THE MAN WHO WOULD BE PRESIDENT

Prince Charles 'compared Russian action to Nazi's' BBC 



 I think I have already made clear my view about comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, see http://alextalbot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/russia-and-crimea-danzig-of-ukrainian.html. Hitler was a psychopath who having gained supreme power in Germany set about exterminating Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally ill. He invaded Poland, Ukraine and Russia with the sole aim of depopulating the region by starvation and mass murder to create ‘lebensraum,’ i.e. living space for the German population who would rule this vast colony, keeping a few Slavs as slave/servants. Whatever the similarities there are between Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his attempts to destabilise Ukraine and Hitler’s behaviour in 1938-39, and there are some, Putin is no Hitler. Which leads me to the Idiot Prince.  
The Prince it seems wants to make the monarchy more active in public life, indeed he is said to want to make the role more ‘presidential.’ To that effect he has already lobbied for those policies that President Windsor wishes to see implemented, though as mere ‘subjects’ we are not being permitted to see the letters he has written outlining his policy preferences. The Attorney general has forbidden their publication on the curious grounds that to do so would expose the Prince as no longer politically neutral and consequently unfit to be a constitutional monarch.[1] Well excuse me for being picky but isn’t that precisely a definition of the public interest?
We are constantly sold the monarchy on the grounds that the Queen is above politics, stands aloof, outside the fray, regal and beyond reproach. Whether you buy this model or not, and I don’t, this is what we are sold, constitutional monarchy, an arrangement  that dates back to the Bill of Rights in 1689 and has evolved slowly over the centuries since, as the idea that the monarch should hold political power was buried. That is anyhow what we are sold.
Charles it seems is unhappy with this settlement, hankers for the days when the Kings opinions held sway and the frustrated dauphin rails against the inadequacies of an age that does not see things his way. Now we have the same crowd who have hitherto sold us the silent apolitical monarchy rush to Charles’s defence. The man, they say has a right to an opinion and to express it boldly. Well having your cake and eating it may be an attractive proposition but in this case it is not a persuasive argument.[2]
Already the man who would be King/President has interfered in the political process by lobbying for his pet causes and now stumbles from gaff to gaff like a drunk in a nightclub. As a man of course Charlie has a right to his opinions, and I for one would fight for that right. He is also entitled to harbour fantasies about becoming president, though for that to happen we would have to become a republic and he would have to go about the tedious process of getting himself elected. Which gives me an idea. Set Charlie free, free the Windsor one. Let him abdicate, express his opinions loudly for anyone in the bar still listening and let him put his name down to become first President of the Republic of England and Wales, (Scotland and Northern Ireland may want alternative arrangements). I have to say though I don’t fancy his chances.
Addendum
I see that members of the LGBT support groups have welcomed the Princes remarks. For myself I would find the Princes concern for human rights more convincing if it extended to the medieval theocratic dictatorships run by some of his royal Middle Eastern friends. Regimes not noted for their LGBT policies.


[2] Though I did hear one defence of Charles on the radio yesterday that he was ‘still learning the constraints of the role.’ Prince Charles became Prince of Wales in 1969, if he were learning the piano at this rate he would have yet to fully master chopsticks.


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