The king
and Keir
Two men,
worlds apart, are Britain’s diplomatic double act in Samoa. But there’s more to
connect Keir Starmer and King Charles III than meets the eye.
October 25,
2024 7:00 am CET
By Dan Bloom
https://www.politico.eu/article/keir-starmer-uk-commonwealth-monarchy-king-charles/
APIA, SAMOA
— One is a consummate politician who mellowed his public views before finally
assuming Britain’s top job … and the other is Keir Starmer.
King Charles
III — who is presiding over a biennial summit of 55 Commonwealth nations in
Samoa Friday — and his newish U.K. premier are enjoying their first outing on
the world stage as Britain’s latest iteration of a longest-running diplomatic
double act: monarch and prime minister.
With the
king hosting a luncheon and dinner for Commonwealth leaders Friday, both
attended by Starmer, the pair may well need all the diplomatic skills they can
muster.
Charles, who
paused cancer treatment to visit Australia and the South Pacific, was heckled
by an indigenous senator in Canberra, while Starmer has tried to rebuff
Caribbean nations’ calls for slavery reparations, choosing to focus on growth
and climate assistance instead.
Charles used
his opening speech at Friday’s summit to call for action to combat the
“existential threat of climate change,” including “cutting emissions, building
resilience as far as possible to both the current and forecast impacts of
climate change, and conserving and restoring nature, both on land and in the
sea.”
Centrist PM,
centrist king?
At first
glance, there is little in common between the PM and king, men only 13 years
apart but with upbringings a world apart. Starmer, 62, often speaks of the
humble origins of his toolmaker father; 75-year-old Charles’ mother was the
most famous woman on earth — and one of the richest.
But both
wear their roles heavily, occasionally gloomily. Observers note similarities in
their style and — whisper it, because constitutionally the king does not have
any — perhaps their politics.
“My guess is
that they would hit it off quite well,” said Jonathan Dimbleby, a personal
friend of Charles and author of a 1994 biography. “Starmer is a thoughtful,
serious person who can communicate in a way that he, the king, I think would
respond well to on issues of substance.”
At least it
has been easier to present a united front between monarch and premier than at
the last Commonwealth heads of government meeting (known as CHOGM) in Rwanda.
Charles’ private views on the immorality of then-PM Boris Johnson deporting
asylum seekers there were leaked days before the 2022 summit began. (The pair
were later all smiles over a 15-minute cup of tea.)
By contrast,
Starmer scrapped the Rwanda plan and leans into green projects beloved of the
king. While Charles has to be strictly neutral on party politics, he has a
sense of “compassion, social cohesion,” said Dimbleby. “He uses the phrase ‘a
community of communities’ as a way of describing a social environment that is
healthy.”
Of course,
the multimillionaire who spent seven decades as heir to the throne is “not
socially a radical,” added Dimbleby. Left-wing ex-Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn
“would not have been to his taste, I suspect, as a future prime minister. If he
has any politics, I suspect it’s pretty centrist, and therefore he will
probably find it pretty easy to communicate in a useful way with Starmer.”
Swords and
sleepovers
The pair’s
first known meeting neatly sums up the British establishment — when Charles
knighted Starmer in 2014 for his work as director of public prosecutions.
One person
who knows Starmer said he and Charles have had a good personal relationship
since, speaking periodically after the former became leader of the opposition
and when polls suggested he was on course to become prime minister.
Being PM
comes with the diary entry of a private audience every Wednesday with the
monarch. In April last year, Starmer was invited to the king’s pre-Easter
“sleepover” at Windsor Castle, and days before this year’s July election, he
was placed next to the king’s Private Secretary Clive Alderton at a state
banquet.
It is quite
a change of tack for Starmer, who said in 2005: “I often used to propose the
abolition of the monarchy.” But the person quoted above — granted anonymity,
like others in this story, to speak about the sensitive issue — argued that the
future prime minister’s views in the 1990s did not define how he felt to his
core: “His small-c conservatism comes from growing up in a working-class or
middle-class family in Reigate, not from being a radical human rights lawyer in
North London.”
Charles,
too, has mellowed his well-known views on issues such as climate change and
housing, at least in public, as part of the strict convention of neutrality
that comes with being king.
His style in
the past was far from laid back. One former minister recalled Charles, as
prince of Wales, inviting them for tea at St James’s Palace, where they found
themselves discussing policy for more than an hour. A second ex-minister
recalled the future king questioning ministers on the detail of green finance —
though never in a way that would lobby for a policy, they insisted. While he
would occasionally “raise eyebrows” in private, they said, “what he will do is
come up with ideas or offers. He will say, ‘This group of people deserve a pat
on the back — would it be helpful to you, minister, if I did an event with them
or I send you something on that?’”
‘He pulled
me to one side’
George
Brandis, Australia’s former high commissioner to the U.K., recalls how the
then-prince of Wales was “very eager to see” Australia commit to a target of
net zero carbon emissions by 2050. When Canberra did — days before the COP26
climate summit in 2021 — “Charles was delighted about that. He had made it
pretty clear on a number of occasions that he was very much hoping that
Australia would do that. In fact, as I read it, [he] was a bit impatient that
we hadn’t done so until relatively late in the piece.”
Brandis
added: “He is obviously very conscious of the constitutional limitations of his
role as king, and I’m sure that his public or private advocacy of causes will
be much less in evidence now that he is on the throne. But nevertheless … I
found him very determined to make his views known and to be an advocate for the
causes he deeply cares about, particularly environmental ones.”
That does
not make the king humorless; like Starmer, he is said to be warm and cracks
jokes in private. Charles also shows “strong emotions,” more than his late
mother, said Dimbleby: “He can get very frustrated, and those around him
sometimes see that. They also see his total commitment to issues that matter
and his ability to speak in a very informed way about them, and in private he
feels perfectly free to do that.”
In September
2023, a year almost to the day after his own mother’s death, the king wrote a
deeply personal letter to then-Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, who had recently
lost his father. Shapps told POLITICO: “He left it on my bed at Dumfries House
[a royal residence in Scotland]. It was a beautifully written, hand-annotated
letter from the king. Later, when I went downstairs for dinner, he pulled me to
one side and said, ‘I know that there are no words that can match losing a
parent, but I do hope you found my letter.’ … He is an unbelievably thoughtful
man, and it was a heartfelt thing for him to do.”
Charles
receives a daily private email on politics from a member of the government
whips’ office, the vice chamberlain of the household. While Queen Elizabeth
encouraged her vice chamberlains to fill their letters with gossip — and would
ask ministers about individual staff in the Commons tearoom — people who have
dealt with Charles in recent years say he is generally more interested in
granular policy.
But the true
nature of the relationship between Starmer and the monarch is, ultimately,
unknown. The Wednesday audience is for the two of them alone, and Starmer’s
office declined to even confirm ahead of CHOGM whether they would meet
one-to-one.
Starmer, for
his part, keeps up his end of the traditional royal secrecy, even amongst his
inner circle. “He never talks about the king. He’s very disciplined,” said one
Cabinet minister.
A marriage
of convenience
The
relationship between a monarch and their government is a two-way street — as
the king is ministers’ ultimate tool of soft power. Charles was expected to
hold private meetings with other heads of state at CHOGM, and unlike those
between Starmer and heads of government, there would be no readout afterward.
This means leaders “can let their hair down a little bit” in the king’s
company, said Dimbleby.
King Charles
III has to be strictly neutral on party politics, but he has a sense of
“compassion, social cohesion.” |
An MP who
has worked alongside the palace pointed out that Charles knows the chief
executives of oil companies — and when the king invites them in to speak, they
are unlikely to say no. His close relationships with figures in the Gulf, where
he has drummed up sometimes controversial donations for his charities, are
helpful for delicate Middle East geopolitics.
The second
ex-minister quoted above said: “He will know people for decades, including
high-power people who are moving through jobs. He has more of that continuity
than anyone in any government. It is a tremendous help.”
Starmer and
the king have even walked down the aisle together — literally. At an afterparty
for the U.K. investment summit on Oct. 14, the PM escorted Charles down the
grand nave of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral.
Some of the
CEOs and investors waiting under the 18th century dome abandoned their usual
poise to whip out their camera phones, said one person present. Those who spoke
to the king included executives from the Qatar Investment Authority and Yasir
Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund who chairs
the Newcastle United football club.
Down to
business
This
stardust helped draw focus to the king’s big moment — his speech at CHOGM’s
opening ceremony on Friday. He was open about his past campaigning for the
climate “for many years,” and appeared to nod subtly to the summit row over
slavery reparations.
He said: “I
understand from listening to people across the Commonwealth how the most
painful aspects of our past continue to resonate. It is vital therefore that we
understand our history to guide us to make the right choices in the future.”
Samoa’s
government approved £84,000 to upgrade his accommodation, according to local
media. The last time most leaders will have seen him was when he was draped in
gold at his coronation. Starmer, who traveled to CHOGM on a separate plane and
mostly did separate events, was a bit player by comparison.
But that has
not stopped the question of whether the king’s realms will shrink further. Of
the 55 nations attending CHOGM, 15 (including Britain) have Charles as king.
Former member Barbados became a republic in 2021, and Jamaica “remains hopeful”
that it will follow in 2025, Foreign Minister Alando Terrelonge told the
Independent in April.
Counterintuitively,
though, this peeling away could help secure the future of the Commonwealth — by
decoupling it from the vestiges of empire and turning it into a forward-looking
body on climate and trade. Or so its supporters hope.
Samir Puri,
an associate fellow at the British foreign affairs think tank Chatham House,
argued Charles’ successor Prince William would understand the pace of global
change as an “older millennial.” He added: “It would be in his interests … not
to turn away from that de-linking of monarchy and Commonwealth, to allow the
Commonwealth to survive.”
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