By A. N. Wilson This is a potential constitutional crisis that’s going to place an immense burden on William
Gaza ceasefire hopes high after Hamas ‘positive’ over truce deal
WHEn a 75-year-old man is told he has cancer, then dread and hope fight a battle, both in his own heart and among his family members. After Buckingham Palace announced King Charles’s diagnosis, we too felt these emotions.
Yes, there appears to be a new openness about the health of the royals, but in some respects there is still that old caution. We were not told the nature of his cancer.
What we do know, however, is that we would not have been told at all were it not for the fact that the doctors are worried.
Of course, everyone of good will wishes the King a complete recovery. And, thanks to the advances made in cancer treatment in past decades, we all know cases where recovery from the disease is complete.
nevertheless, this is not simply a sobering moment in the history of the Windsor family. It is a potential constitutional crisis point.
How quickly events move on and life changes! At Christmas, we should all have said that the King, and the Royal Family were on a bit of a roll.
He had defied all the gainsayers (myself included) who thought he would make a hash of being a constitutional monarch because of his strongly-held views and his hyper-sensitivity to criticism. In fact, after that initial moment of irritation with a faulty fountain pen days after his Accession
Last two weeks have added years to the Prince’s life
ceremony, King Charles has been an absolute model of how to fulfil this role.
He seems consistently dignified and good humoured. His continued, and justified, concern for the environment and the future of the planet has not interfered with his political role in the slightest. His demonstrations of British ‘soft power’ on visits abroad have been palpable. The trips to France and Germany were triumphant personal successes.
His Queen — good humoured, everlastingly well-mannered, a ‘brick’ — has grown in popularity. It really looked as if the monarchy had entered a new golden age. And the darker clouds in the sky — such as the possibility of Prince Harry making an ass of himself on some American chat show or in the law courts — somehow seemed less worrying. With such a rock-solid monarchy, we could even face the further exposure of Prince Andrew’s friendship with the notorious Jeffrey Epstein.
Moreover, as well as having a popular King and Queen, we had a Prince and Princess of Wales who could do all the ‘fun stuff’. While the King could enjoy opera and ballet, they could meet rock and film stars and actually know who they were. Kate could be seen playing rugby and other sports rather better than most chaps.
Then the Princess of Wales went into hospital. And then the King. And it’s impossible not to feel that the last two weeks will have added years to Prince William’s life.
He is now faced not only with looking after his young children while his wife recovers from abdominal surgery and a 14- day stay in hospital. He is also much, much closer than anyone could have guessed to having to take on the role now occupied by his father. This is not to be ghoulish or morbid. It is the simple fact of the case. Although it has been clearly stated, in the announcements from the Palace, that the (much smaller number of) working royals will step in to act on behalf of the King for engagements, everyone knows there is only one person who can, in the most extreme case, take the King’s place.
And that is his heir.
This places a huge burden on Prince William, at a time when he is worried about his wife, and when the devastating feud with his brother Prince Harry is still unresolved.
Many people like me had their doubts about Charles during the long years he waited to take on the role of King. But in all those long years, he was learning.
And, whatever the nature of his relationship with his parents, he had them not only as an example, but as constant companions who could point out to him how the job was done.
To a certain extent, the role of the constitutional monarch is very simple. The monarch, as the symbolic head of state, has to keep the show on the road, and that’s it.
But, as Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip knew, after decades of experience, there are many hazards along the way.
The fact that Charles has turned out to be such a surprisingly popular and successful monarch is partly a tribute to him — of course it is. But it is also a tribute to his parents.
William has had very much less time to learn from his father. And unlike Charles, he comes from a broken home. He is still carrying the scars of Charles and Diana’s break-up, and of the legacy of his everlastingly missed mother.
It was in part a benign legacy — from Princess Diana, both Harry and William have inherited and learnt a spontaneous awareness of those less fortunate than themselves, a lack of stuffiness and a sense of fun.
Diana was a wonderful woman in so many ways but she thought her job was to be Queen of Hearts, a sort of royal rock star.
These qualities, which are excellent ones for any public figure to have, are not in themselves enough to fulfil the role of a constitutional monarch.
We have been told that Charles, during his treatment for cancer, will continue to read through the red boxes which, with relentless frequency, appear on his desk day by day. We have been told that he will continue to hold weekly audiences with his Prime Minister.
These are the core tasks of the constitutional head of state. William has no experience of them, and they must be, apart from anything else, both boring and taxing. William is going to have to learn fast — whatever the mediumterm prognosis of his father’s illness may turn out to be.
And he is going to have to learn these lessons in difficult circumstances — in the short term without the carefree, perpetually smiling Kate as a bouncing Tigger by his side.
For being a monarch is not all about being seen out and about glad-handing in public, important though that is. Queen Victoria was an excellent constitutional monarch even though she led a life of almost total seclusion during her long widowhood.
She went through not only all the red boxes, but often the Cabinet papers as well, and she got to know prime ministers and Cabinet ministers. By the time of her Diamond Jubilee she was the most popular monarch in history.
More than being on constant display to be a successful monarch you need a sense of what the job is. A job so difficult to define that is fatally easy to get wrong.
Charles, like his mother and father, has always known that the real business was what went on in private — with the prime ministers and the red boxes, and the visits of foreign dignitaries, especially those of the Commonwealth.
We live in perilous times, with the world seeming to be balanced on the verge of wars in Europe and the Middle East.
History in the past century has shown that constitutional monarchy is a stabilising, strong influence on events if it is properly understood.
In the era of the fascists and the Soviet Union, Edward VIII did not understand it, and it looked as if the monarchy would go under.
Only when George VI and Queen Elizabeth ( later the Queen Mother) guided it back to its modest but stabilising role did it come into its own again.
This tradition is strong, but vulnerable. I for one do not envy anyone who might be obliged to take it on in the modern world, and my heart goes out to Prince William as his father undergoes this treatment.
Only one can take the King’s place: His heir
HOPES for a ceasefire in Gaza were boosted last night after Hamas finally responded to a potential truce deal.
The terrorist group replied ‘positively’ to a plan for a pause in hostilities drawn up in Paris last week, as international pressure mounted to end the four-month war.
It came as US press reports claimed as many as 50 of the remaining 136 Israeli hostages were thought to be dead. Yesterday, the heartbroken family of one hostage released a tape of the moments before she was kidnapped by Hamas.
Romi Gonen, 23, called her mother moments after the car in which she was fleeing the Nova festival massacre was ambushed on October 7. She is heard cowering from gunfire in the footwell of the vehicle as her best friend Gaya Halifa, 24, lay dying in front of her. Her mother Meirav, 55, tried to comfort her, saying: ‘Romichoo, I’m with you sweetheart. Everything is going to be ok.’
The two-minute clip is part of an agonising 45-minute call, most of which was too devastating for the family to release.
Today marks four months since the October 7 massacre, and hopes of a ceasefire are high. In a message posted on Telegram last night, Hamas said: ‘The Hamas movement recently delivered its response regarding the framework agreement to the brothers in Qatar and Egypt, after completing leadership consultations in the movement and with the resistance factions.’
Yesterday, Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani sounded upbeat at a press conference with the visiting US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. ‘Hamas has comments, but in general the reply is positive,’ the officials said.
US President Joe Biden later said Hamas’s response ‘seems to be a little over the top’ – possibly a reference to demands for the release of its prisoners in Israel – but that negotiations would go on. It comes amid growing concerns over Israel’s intentions to expand combat to areas on the Egyptian border crammed with displaced Palestinians.
Israel has said the offensive will reach the town of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3million citizens have sought refuge. The Egyptian government fears this could push Palestinians across the border, a scenario it is determined to prevent.
The Palestinian death toll has now reached 27,585, according to the Hamasrun health ministry.