Slanted coverage and a few protests fail to take gloss off a dazzling visit
DANCING, diving, dazzling their hosts with genuine smiles, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge completed their most significant Commonwealth tour in fine style.
The Queen will be pleased by their progress; it was a solid eight out of 10.
The Cambridges were not
“tone deaf” to Caribbean concerns.they confronted the bitter memory of slavery and looked to the future – just what their hosts expected.
No, it was some members of the travelling British media who were tone deaf.they don’t seem to know that the Queen has never objected to any of her overseas realms becoming republics.
Princewilliam confirmed this. He nodded when Jamaica’s
Prime Minister Andrew Holness said that Jamaica is moving towards being a republic.
There are 34 republics in the Commonwealth already.
That’s not the point.what matters is the success of the Commonwealth, something the Queen’s father was instrumental in creating and to which she has devoted much of her life.
Demonstrations are easy meat for TV, even small ones.yes, there was one in Belize, over a local land dispute, and a couple in Jamaica, demanding financial compensation for slavery, abolished by Britain in 1834.
But they did not reflect the overwhelmingly positive reception the Duke and Duchess were given wherever they went.
And in an egregious departure from fair and objective reporting, shots ofwilliam and Kate talking to young Jamaicans through a chain-link fence at a football match were misrepresented in a pejoratively racist way, even though Wembley’s own Jamaican-born footballer Raheem Sterling was standing next to them doing precisely the same thing.
None of these blips took the gloss off an eight-day trip that was a textbook application of “soft power” bywilliam and Kate.
The secret of their success? It’s obvious and simple but too rarely seen: they love each other.that came across so strongly that any difficulties were consigned to the shade. People who met them liked them, casting both Commonwealth and Crown in a positive light.
This is the exception, not the rule. I witnessed Princess Anne dragging a forlorn Mark Phillips behind her, Charles and Diana growing further apart with each tour and Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon sparking against each other like jump leads.
Even the Queen and the
Duke of Edinburgh lacked the spontaneity that the Cambridges displayed. Prince William was born to the role but he has brought his mother’s joy and openness to it. His wife doesn’t just look good, she complements his more studied approach.
As Jane Austen wrote, the way women dress is a vital form of communication. Kate gets it right, skilfully mixing high street with designer.
No other royal lady would have dared wear Kate’s skin-tight white T-shirt and figure-hugging khaki trousers for that visit to a Mayan temple. She didn’t just get away with it, she owned it.
The Cambridges are not aloof, and with 60 per cent of the Commonwealth’s 2.5 billion inhabitants under 29, that’s important. Small protests notwithstanding, its 54 nations value being members of an organisation dedicated to human rights, democracy and peace.
Head of the Commonwealth is not a hereditary role. It was a mistake in 2018 to designate Charles as his mother’s successor. I argued in a debate at Westminster that an elected head would be inclusive and welcome. I lost the vote. No matter.
The Commonwealth is robust enough to survive, simply because it is not a trade group nor a military alliance but an association of free nations – committed to the rule of law, prosperity and individual liberty.
‘Their trip was very positive’