Attacking Prince Charles is monstrously unfair

Fifteen years ago, a great house was in danger. Around the beginning of the 20th century, buoyed up by coal royalties in Wales, the ownership of Cardiff docks, and copper mines in Chile, the Marquesses of Bute were one of the richest families in the world. They owned several great houses and employed hundreds of servants. Then the world changed. Taxation and labour costs made the old order unsustainable. By this century, the family had fallen back to Castle Stuart on Bute itself. Welsh houses had been given away and Dumfries House was put up for sale. It was a palace of treasures. Nothing had been altered, including the magnificent furniture, since the Adam brothers had completed the building. The estimated value of the whole estate was £45 million. That could have been a lot higher, but there was a problem. Dumfries House was a beauty, but in a scruffy part of industrial Ayrshire: not the ideal setting for a country house. So the estate was to be sold. The furniture had already been catalogued and was on its way to the sale room. A unique collection would be scattered, while the House itself would have been broken up into flats.

Then Prince Charles intervened. He set about raising the £45 million, and not only for a house-as-museum project. The Dumfries House estate became a centre for craft courses and apprenticeship schemes, creating jobs and imparting skills. In a world where it often seems that what can go wrong will go wrong, it is surely a pleasure to salute an unalloyed success – and the credit is due to the Prince of Wales and his vision. 

But that required money which is now causing trouble, for no good reason. Rich men made donations and at least one of them was given an honour. So what? Down the decades, plenty of rich men have in effect bought their way on to the Honours List by giving money to good causes, including political parties. Assuming that the donors are honourable in a broader sense, why is this a problem? After the First World War, Lloyd George went too far. He virtually turned the sale of honours, including peerages, into a cottage industry with price lists. The King was unhappy and Lloyd George’s many enemies used this as an excuse to discredit him, His principal agent in these transactions, Maundy Gregory, went briefly to gaol. But this did not prevent the discreet use of the honours system to help relieve the public purse. If a Saudi received a CBE for helping to save Dumfries House, he is entitled to feel pride, as should those who facilitated the honour. 

“Saudi”: that has become part of the problem. In 2018, a Saudi journalist called Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Istanbul. It seems likely that the Saudi government was complicit at a high level. Obviously, this should not have happened but we ought to keep a sense of proportion. Returning to a world in which what can go wrong will go wrong, we live in a world full of human rights abuses, involving far more than one unfortunate journalist. In Saudi Arabia, on balance, matters have been improving and the current Ruler, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is a convinced reformer. If he were overthrown, he would not be replaced by a liberal democrat. Over the past 80 years the Saudi Peninsula, from Islamo-feudalism to modernisation, has been transformed more rapidly and more radically than any other comparable region in the whole of history. Instead of making impossible demands on their ruler, we should embrace the Saudis as allies, wishing MBS every good fortune in stabilising his country and securing his throne.

The securing of thrones brings us to an urgent task at home. There are those who argue for our monarchy on utilitarian grounds. They see it as an extension of the tourist board, better at ceremonial that the former politicians who serve a time as head of state in many European countries. But those are emaciated reasons for upholding the greatest of our institutions. Monarchy is a form of secular transcendence. As such, it requires faith, as does religion. You cannot logic-chop your way to God, or to a monarch. There needs to be a leap. You have, as it were, to take the knee.

There is one reason to be thankful for our monarchy which does have a quasi-utilitarian element. Since 1900, Britain has gone through convulsive changes. If not on a Saudi scale, they too were the tinder for political and social instability. Two world wars, the loss of Ireland, the loss of Empire, demographic changes, social changes, regular outbreaks of economic crisis: given all that, we are too ready to take it for granted that the country held together. In fact, that is a matter for thanksgiving, and much of the credit is due to our monarchs. In an epoch of profound change, the throne is a conduit of continuity and a deep source of reassurance.

As such, it is a deep source of covert resentment to those who are on a perpetual Gramscian long march through our institutions towards the ultimate goal of destroying them. They are too sensible to move against the Queen. But Her Majesty will not be with us for ever. In a new reign, the Monarchy’s enemies will strike. They will not call for abolition – at least, not immediately – but there will be “helpful” suggestions which are actually born of malice. Why do we need all these palaces, all these princes? Why should the coronation be dominated by ancient rituals and families? Discard the old pomp and ceremony. Let us have a woke coronation and an Ikea monarchy.

But once you let in daylight and throw out grandeur, this marvellous, mystical inheritance from our past will fade and diminish. That is why Prince Charles is now under attack. That is why those who believe in the monarchy must be ready to spring to his defence. The monarchy will have to endure the embarrassments arising from peripheral princes. But Prince Charles has done nothing wrong.

There are difficulties. A true heir of Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales is a deeply serious man in an era when seriousness often encounters snide adolescent sniggering. In a post-religious England, he is continuously engaged with the religious dimension of human life. He is also committed to doing good, in an age when “do-gooder” is a term of abuse. But the Prince’s Trust is one of the most successful welfare organisations in the world. Through it, he has helped hundreds of thousands of youngsters, for which he is hardly ever given credit.

At Dumfries House, he has also helped many youngsters, while preserving an important part of the country’s heritage. Yet he is now under attack. That is a monstrous injustice.