What is the point of King Charles III?
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A year on the throne and what has our new King got to show for it? He goes to France on a state visit from 20 to 22 September. With luck the English rugby team, which has had an unexpected and welcome rebirth by winning its first World Cup match against Argentina in Marseille, will keep on winning. There is an England v Chile match in Lille on 23 September, so perhaps the King could stay for that?
The French trip is in place of the cancelled state visit in the spring, which became impossible as much of France was in a state of revolt against their own monarchical president, Emmanuel le Premier. Demonstrations against the modest but maladroit raising of the pension age had turned violent, with the handsome 18th century front doors of the Palais Rohan, the town hall of Bordeaux, burnt down by opponents of Macron.
The left and all the anti-Macronites on the right were looking forward to the President and the King meeting at Versailles, once home to Marie Antoinette. She lost her head during the French Revolution, after her famous (though almost certainly mythical) exchange with a royal flunkey. She asked why the people were revolting. “Because they are starving, your Majesty. They have no bread.” “Let them eat cake” (a poor translation of brioche) was her immortal, if apocryphal, reply.
For Macron to have given a sumptuous banquet at Versailles for the King in the midst of last spring’s revolts would have lacked tact. And so the visit was put off until this month. It will again feature a feast at Versailles under (presumably very heavy) military-police protection.
Six months ago there were hopes that the new King, like his predecessor, Edward VII, might launch a new entente cordiale with France to begin a reset of relations with Europe. Charles instead went to Berlin and addressed the Bundestag.
Until Britain has a change of government and the nation’s leaders catch up with the mammoth change — at least in opinion polls, if not in political leadership circles — at how Brexit is now seen as a major historical error, no-one in Paris, Berlin, Brussels or anywhere in the EU is much interested in anything Britain does or says.
So this visit is one of politesse, not politique. The French will be friendly. The King will spend time in Aquitaine, and its capital Bordeaux. Brits are still very present in the region. With the help of friendly Maires they have kept being able to live in France, even if they have to go home after 90 days because of the Brexit rules negotiated by the medieval France specialist, Lord (David) Frost.
The best-selling foreign author in Aquitaine is the British crime writer, Martin Walker, once the star of the Guardian’s foreign pages as their man in Moscow, Washington, and Brussels. Now his police thrillers, set in the Dordogne and based on a local French police chief and his network of English friends, have sold 7 million copies, even outselling the legendary Peter Mayne.
Walker is an official Ambassador for the vineyards of the Bergerac region and takes part in the furious debates about whether the more innovative wine growers of Bergerac wines now have the edge over their self-satisfied, self-important vignerons of the Bordeaux grapes. He is recognised everywhere he goes in the Dordogne and could set up much more interesting rencontres for the King than those permitted by the unimaginative protocol chiefs of the Palace and the Foreign Office.
But France, like Britain, will be asking: what is the point of King Charles III? When does he make a mark? After France he celebrates his 75th birthday in November. That’s young by the standards of Joe Biden, Pope Francis, or Rupert Murdoch, but the King — with his stooped head and wispy white hair — seems older than his years.
He has been unable to shape a new narrative about his monarchy. It all feels the same as in the last, slowing-down decades of his late mother. She remains the monarch Britain knows and respects, not her son.
He does not know what to do with his brother Andrew, forever associated with an American criminal pimp, Jeffrey Epstein, and allegations of teenage sex.
Charles’ own son could not be bothered to go and support the Lionesses in Australia, even though he is president of the Football Association. William refuses to wear a kilt, the below-belt symbol of Scottishness. He seems to get his pleasures from a narrow circle of friends in Norfolk and plays no obvious role in national life.
In France Charles is le Roi d’Angleterre. The clumsy post-Brexit efforts to banish the term “Great Britain” and replace it by “United Kingdom” only puzzles the French. All Europeans know what “GB” stands for; they know who die Briten or los Británicos are, but have no idea what “United Kingdomers” might be.
The French are not so much pro- or anti-Brexit as just puzzled by it. In their logical Cartesian minds, they can see no evident benefit to their old friend and rival in cutting links with Europe.
But Charles dare not say anything on that. Nor on any of the problems that beset his realm. His mother reigned over a Great Britain that had many political conflicts during her reign, but nothing like the general morosity and sense that too much is now broken that prevails today. “Something must be done,” as his great uncle Edward VIII once said. But no one knows what the “something” might be.
Charles seems unable, unwilling, uninterested in saying or doing anything that might mark his reign. What does he think about Europe? What does he think about our single biggest social growth industry? (The number of beggars outside every supermarket or train station in his realm.)
Do he and the innumerable royal cousins, aunts, nephews, and nieces, and royal hangers-on have to occupy giant estates of houses, flats in the centre of London? Almost every other royal palace in Europe is now a public building. Must they be all reserved for Charles and his second wife?
The right wing media and commentariat have a visceral hate for his son’s African-American wife. Why not make clear that she, his son and his grandchildren are welcome to live under his blessing in the country Prince Harry served with valour in Afghanistan?
His father was the son of a Greek prince. His grandmother lived in a convent in Athens. Why not send back the looted Parthenon Marbles, the greatest theft of cultural heritage in the history of European civilisation?
At his Coronation – remember that? — did he have to say he would defend the Anglican Church, thus alienating every Catholic and adherents of other faiths in the British Isles? Perhaps it is unfair to ask a man about to be 75 to reinvent himself and his role.
So far the reign of King Charles interests no-one and inspires no-one. He is like a King of Belgium. We know there is one but not much else.
King Charles sits on a throne, but is anyone at home?
Denis MacShane is a former Minister of Europe.
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