I never met the late Queen Elizabeth. I did, however, once try to bar Charles’s entry to the Cambridge Union Debating Society…
There has been predictable criticism of UK Royalty for failing to denounce slavery, colonialism, class inequality, etc. but this misunderstands constitutional monarchy. ..we often have to look at the monarch’s actions and symbols.
Integrity, public service, concern for the natural world and for the socially excluded are fundamental to market societies – greed is not good for social cohesion and the maintenance of order by acts of state power rapidly becomes a source of conflict and a drag on the economy. Soft social control may not be our preference but it has had a remarkably good run. King Charles is likely to understand better than most, as his mother did, that a constitutional monarch stands for values rather than policies.