she does not travel overseas, his royal tours representing her across the globe are state visits. It is, in effect, a job-share monarchy, with the heir leading the way for the House of Windsor, not following.
The sudden abdication of King Juan Carlos of Spain in favour of his son, the new King Felipe, in 2014, after thirty-nine years on the throne, led to a familiar chorus: ‘It will never happen here.’ For some reason commentators assume that Elizabeth II will just go on and on even though we are already sailing in new waters. Granted, Her Majesty is a consecrated monarch who pledged in her Coronation Oath to serve throughout her life. But can she seriously remain as head of state if she lives to be a centenarian like her mother?
Unlike in Spain, where politicians had to amend the constitution to accommodate Juan Carlos’s decision, in the UK we already have the Regency Act enshrined in law. The last time such provisions were used was in 1810 during the reign of George III, when the monarch became permanently deranged. It meant his eldest son assumed the title Prince Regent for ten years until, on his father’s death, he became George IV.
The Prince of Wales has always felt aggrieved on behalf of his infamous relative. In a foreword for a biography of King George III, he wrote in 1972, ‘As human beings we suffer from an innate tendency to jump to conclusions; to judge people too quickly and to pronounce them failures or heroes without due consideration of the actual facts and ideals of the period.’
Queen Elizabeth II has enjoyed remarkably good health, both mental and physical, and there is nothing to suggest that a regency would be necessary in the way that it was for George III. Behind palace gates, however, preparations have been made in recent months for all eventualities with Her Majesty’s blessing.
Charles has always been consistent about his position. His ascension is in the ‘lap of the gods’, he has said. In 1994, talking about becoming king one day, he told Jonathan Dimbleby, ‘Sometimes you daydream about the sort of things you might do …I think you could invest the position with something of your own personality and interest but obviously within the bounds of constitutional propriety.’
The only time he went further was in 1998, when he was forced to react to claims that he would be ‘pleased’ if the Queen abdicated. Irritated at the impertinence of the suggestion in the tabloids, he stated, ‘I begin to tire of needing to issue denials of false stories about all manner of thoughts which I am alleged to be having.’
In fact, in the aftermath of his divorce, he grew increasingly embittered towards the tabloids, although in recent years his relationship with the press has improved. Back then, he regarded them not only as his enemies but as the enemy of the people. For a considerable time aides would have to listen to his rants about how the ‘poor brainwashed’ country is controlled by the tabloid press, who actively sought to make him look ‘truly absurd’ whenever the opportunity arose. He dubbed the Mail on Sunday, at the height of the so-called ‘war of the Waleses’ of a few years back, the organ of ‘depravity and deception’ that poisons society. (Ironically, under the stewardship of editor Geordie Greig from 2012 to 2018, the Mail on Sunday was largely supportive of the prince. In September 2018, Greig replaced long-serving editor Paul Dacre as editor of the Daily Mail.) ‘There was nothing one could say or do to alter his view at that time,’ said one former member of his team. ‘Thankfully, with time he has mellowed and his relationship improved.’
The left-leaning Guardian newspaper in the UK reported in March 2017 that, for years, arrangements have been in place by the palace and government for the death, funeral and internment of the Queen. There is even a codename to be used in the event of the inevitable eventuality: Operation London Bridge. I was among a group of media representatives given such a detail off the record by palace officials; the Guardian, which did not send reporters to the palace briefings, was not. The editor, however, after the Queen’s serious bout of ill health over Christmas 2016, commissioned an article on the ‘secret plans that exist for the death of the Queen’. Journalist Sam Knight made a good fist of it, basing much of it on what happened on the death of the last monarch, George VI. But he had the codename for Elizabeth right and much of the detail was fairly accurate, too.
The Prince of Wales, as her heir, will be the first to know of his mother’s passing. He will probably be at her deathbed, unless the monarch dies suddenly or unexpectedly. On his mother’s death, Charles will be king immediately. His siblings and children will kiss his hands. Then constitutional government will kick in. The Prime Minister will need to be informed immediately of the passing of the head of state.
That job will now fall to Sir Edward Young, Lord Geidt�
��s successor as the Queen’s current private secretary, who will then go to a secure telephone line and tell the PM ‘London Bridge is down’. Then, from the Foreign Office’s Global Response Centre in London, the news will go out to the fifteen governments, directly to the respective prime ministers, outside the UK where the Queen is also the head of state, and the thirty-six other nations of the Commonwealth for whom she has served as a figurehead. For a time her subjects will not know she is dead and that the throne has passed to her eldest son. But in the world of twenty-four-hour news it will not stay secret for long. Governors general, ambassadors and prime ministers will learn first. But, as more people are told, the more likely there would be a leak of the monumental news.
Nothing will be left to chance. If the Queen dies abroad, a BAe 146 jet from the RAF’s No. 32 squadron, known as the Royal Flight, will take off from Northolt, at the western edge of London, with a coffin on board. The royal undertakers, Leverton & Sons, keep what they call a ‘first-call coffin’ ready in case of royal emergencies. If the Queen dies on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, her body will come to London by car after a day or two.
The most elaborate plans are for what happens if she passes away at Balmoral, where she spends three months of the year. First, the Queen’s body will lie at rest in her smallest palace, at Holyrood House in Edinburgh, and will be guarded by the Royal Company of Archers. Then the coffin will be carried up the Royal Mile to St Giles’s Cathedral, for a service of reception, before being put on board the Royal Train at Waverley station for a sad progress down the East Coast Main Line. Crowds are expected at level crossings and on station platforms the length of the country. ‘From Musselburgh and Thirsk in the north, to Peterborough and Hatfield in the south – to throw flowers on the passing train. (Another locomotive will follow behind, to clear debris from the tracks)’ Knight reported.
This is, however, jumping the gun. Given the Queen’s history of robust health, perhaps a far more likely scenario is that her great age will mean she herself will trigger a period of regency, thus ensuring safe stewardship of the great office she has held and worked so hard to secure. Senior former members of her household believe the Queen will grant her eldest son and heir the full power to reign while she still lives because of the respect she holds for the institution of monarchy.
One senior aide told me that the Queen has given the matter of her passing years considerable thought and believes that, if she is still alive at ninety-five, she will consider passing the reign to Charles. Abdication, however, is not even a consideration.
One senior aide admitted to me the ‘dusting off’ of the Regency Act. My understanding is that senior figures, with the Queen’s blessing, have been examining various scenarios. Before his unceremonious departure, the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Christopher Geidt, was awarded a second knighthood for, according to the citation, ‘a new approach to constitutional matters…[and] the preparation for the transition to a change of reign’. This was interpreted as the clearest sign yet that the Queen was getting ready to pass on the mantle.
Strangely, until 1937, our constitutional law had no permanent provision for a regent to cover the situation of a monarch being incapable of performing his or her duties. It was the debilitating illness of the Queen’s grandfather, George V – who suffered from chronic bronchitis from 1935 until his death – that led to the reformed Regency Act. Since then, no statutory regency has been created. A statutory regency would be established if the person inheriting the throne were under eighteen or if the monarch were, ‘by reason of infirmity of mind or body’, incapable of performing the royal functions. But there is an intriguing additional ground within the drafting of Section 2 of the Act. This says that a regency arises if ‘the Sovereign is for some definite cause not available for the performance of those functions’. It is not clear what situations this covers. Perhaps it is vague enough to allow the monarch simply to pass the baton to her heir and effectively retire – thus effecting the smoothest of successions with the minimum of fuss.
The Queen is au courant with the passage of time, and how her age impacts on the institution she serves. She has, impeccable sources have told me, already drawn a line in the sand, a date when, like Prince Philip, she will effectively retire from public life. Another former senior courtier said, ‘Her Majesty thinks long and hard about this issue. She would never want to do anything, or be seen to do anything, that would harm the monarchy, and that includes going on too long. If she felt her age was in any way damaging the monarchy, she would act accordingly.’
Nobody has a crystal ball. But my knowledge of the monarchal system leads me to believe that, whatever happens, it will unfold naturally. It will, when that happens, be seamless. It is clear, however, that Charles’s position as the driving force of the institution in the second decade of the twenty-first century, as he approaches his seventieth birthday, is indisputable. He, not the Queen, is the firm hand on the tiller.
Chapter Three
SHADOW KING
‘I think it’s something that dawns on you with the most ghastly inexorable sense. I didn’t wake up in my pram and say: “Yippee, I…” But I think it just dawns on you slowly that people are interested in one and slowly you get the idea that you have a certain duty and responsibility.’
THE PRINCE OF WALES TO BRITISH JOURNALIST AND RADIO PRESENTER GIOVANNI BATISTA ‘JACK’ DE MANIO, MC AND BAR, IN 1969, WHEN ASKED WHEN HE FIRST REALISED THAT HE WAS HEIR TO THE THRONE
Head bowed, His Royal Highness Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the British throne, Field Marshal in the British Army, Admiral of the Fleet of the Royal Navy and Marshal of the Royal Air Force, stood bolt upright. His job that cold November morning was simple enough: to lay a wreath, or in his case two. Pristine as always, he was wearing his ceremonial uniform of an RAF Air Marshal with his large medals pinned to his chest, but hidden under his heavy blue-grey greatcoat. He had performed this solemn duty many times before, but today was special.
Right on cue, the heir to the throne would lead the nation in commemorating our war dead on Remembrance Sunday. This time it fell to him, not his mother, Elizabeth II, to lay the first wreath – the nation’s wreath – of red poppies at the foot of the Cenotaph memorial in Whitehall. This time, the sovereign, our once ever-present Queen, would not be on duty or the star performer, but he would be. The man who will be king and commander-in-chief of the UK’s armed forces then snapped a salute to the fallen. As ever, he had performed his duties with aplomb but, unequivocally, this was a watershed moment in his developing royal journey.
A few minutes earlier he had led out seven members of the Royal Family all bedecked in military uniform. His sons, William and Harry, his siblings Anne, Andrew and Edward, and his mother’s first cousin and grandson of King and Emperor George V, the Duke of Kent, dutifully followed him and then stood in silence. Charles, in front of them, waited patiently for his signal to perform. The unmistakable chimes of Parliament’s Big Ben and a gun salute marked the beginning of the two-minute silence. Another gun salute, followed by the Reveille played immaculately by nine white-gloved buglers of the Royal Marines’ Portsmouth Band, bedecked in Number 1 Full Dress of full-length, dark-blue greatcoats with the white Wolseley-pattern helmets, signalled that the impeccably observed silent tribute was at an end.
Queen Elizabeth II’s equerry, Major Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah of the Blues and Royals, stepped forward with the sovereign’s wreath and handed it to Charles. He held it firmly in his right hand and then, with his left hand holding the hilt of his sword, walked forward and placed it in pride of place at the foot of the Cenotaph before walking backwards whence he had come.
It was 12 November 2017 – the day after Armistice Day and just two days shy of Charles’s sixty-ninth birthday and the start of his milestone seventieth year.
Without doubt it was going to be a momentous twelve months for the man who is now the longest-serving heir to the throne in the British monarchy’s history. L
ess than a hundred metres away on a Whitehall balcony, the Queen, wearing a spray of poppies held in place by Queen Mary’s gleaming Dorset bow brooch, keenly observed proceedings, watching her eldest son’s every move with a sharp eye. Alongside her, in his uniform as Lord High Admiral, was World War II veteran Prince Philip, then ninety-six, protected from the autumn chill by his heavy Royal Navy winter greatcoat. Next to the royal couple stood Prince Charles’s second wife, all in black, the seventy-year-old Duchess of Cornwall.
From her vantage point the Queen surveyed the solemn scene: the one time of the calendar when all the Royal Family, all the party leaders, all former prime ministers and representatives of every Commonwealth nation gather in London. Although on six previous occasions she had been absent from the parade in her sixty-five years on the throne (during her pregnancies with Prince Andrew in 1959 and Prince Edward in 1963, and on four other occasions when she was on overseas visits in 1961 in Ghana, in 1968 in Brazil, in 1983 in Kenya and in 1999 in South Africa), 2017 was much more significant. After all, she had always been centre stage, not an observer, as in this case.
It was also a definite move to authorise her heir to carry out the job and it was certainly not a decision taken lightly. As she watched on, some reporters insisted they had seen the Queen wipe away a tear, but it seemed unlikely from such a stoic character and was more likely the effects of a bracing northwesterly wind in a November cold snap that chilly morning.
In the months leading up to this symbolic moment the Prince of Wales had slowly but surely been taking on a number of the Queen’s more physically taxing engagements at her request. In 2017 the prince clocked up 374 UK engagements and 172 abroad, making him the busiest member of the Royal Family with a grand total of 546 engagements. He did the most travelling, too. For the prince in the coming years it was going to get busier as more and more he did the heavy lifting for the ageing sovereign. As ever, he carried out his duties with the minimum of fuss. It was, as he saw it, his duty to do so as her ‘liege man’, as he had sworn to be before four thousand guests inside the medieval walls of Caernarfon Castle at his investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969. Back then he had received the insignia as the twenty-first Prince of Wales and, along with it, the right to use the heraldic badge of the title that bears motto, ‘Ich Dien’ – ‘I Serve’ in German – on the ribbon below the coronet and his feathers.
Charles at Seventy Page 6