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I am a monarchist for a very simple reason. There has to be a head of state and I don't want that person also to be the leader of the government. The symbolic functions of leading the nation must be carried out with dignity and continuity. To do that, the monarch doesn't need to do much except behave well and look the part. In just this way, the Queen, heaven preserve Her Majesty, has carried out her duties quite irreproachably. She always conducts herself admirably on state occasions. We could not hope for a better heraldic beast.
And, just as important, she has never tried to make herself inappropriately interesting. She doesn't suffer from the delusion that she is Queen because of her powerful intellect or engaging personality. So we don't actually know very much about her personal preferences. She favours some pretty garish colours for her coats and dresses, although possibly only to help people spot her from a distance. She evidently has a bit of a thing about corgis, a snappish breed most people don't care for so much. And she obviously loves the geegees. Beyond this, though, who knows what does it for her?
Alas, we cannot say the same of her unfortunate son, Prince Charles, 60 today. The Prince of Wales has chosen to share with us his opinions on many matters. On some of them, such as the importance of wildflower meadows, I could not agree with him more. On others, such as alternative medicine, I think he talks pitiful twaddle.
But it makes no difference. He should not be inviting his prospective subjects to evaluate him on the basis of his views, good or bad. Having done so, he has completely devalued his own currency.
This week, the BBC broadcast an hour-and-a-half long programme to celebrate his birthday, Charles at 60: The Passionate Prince. It was intolerably sycophantic, in my view a much greater disgrace to public broadcasting than the puerilities of Ross and Brand.
There were a few little gems. It was interesting to see the German in him breaking out, as when he called GM crops "verboten" and proclaimed his love of Wagner. It was funny to hear this man who owes everything to his descent say, without irony, talking of his gardening actitivities, "it's worthwhile taking a bit of trouble in getting a good source of seed, as there is a lot of heredity in it".
But the main illumination provided by this boring and humiliating documentary was to show how deferentially people behave around Prince Charles. On every occasion we saw, they were one and all beaming, nodding, and chuckling with delight at being in his presence.
It is understandable, it is human, but it has made Prince Charles completely deluded about the worth of his opinions. He lives in unreality. In fact, he's got a nasty case of the Michael Jacksons. And for us monarchists, that's little short of a disaster.
Poetic justice in the jungle
Until now, nobody knew what to do with failed politicians. The commonest solution, retiring and writing a pointless biography, never worked very well. Now, though, the future is bright. Brian Paddick, the flopped candidate to become Mayor of London, and Robert Kilroy-Silk, the former Labour MP who transited through UKIP before forming a daft party of his own, are both on the new I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! They'll almost certainly be filmed in their knickers and eating worms.
A great advance, this, which has set me dreaming about who else I'd like to see similarly challenged. Shirley Williams is probably too much to ask, but I'm sure Tony would do it if the money was right.
Prettifying the dirty protest
Hunger, the much praised film about the IRA man Bobby Sands starving himself to death in prison, is disturbing. It's directed by Steve McQueen, the Turner Prize-winning artist, and it's more an installation than a movie. It is extremely slow, for the most part speechless, and it's preoccupied with its own formal procedures.
McQueen makes no reference to the crimes committed by the imprisoned IRA men. “I am an artist. I have no answers to the bigger political questions,” he has explained. But that hasn't prevented him from glamourising Bobby Sands's suicide with an extended hallucination, as he expires, of his boyhood days as a cross-country runner, cornily meant to suggest he has run his race to the end. Hunger is a portrait of a holy martyr, little less than a devotional aid. In context, then, completely objectionable.
Reader views (3)
David Sexton's opening statement betrays a certain lack of awareness of the alternative to a monarchy when it comes to heads of state:
"I am a monarchist for a very simple reason. There has to be a head of state and I don't want that person also to be the leader of the government."
It is true that under the presidential model favoured in the USA, for example, the President is indeed the head of government. However, there are also states (such as the Irish Republic) in which the elected First Citizen serves in a wholly symbolic manner, as titular figurehead alone. If fear of a political head of state is all that is holding Mr Sexton behoven to the anachronistic, and, indeed parasitic, nonsense of monarchy, he can abandon it at will, safe in the knowledge that a truly democratic state, with authority deriving from the people, represented by an apolitical figurehead is indeed possible.
Welcome to the Republican movement, David.
- Edward Marlowe, London., 14/11/2008 18:38
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I'm amazed! The press gave Prince Charles a hard time almost from the moment he was born - and here they are still at it when he reaches sixty! It's almost pathological. The reference to 'pitiful twaddle' takes some beating. For many of us, he is a pleasant change from a world of grinning 'celebrities', condescending politicians and cheating bankers. He gets no more fawning from the folk around him than do these three.
- John Problem, Hackney Wick, London, UK, 14/11/2008 18:15
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It is a shame that this vain glorious man is to be the next king and bring with him the wonderful Camilla
- Peter Berg, Wembley, 14/11/2008 13:31
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