Charles at Seventy

by Robert Jobson

  ‘Today we have agreed that the next head of the Commonwealth will be His Royal Highness Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales. His Royal Highness has been a proud supporter of the Commonwealth for more than four decades and has spoken passionately about the organisation’s unique diversity. It is fitting that he will one day continue the work of his mother, Her Majesty the Queen,’ she said.

  When it was finally and formally announced, the prince was typically self-effacing and declared, ‘I am deeply touched and honoured by the decision of Commonwealth heads of state and government that I should succeed the Queen, in due course, as head of the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, I will continue to support Her Majesty in every possible way, in the service of our unique family of nations.’

  Sub rosa, presidents and prime ministers from across the world convened to finalise plans for the future of the Commonwealth, enjoying the hospitality of the Queen’s home at the end of a week that had seen senior members of the Royal Family out in force. President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, said the decision was reached by ‘strong consensus’, while Theresa May insisted it was unanimous. Grenada’s prime minister, Keith Mitchell, said he had been convinced the decision was a good one thanks to his belief that the young men of the Commonwealth need a strong male role model.

  It was made clear, however, that the decision was a one-off, and the leaders spelled it out that the ruling did not apply to Charles’s own heirs, Prince William and Prince George, who would not be automatically in line to hold the office. It would remain, they said, a non-hereditary position.

  That said, the Queen had left nothing to chance. The day before the ruling, as she spoke at the official opening of the CHOGM at Buckingham Palace, she made a heartfelt address spelling out for the first time her hopes for the future of the Commonwealth, and offering her unadulterated support to her son in the role.

  ‘It is my sincere wish that the Commonwealth will continue to offer stability and continuity for future generations, and will decide that one day the Prince of Wales should carry on the important work started by my father in 1949,’ she told the leaders gathered. There is little doubt that the Queen’s public words galvanised the world leaders into pushing through the decision.

  ‘We are certain that, when he will be called upon to do so, he will provide solid and passionate leadership for our Commonwealth,’ Joseph Muscat, prime minister of Malta, said of the prince in the same ceremony. Later that day, Malcolm Turnbull, the Australian prime minister, confirmed that his country ‘strongly supports the continuation of the king or queen of the United Kingdom as the head of the Commonwealth …Prince Charles in time will succeed his mother,’ he stated unequivocally.

  Speaking to media, Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, said, ‘I very much agree with the wishes of Her Majesty that the Prince of Wales be the next head of the Commonwealth.’ And Ralph Regenvanu, the foreign minister of the Pacific state of Vanuatu, disclosed, ‘We see it almost naturally that it should be the British Royal Family because it is the Commonwealth after all.’

  Others had expressed frustration that the issue had overshadowed more important discussions. Tevita Tu’i Uata, Tonga’s trade minister, told ITV News that people in his country ‘are drowning’ due to rising sea levels, saying, ‘Maybe sorting out who is going to lead the Commonwealth may be also an issue, but it’s not as pressing an issue to [Tonga] as taking care of climate change.’

  The Prince is expected to represent the Queen in the honorary role at future Commonwealth meetings, the next of which will take place in Rwanda in 2020, having previously attended the meeting four times: in Edinburgh in 1997, Uganda in 2007, Sri Lanka in 2013 and Malta in 2015 when he appeared with the Queen.

  How does he propose to change things, if at all? The bottom line is that the Commonwealth is a fundamental feature of his life. His first Commonwealth visit was to Malta when I was just five. He has, over time, spoken to many of the giants of the club: Sir Robert Menzies, Kwame Nkrumah, Sir Keith Holyoake, Jomo Kenyatta, Pierre Trudeau, Kenneth Kaunda, Julius Nyerere and Lee Kuan Yew.

  But for Charles it is not applauding past successes; for he believes that the modern Commonwealth has a vital role to play in building bridges between our countries, fairer societies within them and a more secure world around them. He hopes his role will enable member states not only to revitalise the bonds with each other but also to give the Commonwealth a ‘renewed relevance to all citizens’, finding practical solutions to their problems and giving life to their aspirations. That way, he believes, the Commonwealth will be a cornerstone for the lives of future generations.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE GREAT CONVENER

  ‘I have been entirely motivated by a desperate desire to put the “Great” back into Great Britain.’

  HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES IN A PRIVATE LETTER, JANUARY 1993

  In the impeccable garden of Clarence House, glass in hand, stood Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece. They were locked in conversation. The UK’s under-fire prime minister, Theresa May, was close at hand, too, with her newly appointed foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt. A gaggle of other embattled UK Cabinet ministers were close by. It had, after all, been a tough few days with the double resignations of Tory ‘Big Beasts’ Boris Johnson and ex-Brexit Secretary David Davis. The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, mingled in the throng with six other prime ministers from the western Balkans with their ministers and ambassadors shadowing their every move.

  The Prince of Wales, the host, was steadily working his way around his garden, cajoling, joking, jollying along the influential group as the evening sun dipped out of sight in the capital. The reception, held to mark the end of the western Balkans summit in London, was a success. When Charles stepped up to a small podium, however, he was not about to flatter those present with pleasantries and platitudes.

  He delivered a short but powerful oration on the importance of reconciliation. Speaking from the heart, citing his own experience following the murder of his great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, at the hands of the IRA, he said, ‘Reconciliation is not simply a theoretical abstract concept: it is, of course, a matter of practical, difficult action, painful choices and hard, but essential, compromise.’

  He went on, ‘Blame, distrust and hatred are natural, instinctive responses to decades, even centuries, of conflict and injustice – but they do not help us to change course. That requires the really difficult business of forgiveness, understanding and, if I may say so, tremendous courage and enlightened leadership. I know this because, very nearly forty years ago, my great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was murdered in a terrible bomb attack.

  ‘Ever since that fateful day, I have been determined to pursue the long, hard road to lasting reconciliation. We can, of course, never forget the wrongs of the past, which must always inform the choices we make about the future. But they cannot be allowed to limit our horizons or to constrain the opportunity to which future generations aspire,’ he said. His words, so raw and personal, touched a nerve with the blue-chip audience.

  Meaningful reconciliation, the prince argued, in the western Balkans was the only way of ensuring that the region’s children did not endure the agonies of the generations before them. ‘Much progress has been made in this regard over recent years,’ he said, ‘but much, much more needs to be done.’

  Charles was speaking in the week that marked the twenty-third anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre of more than eight thousand Bosnian Muslims at the hands of Bosnian Serbs, the worst mass killing on European soil since World War II He had assembled a powerful audience on 10 July 2018 and he hadn’t wasted it, for he had delivered a powerful and effective message, too, delivered by a statesman who still believes post-Brexit that Britain will remain a global power.

  In the way he conducted the proceedings, he embodied what Britain can be in the early part of the twenty-first century and gave a hint at what kind of king he will be: a strong convener with the ability to br
ing together leaders with real influence.

  Who else but the Prince of Wales could persuade Angela Merkel’s office that she should spend another hour of her day in the UK at a reception such as this? Who else could lecture a group of heads of government about reconciliation but an experienced statesman and future monarch who had suffered personally from the violence of conflict?

  The prince is not about to become our de facto foreign secretary, nor would he want to be. And, if ‘global Britain’ and ‘soft-power’ diplomacy were to mean anything going forward post-Brexit, then the government will have to provide answers to the big foreign-policy questions of the age themselves and not leave it to the prince to fill the void.

  It was an example, if one were needed, of that at which the prince is exceptional. He is the great convener, the ultimate chairman of the board, if you like. His strength and charm is bringing people together and skilfully addressing the biggest questions without the feeling he is ranting or ramming home his message.

  The Queen has told those closest to her, if she is still living at ninety-five, it is her intention to step aside so that Charles can become Prince Regent, although the prince’s team insist ‘they’ are not aware of this. It is her call and she is prone to prevarication at the moment, so nobody is really sure whether to start actively preparing for the moment.

  ‘At seventy years of age, at seventy-five years of age, at seventy-six, when the moment comes he is not going to change,’ one aide who knows him well explained. And, as we saw earlier, he also won’t change his name – which is convention – when his moment to be King Charles III comes. People know him as Charles and he will continue to be Charles.

  In time, I believe, history will be kind on King Charles III. His reign will probably be short, maybe even the shortest ever in contrast to the longest wait to attain it, and, as a result, in historical terms, his time on the throne not a remarkable one. His contribution to the world during his entire lifetime, however, certainly has been remarkable. His legacy, whether as prince or king, will be as a regal philosopher, a courageous man prepared to take risks for what he sees as the greater good, and an unselfish and unflinching advocate for peace and global sustainability.

  One must remember, however, that the taxpayer doesn’t fund any of his lifestyle (with the exception of travel when he is on official business and the security bill to keep him safe); his landed estate, the Duchy of Cornwall – which he ultimately runs, and runs very well and profitably – does. The estate, which stretches over 135,000 acres and across 23 counties, mainly in the southwest of England, was last year estimated at £1 billion and Charles’s net worth is said to be £306 million, according to a report by Time magazine. He is just a steward for this estate. The trust passes to the Duke of Cambridge when he becomes Duke of Cornwall (and Prince of Wales) and beneficiary of the Duchy on Charles’s ascension.

  With the multimillions his Duchy of Cornwall estate generates for his personal use every year (last year it was £21.7 million, up 5 per cent on the previous year, and the tax paid voluntarily increased to £4.85 million), he might well live a cosseted existence. Why shouldn’t he? The money is, after all, his, just as the money generated by other landed estates such as the Duke of Westminster’s extensive property portfolio is his. Unless there were to be some kind of Communist-style land grab, it is the way it is. Charles, therefore, could have happily lived the life of a playboy prince, a waster selfishly squandering his wealth on a debauched and lavish lifestyle. But he does not and, even though it is his ‘private income’, the prince has long chosen to be as open and transparent as possible.

  From March 2017 through to March 2018, together Charles and Camilla undertook 620 official engagements in 45 counties across the UK and 15 foreign and Commonwealth countries around the world. The prince visited ten Commonwealth countries in this year alone, supported by the duchess on six of these visits. In his travels, sustainability and climate change – constant themes of his work for four decades – have been at the core of his message as he bids to raise awareness of the ways in which changes to our natural environment are having a negative impact on the world around us, particularly the case on low-lying islands, including across the Caribbean.

  He attended, too, the Our Ocean Conference in Malta in October 2018, where his keynote address warned once again of the damage that is being caused by the dual threats of climate change and plastics pollution as humanity stretches nature to the limit. He had worked tirelessly to draw out the issue of religious tolerance and greater cultural cohesion, too, which he had addressed through his Easter message broadcast globally on Good Friday 2018, reaching a global audience of more than 10 million. In it he gave an emotional message of support for persecuted Christians around the world, describing his compassion for ‘Christians who are suffering for their faith in many places around the world’. He started the speech by saying, ‘I want to assure them that they are not forgotten and that they are in our prayers.’

  The prince’s detractors insist he is a drain on the public purse. The reality is in the relationship between private and public money, the taxpayer meets less than 10 per cent of the total costs for Charles and Camilla (excluding security costs) and those costs are usually for travel expenses when they are sent on official business and in a mode of transport the government, not he, selects.

  The scope and diversity of the prince’s work is wide-ranging, from state occasions through to work to support the military, not to mention communities of every faith and of every ethnic origin, helping to bind all people together as a single United Kingdom. According to an independent study in 2017, the prince contributed £1.4 billion of value to society in the last decade alone. His charities raised £170 million in a year, a figure they have repeatedly hit. On the environment, he practises what he preaches, too, with his household recording that 85 per cent of its energy now comes from renewable sources, including all of its electricity.

  Despite all this almost obsessive devotion to duty, some still argue Charles is a pampered, over-opinionated hypocrite who has his elevated wealth and status only through the good fortune of his birth. If one chooses to ignore the facts about the man, it is easy enough to argue that point. After all Charles has a personal staff of over 120, a figure perhaps more suited to a Tudor monarch than a modern-day, pared-down prince. There are valets who prepare his clothes and polish his shoes, chefs to indulge his every organic culinary whim, and a small army of estate workers, gardening being one of his greatest passions, one that was sparked in childhood, playing with Princess Anne outdoors and spending a lot of time with his grandmother, the Queen Mother, at the Royal Lodge in Windsor.

  Despite his considerable wealth and resources, Charles has devoted his entire life to public duty, supporting the Queen in her role as head of state as well as being a global philanthropist. His Prince’s Trust, which has long been lauded, has created more than 125,000 entrepreneurs since its creation, too.

  But, when the time comes to assess his legacy, it is his work as a pioneer and game-changer for which he will be best remembered. Even when he becomes king, I am confident he will do his best to find a way not to be suffocated by the limitations of the role and continue to strive to give a voice and platform to what he believes in.

  He, more than anyone still living, is behind a global sustainability revolution to make world leaders – indeed all of us – think more deeply about how we are treating nature and our planet, and to realise for the sake of future generations our lifestyles must change. He, more than anyone, has led the charge in changing how people think, and to realise, as he would say, ‘Right action cannot happen without right thinking.’

  In his seventy years, the prince has striven to make a real difference and to enlighten others. He has championed organic farming and spoken up for sustainable urbanism, emphasising the need for local character to be preserved. He has encouraged a more balanced approach to business and healthcare and a more benign holistic approach to science and technology. In
doing so, he has placed himself in the firing line and faced widespread criticism for daring to challenge the current orthodoxy and the conventional way of thinking.

  But what he has actually been revealing is that all of these areas are totally interrelated and we must all see the whole picture – what he often calls ‘the big picture’ – to appreciate the problems that we, as the human race, face.

  Writing this book has been both a challenge and a journey. Its research has taken me around the world in the prince’s slipstream, which has forced me to examine and explore closely his complex beliefs and personal idiosyncrasies.

  It is clear that in Charles we are blessed to have a future king of high intelligence and drive. He may not be an intellectual in an academic sense, but he is a deep-thinking, spiritual man, not cynical but intuitive and instinctive. He is sentimental, too, and perhaps overemotional at times; but he is somebody who cares very deeply about the world and environment we live in, today and for the future. He may be born into huge wealth and privilege, but he has always tried his best to justify that good fortune by working to improve the lot of others.

  He has a great love of the arts, too, of books, of Shakespeare, of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, of the Goons, of the poetry of Dylan Thomas, of the music of Bach, Hubert Parry and Leonard Cohen, of art, particularly the work of Johan Joseph Zoffany, and of the classical architecture of Rome and Wren, and, more recently, of Quinlan Terry. Charles, Prince of Wales, is fundamentally a decent man of integrity and honour who has always tried to put duty before himself.

  Two days after my extended conversation with the prince on board the Australian Government BBJ jet during the Australian tour, on 10 April 2018, at a reception at Government House in Darwin, the final engagement of the visit, the two of us had another, much shorter exchange. Vicki O’Halloran, Administrator of Australia’s Northern Territory, escorted him through an insufferably humid room that uses ineffective, colonial-style giant ceiling fans for ventilation, and I was formally introduced to the prince, as is custom even though we both knew perfectly well who each other was. Without prompting, he again mentioned HMY Britannia. It was clearly something that touched a nerve in our previous conversation. I then informed him how well he personally and the monarchy as an institution had fared in a poll in The Australian newspaper that day. It reported that I had said that the support for the monarchy Down Under was at an eighteen-year high. Perhaps, I should have known better.