Amid all the usual froth and fury, Twitter did manage to throw up one decent observation during that historic week this time last year. ‘There’s a pint of milk in my fridge,’ ran a much-repeated meme. ‘It has seen two monarchs and two prime ministers – and it’s still going strong.’
This not only had the merit of being true, given the appointment of Liz Truss as PM on September 6 and the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8. It also seemed a thoroughly British response to what might become a very grave crisis.
For in most of the world, the idea of a country losing both a head of state and a head of government in the space of three days would be a recipe for serious civil disorder, if not civil war.
It can happen to the most advanced democracies. Witness the mayhem in the U.S. (where the two roles are merged) when it was time for Donald Trump to leave office and his henchmen laid siege to Capitol Hill in January 2021. Many organisations are at their most vulnerable when there is sudden transition at the top.
In Britain, however, no shots were fired, no mobs took to the streets. There was barely a cross word. Why such a seamless transition? It was, I believe, because of something we either mock or take for granted: the inherent stability and continuity that come with having a constitutional monarchy.
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Charles’s first year as King has reinforced royalty’s granite sense of permanence. Pictured: Camilla and Charles on the day of his Coronation
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A royal expert said Charles’s Coronation photo showed the sovereign as a ‘monarch who knows his own mind’
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In his post-Coronation ‘team’ photo, who should be immediately to the King’s right but the one other person in the family who has been performing royal duties for as long as he has: his sister
The Government had been inert all through the summer of 2022 and the political situation febrile and angry as ever that week. Yet it all seemed of secondary importance on September 8. The big question was: would the nation rally round its new King? And it did.
That was in no small part because Charles III hit the ground running. No one at the Palace needed any reminding of the perils of an absent monarch. The memory of 1997, when the Queen remained at Balmoral after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, still lingers. Although she did so with the best of motives, namely to throw a ring of compassion and normality around Diana’s sons, a vociferous section of the public and the Press demanded that she should be with her people.
As the days went on, so tempers rose – only for a complete change of public mood once the Queen and Prince Philip finally reappeared in the capital on the eve of Diana’s funeral. After stopping their car outside the Palace to look at the great expanse of flowers and candles, they heard the first indicator that the tide was turning: warm applause.
That is why, less than 24 hours after the death of Elizabeth II, the new King and Queen Camilla were on their way from Balmoral to London. They, too, stopped their car outside the Palace to meet the grieving crowds. I was in the thick of it that day and the response was not just one of deep sympathy – but also appreciation. In addition to seeing a son mourning his mother, here was the Sovereign leading his people.
Their first year in charge hardly enjoyed a ‘honeymoon’ period. Within weeks, the sniping from Montecito started as the Sussexes embarked on a protracted grumble about the awfulness of Britain, its Press and its first family
People forget that the King has been on the receiving end of protests and placards since his student days. The shouters move on. He does not
With dusk falling, the King made that historic address to the nation on television, solemnly pledging himself to his people, ‘as the Queen herself did with such unswerving devotion’ and sending her on her ‘last great journey to join my dear late papa’. A passionate champion of Shakespeare, he concluded with words from Hamlet: ‘May ‘flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’ ‘ That he had well and truly nailed it was confirmed three days later by a YouGov poll on public reactions to the broadcast. It showed that an astonishing 94 per cent thought it had been a ‘very good’ or ‘good’ speech. You don’t normally see figures like that outside North Korea or Russia.