Charles peeking at a tree planted by his predecessor, Prince Edward. Credit: Chris Jackson - Pool/Getty Images
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I wonder if Brexit and Boris Johnson, PM, would be possible without monarchy, for they seem connected. Boris acolytes are fuelled by loss, as is he: loss of the kind of power that let fools rule empire, if British. Why, they moan, can they not still? It feels suspiciously like a tantrum.
Elizabeth II, who grumpily planted a tree this week, insisting she could still wield a spade, is the reluctant link to this imperial past. She makes us, unconsciously and inaccurately, feel safe in what is soon to be Boris’s Brexit Blunderland. What we must horribly call her brand is Duty: how can we not feel safe, when she is dedicated to us? But nothing lasts forever. She is 93.
Fear prevents us thinking about what will happen when she dies; better to live in a dream in which jam, and perhaps butter, will maintain us as the fifth largest economy on earth. We were fine in the world wars, an imbecile told the BBC recently in a vox pop, forgetting that we lost close to 1.5 million souls and took $3 billion from America after 1945.
Meanwhile, we have self-indulgent political chaos and, for distraction, gossip without end. The Duchess of Sussex goes to Wimbledon in jeans. She and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, who apparently likes gardening, are portrayed as avarice and benevolence. Meghan asks not to be photographed in a place that contains multiple television cameras. She spends blah pounds on a kitchen in Berkshire. She will not release the names of her son Archie Harrison’s godparents – is one of them a Teletubbie, or George Clooney?
Amid this babble, what we are not gossiping about is Charles III, probably because we have known him longer and he is not as photogenic as his sons’ wives. Even so, he is creeping up on the throne like one of his plants; he is stealthy, and he should be. Some people still think he had his first wife killed; and he has never clarified whether he will – and I think he will, because he is a nostalgist of the worst kind – crown his second wife Queen Camilla.
Charles has been Prince of Wales for 61 years. That is a long overture, even for monarchy, which copes in centuries. And he has been Prince of Wales for longer than any other; the runner-up in this competition which no one wants to win – a metaphor for futility – was Edward VII with a mere 60 years.
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