A ROYAL RETREAT

Marcus Walker (“The greatest

cancellation”, Dec/Jan) wrongly suggests that I am a “High Tory”, when I am really a suburban lower-upper-middle class conservative social democrat. And he then accuses me of seeking to cancel the Queen for expressing a political opinion I do not like.

As I made quite clear when I criticised the monarch’s open support for the contentious Green position, I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I do not support the green position, but I hope that I would be appalled by Her Majesty’s open partisanship in any direction even if I agreed with it. I know perfectly well that this is not a first offence, and have complained at previous breaches of this rule. But the scale of this particular transgression was too great.

By contrast, I have personal experience of the Royal Family’s strong aversion to expressing or being associated with unfashionable views. Some years ago, I received what I can only call feelers, suggesting that I might be asked to meet the Prince of Wales, who was interested by my book The Abolition of Britain.

Those who transmitted these feelers were most anxious to be assured that, above all things, I would not blab about it afterwards. I readily gave the assurances, but nothing happened. I kept my mouth shut. But some years later the Blairite MP, Tristram Hunt, revealed that Prince Charles had been browbeaten by his advisers into abandoning the meeting, presumably lest it upset the then government.

The contrast between the secrecy, discretion and ultimate loss of nerve in one direction, and the bold and open endorsement in the other is a bit hard to put up with. Peter Hitchens

London