Left-wingers regard themselves as virtuous. But the spiteful reaction of so many to Charles’s illness shows they’re the ones filled with hate

TWENTY- FIVE minutes was all it took for the Left to start politicising the King’s cancer. Quick work, lads. A political activist called John Smith was first to the draw, taking to X (formerly Twitter) to complain the monarch had not been stuck on an NHS waiting list. Mr Smith went on to denounce the ‘defunding of public healthcare done by neoliberal governments to enrich the 1 per cent, who the King belongs to’.

Quick-to-the-trigger Smith soon posted another message saying monarchy was a ‘cancer on the body politic’. He completed a hat-trick of charm with a tweet about his own experience of cancer. ‘I, too, was helicoptered home to my ancestral estate of Sandringham to recuperate with a household of servants at my beck and call,’ wrote Comrade Smith with leaden sarcasm.

Abolition

He was not alone in curling a lip. The Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire, who happens to be an old friend of mine, pumped out a social-media comment that ‘two in every five cancer patients urgently referred by a GP do not start treatment within the NHS two-month target. I wish King Charles a full recovery but there should be no ignoring that many others are not as privileged or fortunate.’

Ava Evans, another Leftleaning pundit, said this was ‘a good moment to consider statutory sick pay — and the millions of people who have to keep working while they’re ill because they cannot afford not to’.

The pressure group Republic, which campaigns for the monarchy’s abolition, responded decently, saying ‘cancer is an awful disease and we’re sorry to hear of Charles’s diagnosis. We wish him a speedy recovery.’

Republic’s online followers were not altogether pleased with this civilised reaction.

Though some applauded, others said ‘karma comes for him’, ‘it’s time he abdicated for the good of his health’ and ‘it’s funny because he’s the least likeable monarch in centuries potentially’. One slug even wrote: ‘Need him in tip top so he can stand trial for crimes against humanity.’

Well, it’s a free country. People should be able, should they not, to say objectionable things provided they are not inciting violence? As a parliamentary sketchwriter, I would be a frightful hypocrite if I opposed a little saltiness in political commentary.

Anyway, who truly takes offence if a few idiots and attention-grabbers have said ungenerous things about our 75-year-old head of state being told that he has a disease that, regrettably, visits so many families? Does the very prevalence of cancer not, in fact, legitimise critical scrutiny of the King’s private treatment?

Or does the sourness of those published views — the desire to turn every personal misfortune into a political bludgeon — say something about their authors and their political orientation? Why, in short, are some on the Left in such a vexatious spin about everything?

Theresa May once said that the Conservatives were seen as ‘the nasty party’. Unlike some, I thought she was right to speak that home truth to her party, which at the time did seem perpetually cross. In recent times, however, it has been evident that the haters and haranguers have been more frequently on the Left.

The socialist comedian Jo Brand suggested throwing battery acid in Nigel Farage’s face. Angela Rayner called Tories ‘a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolutely vile’. John McDonnell joked about Conservative MP Esther McVey being lynched. Apologists said these were loose, misspoken words.

Yet when the boot is on the other hoof and a Rightie makes a goof, as Rishi Sunak did in the Commons yesterday with a slightly tone- deaf remark about trans self-identification, Labour MPs recoil like goosed dowagers and allege that their parliamentary opponents are guilty of moral degradation.

What is so maddening is the way Left-wingers project themselves as ‘good people’ and lay claim to virtuous heights. Really their chief consideration, much of the time, is naked politics. Their application to the cause is, in a way, rather enviable. They never seem to switch off.

Right-wingers are never as focused because they are more individualistic, and therefore less good at following a party line. So we must concede that the Left is skilful at playing a tough game. But just occasionally one feels like sighing: ‘Oh give it a break for once, please.’

Having in the past six years lost two siblings to cancer, do I or should I feel anger about the King’s speedy treatment?

No. I certainly wish medics had been as good when treating my sister Penny. She seemed to have overcome breast cancer but it returned. She went to her doctor with pains and was told it was a back-strain. Penny, the mother of three fine children, died at the age of 59.

The NHS was little better when my brother Alexander complained of racking pains in his gut. This turned out to be cancer of the colon, but his treatment during lockdown was far from good. Alexander, one of the fittest guys I knew, died at 62, leaving a grief- stricken wife and four terrific sons.

Miserable

The King’s cancer was spotted at a private hospital and he is now to receive the best care and attention. The Left would have me ask: why isn’t the privileged so-and-so on a hard chair at an A&E in Slough? Why isn’t he having a more miserable time? Why? Why? It isn’t fair!

Well, no, I suppose it isn’t fair, if by fair we mean that everything must have an equal outcome. But life isn’t fair. Life can be hard.

Why did my super-fit siblings die of cancer while I, fat as an old labrador, still live? Shakespeare’s King Lear cradles the body of his dead daughter Cordelia and bawls: ‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all?’

It is only human to respond to grief like that, perhaps.

The reaction of our Left-wing friends, however, is not driven by grief. It is political. It seeks to make political hay out of a diagnosis. A physician tells a 75-year-old sovereign that he has cancer and these people accuse the supposedly wicked Tory government of ‘defunding’ an NHS that has never received more money. They spit at Charles’s ‘privilege’.

Sorry, but this outrage is forced. It is almost unhinged in its incessant devotion to electoral ends. Is the greatest privilege of all not the privilege of good health?

Bile

I am no saint. I am as likely as the next person to feel cheesed-off. But when I heard about the King’s illness, my brain did not start computing electoral advantage. My first reaction was ‘bloody cancer’.

The second, if one can say this without lese-majeste, was ‘poor chap’. Chap he be, despite his rank. The King is human, as prey to flaws and bugs as the rest of us. I happen to admire him, though I accept it is every citizen’s right to campaign against the constitutional monarchy. What is harder to accept is this ceaseless eye to political chance, this galloping, hard-jockeyed nag of spite.

Politics matters, of course it does, but the best politicians understand there is more to life. ‘To everything there is a season,’ says Ecclesiastes. When a loved king has been given some rough medical news it should be ‘a time to cast away stones’. The initial response of the anti-monarchists at Republic was wise. The consequent bile of some of their supporters, and the rush by others to make political points, ruined that moment of decency.

We will close by returning to John Smith, the ardent revolutionary who greeted the King’s diagnosis by calling monarchy a ‘cancer on the body politic’.

Mr Smith, as he declares on his X handle, is the son of Harry Leslie Smith, a writer and political campaigner who was a famous figure in the Labour movement. Without his late dad, in other words, poor John would be a nobody.

How perfect that such a vinegary little agitator for republicanism is himself a beneficiary of the hereditary principle.