Too ‘woke’ for the throne? Charles III has a hard act to follow, but there’s no reason to panic

It may have been my imagination, but I thought I heard God Save the Queen being sung even more lustily and loudly by the crowd at the Cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday. “Long to reign over us” was a poignant line for veterans especially, with the Queen, in whose name they served, unable to attend the proceedings. It was a bit of a premonition really, and not a particularly pleasant one, of our near future.

Britain, it’s fair to say, has become a fairly divided and bewildered place in recent years, with familiar ideas and institutions being trashed, left, right and centre, so to speak. Soon another great constant in our lives will be gone. The outpouring of grief will be astonishing when the moment arrives, bigger even than the collective national nervous breakdown after the death of Diana in 1997. The sense of loss will be personal for some, and real, and there will be that great sense of loss: a Britain, once again, diminished. There are very few people around, after all, who can remember at first hand life before Elizabeth II. It may be all very irrational, because business and life will go on, but still “a moment”, and the advent of a new monarch, albeit an old face, will be unsettling.

Some fear that King Charles III will himself trash the institution of the monarchy by being “woke”, whatever “woke” is, as he might quip. The idea is that the new head of state will become the ultimate instrument and embodiment of a metropolitan elite, with its entrenched progressive views and preaching - the horror - traditional values of tolerance and compassion. If so, then he won’t be so very different from Elizabeth II who devoted her life to defending a multicultural and multiracial Britain and Commonwealth of Nations. Her homilies usually had a bit more meaning to them than met the ear.

It is thought that the Prince of Wales, who was once mocked for talking to his plants, will create an environmental activist monarchy, “pushing” the case for saving the planet like an elderly, even more grumpy version of Greta Thunberg with a big crown on its head. They fret that the “Green King” will use what influence he may have with his ministers to tear our gas boilers out, and scrap every old petrol and diesel vehicle on the road and tax our air flights (while he and Camilla go around in private jets and vast limousines).

The House of Windsor’s answer to Che Guevara will be firing off memos written in his own spidery hand. The emails and the letters from Buckingham Palace to 10 Downing Street will demand such outrageous things as probity in public life, adding by the rule of law, showing some human concern for migrants at risk of drowning in the English Channel, and respect for the feelings of people of colour and trans rights.

Such concerns seem to derive from a misunderstanding of the constitution, and the man. First, the monarch cannot tell the prime minister what to do; in fact the convention works in precisely the opposite direction. Boris Johnson notoriously takes no notice of anyone anyway, his great strength but also probably fatal flaw as premier.

Second, the new King will probably realise he can’t be as outspoken as he was when he tried to carve out a role for himself as Prince of Wales. As monarch, he will have a new job, to be done in a new way. He is Britain’s longest serving work apprentice (he turned 73 on Sunday), so he’s learned about his new role by long exposure to the Queen’s example. He may also have lost some of his youthful impatience and self-indulgence.

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Third, though most, if not all, of Charles’ views are broadly consensual in any case. Being “woke” doesn’t make you a Marxist or a statue vandal; it’s simply a matter of respect and good manners. It really shouldn’t be controversial anyway. No doubt some, who believe in a flat earth, would be offended if he got up at a Cop conference and declared that the earth was basically round, just as there are some right now who think the royal family taking the Covid vaccine is part of a vast globalist plot run by Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab. The climate deniers will be upset if he speaks out on climate change, but they should reflect that his mother and his sons also did precisely that (though she was harder to attack). Preaching tolerance and mutual respect will no doubt be taken as pitching a woke agenda, but there we are. A monarch who says and does nothing isn’t much use either.

We need not, then, worry about the constitution. Instead, we can continue to debate the important, but not really political or constitutional challenges that Charles faces. What will be his “regnal name”, seeing as he can call himself what he likes. If his “brand” is so tarnished he might signal a fresh, albeit traditional, start by taking “George VII” and saying that he’ll do things the same as his mother and grandfather, George VI.

Charles has already spent many months wondering what to do about his brother, Andrew, as legal proceedings against him grind inexorably on. Or whether we should call his wife Queen Camilla, still an upsetting thing for the Di fan club. Or how he can organise some rapprochement with Harry and Meghan, still potential assets to the firm.

The Prince of Wales, above all, knows he has a hard act to follow. He’ll no doubt do his best and all that, but in a hereditary system, there’s no choice in the matter. The public and politicians have no say in who gets the job, even if they can say how he ought to do it. He’ll be wise enough to listen to that.