Breach of protocol

IN a moving service of reflection in Belfast yesterday, attended by King Charles, the Archbishop of Armagh spoke powerfully of one of the Queen’s finest achievements.

Driven by duty and empathy, he said, she was a major force for healing and reconciliation between Northern Ireland’s divided Unionist and Nationalist communities, as well as Britain and Ireland.

Indeed, her historic handshake with the former IRA terrorist Martin McGuinness in 2012 signposted a better future, free from bloodshed and hatred.

On the first visit to the province by a British king in 80 years, Charles rightly pledged to follow her ‘shining example’.

After all, he himself has been touched by Troubles tragedy: The IRA murdered his great-uncle, Earl Mountbatten, in a brutal terror attack in 1979. He knows perfectly well that as sovereign he cannot overstep into political opinion – especially given the sensitivities in Northern Ireland.

It is hard, then, to understand what Simon Coveney seeks to achieve by hinting that the King wants a deal with the EU on the broken Northern Ireland protocol, which has already inflamed sectarian tensions.

Is the Irish foreign minister cynically seeking to exploit the mourning period for political ends? Or does he fundamentally misunderstand that the British monarch has to be strictly politically neutral?