Born to Be King: Prince Charles on Planet Windsor by Catherine Mayer Page B
Authors: Catherine Mayer
Tags: Historical, nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Retail, Europe, Great Britain, Royalty, Presidents & Heads of State
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minds a bit more.” 3
Fully or partly elected alternatives risk eroding these useful differences. Representative democracies are precious things, but not every one of their constituent parts must always entail direct elections for the systems to be truly democratic.
At Republic’s annual general meeting in May 2014, Graham Smith quoted from the final speech made by the famous Labour firebrand Tony Benn ahead of his retirement as a Labour MP. Benn renounced his hereditary peerage to sit in the Commons and returned to the reasons for his decision in his parliamentary valedictory, listing five questions for any governing institution: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” Benn concluded: “If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.” 4 The current House of Lords is not directly accountable to voters but it is subject to reform and even abolition as and when MPs coalesce around a workable plan. What the debates at Republic’s AGM fail to acknowledge is that the monarchy is in a similar position, even if the sovereign is consulted on legislation and would be expected to provide the last signature on any law abolishing the throne. If that day comes, no Windsor monarch is likely to withhold his or her signature or barricade the palace gates.
Graham Smith doesn’t really hold out hope of stopping the coronation but expects King Charles to make the argument for republicans once installed on the throne. “People couldn’t imagine David Cameron being Prime Minister until he was. And I think the same will happen with Charles, and the other thing that will come is ‘Well, hang on a minute, we’ve just changed our head of state and I didn’t get a vote.’ And that’s quite a big thing as well and I think that people kind of talk in theoretical terms saying well we don’t need to vote for them but when they’ve actually seen it change in front of their eyes without ever being asked that might change the way people feel about it.” 5
The secret to galvanizing opposition against the monarchy, Smith says, is to get people angry. He thinks the presumed future King will annoy the hell out of his subjects. Here are some thoughts about how Charles could make himself more loved than loathed.
* * *
Niccol ò Machiavelli, Renaissance Italy’s most celebrated political philosopher, declared that sheep and royalty don’t mix. In his famous treatise The Prince , he tells the story of Emperor Maximinus, who earned the disdain of his subjects by keeping flocks. The cautionary tale is unlikely to chime with a twenty-first-century, sheep-promoting Prince, but Machiavelli also offers more apposite advice. “It makes him contemptible when he is considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavor to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity and fortitude; and in his private dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are irrevocable, and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can hope either to deceive him or get round him,” he wrote. 6 Apart from the injunction against effeminacy, this must count as timeless a piece of wisdom as any perennialist prince could hope to follow.
There’s another nugget the heir to the throne might usefully take on board: Machiavelli counsels princes to keep their servants and soldiers in check. The ranks of Charles’s servants and soldiers—his courtiers and the ground forces implementing his vision through his charities and initiatives—include some of the most talented and dedicated individuals I’ve ever met, as passionate about the Boss as he is in his activism. The more he is criticized, the more they band together in a protective ring, lowering their lances at the outside world—which in
Fully or partly elected alternatives risk eroding these useful differences. Representative democracies are precious things, but not every one of their constituent parts must always entail direct elections for the systems to be truly democratic.
At Republic’s annual general meeting in May 2014, Graham Smith quoted from the final speech made by the famous Labour firebrand Tony Benn ahead of his retirement as a Labour MP. Benn renounced his hereditary peerage to sit in the Commons and returned to the reasons for his decision in his parliamentary valedictory, listing five questions for any governing institution: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” Benn concluded: “If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.” 4 The current House of Lords is not directly accountable to voters but it is subject to reform and even abolition as and when MPs coalesce around a workable plan. What the debates at Republic’s AGM fail to acknowledge is that the monarchy is in a similar position, even if the sovereign is consulted on legislation and would be expected to provide the last signature on any law abolishing the throne. If that day comes, no Windsor monarch is likely to withhold his or her signature or barricade the palace gates.
Graham Smith doesn’t really hold out hope of stopping the coronation but expects King Charles to make the argument for republicans once installed on the throne. “People couldn’t imagine David Cameron being Prime Minister until he was. And I think the same will happen with Charles, and the other thing that will come is ‘Well, hang on a minute, we’ve just changed our head of state and I didn’t get a vote.’ And that’s quite a big thing as well and I think that people kind of talk in theoretical terms saying well we don’t need to vote for them but when they’ve actually seen it change in front of their eyes without ever being asked that might change the way people feel about it.” 5
The secret to galvanizing opposition against the monarchy, Smith says, is to get people angry. He thinks the presumed future King will annoy the hell out of his subjects. Here are some thoughts about how Charles could make himself more loved than loathed.
* * *
Niccol ò Machiavelli, Renaissance Italy’s most celebrated political philosopher, declared that sheep and royalty don’t mix. In his famous treatise The Prince , he tells the story of Emperor Maximinus, who earned the disdain of his subjects by keeping flocks. The cautionary tale is unlikely to chime with a twenty-first-century, sheep-promoting Prince, but Machiavelli also offers more apposite advice. “It makes him contemptible when he is considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavor to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity and fortitude; and in his private dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are irrevocable, and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can hope either to deceive him or get round him,” he wrote. 6 Apart from the injunction against effeminacy, this must count as timeless a piece of wisdom as any perennialist prince could hope to follow.
There’s another nugget the heir to the throne might usefully take on board: Machiavelli counsels princes to keep their servants and soldiers in check. The ranks of Charles’s servants and soldiers—his courtiers and the ground forces implementing his vision through his charities and initiatives—include some of the most talented and dedicated individuals I’ve ever met, as passionate about the Boss as he is in his activism. The more he is criticized, the more they band together in a protective ring, lowering their lances at the outside world—which in
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