Britain is lucky to have King Charles III

This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter, exclusively for Reaction subscribers.

In the early 1980s, when the comedian Spike Milligan put on a show at the Lyric Theatre attended by the then Prince Charles, Milligan made a point of calling him “trainee king” throughout. The pair were friends.

As a young child, the future monarch had heard on the BBC the nonsensical, surrealist and highly popular Goon Show, written by Milligan and featuring Peter Sellers. The final series proper aired on the radio in 1960 when Charles was only 12, but through the published scripts and recordings the young Royal became a fan as a young man.

Later, in the 1980s, the heir to the throne visited the Milligan residence for dinner, where the Goon’s daughter Jane remembers everyone staying up until 4am reading out the unintentionally comical poems of William McGonagall. Interest in Scotland’s Victorian bard, a notoriously bad poet and unlucky individual, infamous for his verses on the Tay Bridge disaster, was revived by Milligan. His 1974 biopic The Great McGonagall is said to be a favourite film of the new King.

In 2004, the Prince’s Trust held a McGonagall dinner in the Signet Library, Edinburgh, raising £20,000 for the Prince’s charities. There were readings, and cigars.

“I am only sorry I cannot attend the dinner myself,” the Prince wrote. “As ever since I was introduced to the great ‘poet and tragedian’ by the Goons many years ago, I have been a devotee of the Dundee ‘versifier’ who walked all the way to Balmoral to see Queen Victoria and was turned away by the policeman.”

The Milligan connection is further evidence that Britain is lucky to have King Charles III. Woven into his character is a very British type of humour and a useful sense of the ridiculous. Charles is the warp and the weft of Britain’s post-War history, a strong link between our nation’s past and future. A figure connected to the Wartime generation yet familiar with the way Britain changed after the War and changes still.

The King has inherited a deep sense of duty from his mother, the late Queen. How strange it is to write of her as the late Queen. The mountain of tributes grows so large that it has all been said, and I won’t add to it other than to say like many millions of others I find her departure almost unbearable.

Happily, one of the Queen’s greatest achievements was her son, the new King, and the sense of continuity that his succession bestows. There were difficulties and human imperfections played out in public, of course. This is the stuff of life. We are lucky to have as new monarch someone who was during his apprenticeship so interested in ideas, in people, in architecture, in the next generation, in the social fabric of the nation.

You didn’t need to agree with all of his campaigning as Prince of Wales to admire his commitment to this country and its people. I didn’t like the climate catastrophism when a less alarmist approach seems more likely to combine improving the environment with keeping the lights on.

His Prince’s Trust is credited with helping almost one million young Britons since the charity was founded in 1976. It exists to help vulnerable young people and has created more than 100,000 entrepreneurs. Down the years I’ve listened many times to critics, often extremely affluent London-centric media folk, describe him in dismissive terms. I always thought when listening to such criticisms that there is, through the Prince’s Trust and other charitable endeavours, probably no-one more in touch with what is really happening on the ground in Britain than our new King. I mean that. Much more in touch than all manner of people who make the noise in this shouty social media age.

On Friday, in his first speech since his mother’s death, King Charles acknowledged that the campaigning on causes stopped the moment he became monarch.

That speech was one of the most powerful pieces of phrasemaking and communication I’ve ever watched live. Not only was it profoundly moving, in the manner in which he paid tribute to the Queen, it was also countercultural. In an era of soundbites, and instagram shortened attention spans, here was a nine minute address that paid us all, the watching audience, his new subjects, the highest compliment possible. We were treated seriously, talked to as grown ups. 

Milligan’s “trainee king” is now the King.

Ukraine advancing

The next few days will be critical. It looks as though the Ukrainian armed forces are making extraordinary breakthroughs in the east. Military analysts are racing to keep up, while Russian nationalist bloggers are depressed by developments. Russia is rushing in reinforcements to combat the advances but Ukrainian planning and targeted use of force, aided one assumes by Western intelligence and advice, has caused reverses that could even turn into a collapse.

This success brings increased risks, if a humiliated Putin lashes out.

Might he opt to exacerbate the nuclear crisis taking place in southeastern Ukraine, at the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant? Zaporizhzhia is still under Russian control, although staff from the Ukrainian state energy company are operating it under duress. It has been shelled and the final power-line to the plant was cut on Monday. The desperate pleas of the International Atomic Energy Agency – it sent a delegation last Saturday and called for an end to shelling – have been ignored by the Kremlin. The Ukrainian government is calling on Russian forces to leave the site so that safety might be restored.

Liz Truss, Prime Minister

What a week for Liz Truss. It is only five days ago since she was declared winner of the Tory leadership contest, beating former Chancellor Rishi Sunak by a narrower margin (57-43) than envisaged. The next day Truss, after Boris, was off to Balmoral to be invited by the Queen to form a government. The new team in Number 10, many young, set about a cabinet reshuffle. There was the announcement of an energy bailout that is of a scale unseen in peacetime. And then on Thursday the Queen died.

There has been some criticism of Truss’s public appearances since. True, she is not a natural speechmaker (and doesn’t claim to be). The curtsy on meeting the King for a first audience was awkward and had a touch of Julie Walters about it, but I wonder if the curtsy custom will continue for much longer under the new monarch. A simple nod, or bow of the head, is better. 

I must say I saw Truss’s appearances quite differently from the critics, and not just in terms of human sympathy. What a time to become Prime Minister.

By the time of Friday evening’s service, held at St Paul’s, Truss was gaining in confidence. On Saturday at the meeting of the Privy Council, alongside the new Prince of Wales and the Queen Consort, Camilla, Truss had the sombre yet determined mien of an Elizabeth I as played by Cate Blanchett. In moments of great historical drama, individuals sometimes find themselves forged, toughened and transformed by events. Truss this weekend looks like someone growing into the role. She is starting to look like a Prime Minister.

Let’s see. If, and this is a big if, the Ukrainian gains are sustained, Europe reorders its energy markets successfully, inflation peaks and an economic downturn is brief, I wonder if the new PM might surprise people.

Why the world’s worst newspaper hates Britain so much

All traditions began somewhere in history as innovations. Perhaps that is how the British should view the appalling behaviour of The New York Times towards Britain since the death of the Queen. Within hours of the news breaking, the NYT’s opinion page was running a screed from an academic saying the late monarch had helped to cover up the bloody history of colonialism, and so on.

One of my earliest memories as a journalist is hearing a senior hack in the pub describing the New York Times as the world’s worst newspaper. Young and inexperienced, I found this denunciation shocking. Wasn’t the NYT one of the greatest newspapers in the world? As I discovered when I started to read it, picking up an edition occasionally from an international press stand, my more experienced colleague was correct. There was good writing in it, of course, but the opinion pages too often were overburdened with sanctimonious, hectoring drivel.

But the people who ran the NYT were not idiots. They realised that the birth of the internet presented an opportunity. There was an untapped global market for sanctimonious, hectoring drivel. No longer would potential readers have to seek out a paper copy of the NYT. It was now available at the click of a button and in real time. And, when the payment infrastructure developed sufficiently, for the price of a monthly or annual subscription.

The NYT now has more than 8m paying subscribers, and more than 1m subscriptions sold outside the US. The company is aiming to have 2m subscriptions sold annually outside the US by 2025. By virtue of it being an English language publication, a big target market for the NYT is Britain.

Doesn’t that mean the NYT should strive to be at least moderately respectful to Britain, if it wants subscribers here?

No, quite the opposite. This is the internet. The niche, paying market the NYT wants in Britain is Britons who can’t stand Britain. There is quite a bit of revenue to be made here. Although the NYT is in competition with The Guardian, which is free to read, The Guardian has deep roots in Manchester and English life and doesn’t hate Britain, I think. The Guardian team just hates much of what goes on in Britain, but wants to change Britain so that it is more like the Guardian thinks it should be. Incidentally, this is a perennially futile mission doomed to failure, because of Britain’s voters.

To make money here the NYT must appeal to those Britons who think the Guardian is way too soft on Britain.

The NYT approach is ruthless and commercially clever. The publisher’s “dystopian UK is doomed” attack pieces appear to be pushed and marketed to go viral, to attract attention and amuse and impress those bitter souls here who get a thrill from seeing other people in this country on social media express annoyance or bewilderment at the horrible articles. Sometimes the writers the NYT uses to assault Britain are, by necessity, not even household names in their own households. If you want something really outlandish, ahistorical, deranged, even, you might have to get it written by a resting London-based academic with a PhD in applied anti-colonialism who thinks the problem with Stalinism is that the old boy didn’t go far enough in his purges.

This is why the NYT does it. To sell subscriptions. The rudeness and lack of manners is a deliberate marketing ploy.

There is a cost to America in this deliberate fostering of alienation, although the cost might be considered a small one and perhaps hardly anyone there will care. But the NYT’s nastiness is one small element of America’s larger image problem, a growing problem I know worries thoughtful American friends and readers of this newsletter. If those of us who like the US and hold it in such great affection, and want it to lead the West, come to associate it primarily with globalised ghastly internet culture, Donald Trump’s antics, twisted news outlets hating Britain, and lucky celebrities making tell-all emotionally incontinent poor little me in my Californian mansion Netflix documentaries, then the special relationship will be eroded.

In contrast, President Biden’s remarks and his conduct following the death of the Queen have been exemplary, offering considerable grounds for hope. The Queen’s funeral, expected to be held on Monday 19 September, will be an extraordinary international gathering, with the mourning led by her successor.

God save the King!