If the Queen can’t keep mum, what hope for Charles?

Ask any journalist worth their salt to name their ultimate interviewee, and the answer will be the same: the Queen. Who wouldn’t love to know what our famously delphic monarch is thinking? After all, we’ve spent more than six decades trying to read her facial expressions as best we can.

There are the pursed lips, the gracious ribbon-cutting smile, the brows raised in interest, the downturned mouth, the unamused darkening and the unalloyed brightening of her expression (the latter usually brought about by horse racing or corgis or greatgrandchildren).

But nobody really knows for sure what Elizabeth II is making of it all. And with good reason; when she was overheard this week observing that the Chinese had been rude during their last state visit, the story went global. China, which had indeed been rude, duly imposed a news blackout.

Felicitously, the Queen’s views took the heat off David Cameron’s condescendingly jocular observation that Nigeria and Afghanistan are “fabulously corrupt”, but the furore surrounding her remarks was more incendiary precisely because she is expected to be above politics (but not, we learn, above politeness).

This in turn begs the question: how will petulant Prince Charles manage to keep his own counsel and, more saliently, his cool once he ascends to the throne? My guess is that he won’t be able to cultivate his mother’s elaborate air of regal detachment.

Whatever one thinks of his views on architecture or talking to delphiniums, he’s a vocal, passionate advocate for the causes he cares about, which is laudable in principle if not in practice.

Truthfully, there are some respects in which the House of Windsor would do well not to modernise. If the monarchy is to survive beyond the present Queen, then the role must remain that of a figurehead, not a mouthpiece. In this regard, Prince William seems an altogether more suitable heir in that he is more biddable and less intellectually engaged than his father.

Royalty grants many a privilege, but airing opinions is most definitely not one of them.