LONDON – King Charles III has nothing to do with the Northern Ireland trade agreement presented on Monday by the United Kingdom and the European Union.
But he could be forgiven for thinking he had put his royal stamp on agreement.
His name is Windsor March, which is the king’s surname.
He has sealed himself away in a luxury hotel in Windsor, west London, where he has a castle.
And it was there, at Windsor Castle, that Carlos received for tea one of the negotiators, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, a few minutes after she and the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak present the deal to the world.
That courtesy call, and the subsequent photo of a smiling king appearing to celebrate his guest’s arrival, prompted angry recriminations from critics, who said the government improperly recruited Carlos to be an ally on one of the most controversial issues in British politics.
By tradition, Britain’s constitutional monarch stays out of politics, not to mention the noxious crosswinds of the Brexit.
Buckingham Palace and Downing Street disagreed on who initiated the meeting with von der Leyen.
The palace said the king was acting as a “government councilwhile a spokesman for the prime minister said Sunak “strongly believes it is for the king to make those decisions”.
To many, this may seem like a trivial dispute over protocol.
But historians say the British monarch is a resonant figure for Northern Ireland’s unionists, who are the main obstacles to the trade deal.
Unionists are in favor of the rest of the northern part of the United Kingdom and profess allegiance to the British monarch.
By giving the King such an important role in finalizing the deal and wrapping it in Windsor’s name, some observers said the government was doing harder that the trade unionists rejected it.
“By calling it the Windsor Agreement, the government has tried to make it sound like it supports it,” said Vernon Bogdanor, an authority on constitutional monarchy at King’s College London.
“I think the king has been put in a very awkward position.”
Other royal observers were less willing to exonerate Carlos for his challenging role in the day’s events.
They said the king and his courtiers had used poor judgment in agreeing to meet von der Leyen because of Charles’ desire to appear like a statesman, being in the thick of things and on the right side of history.
“He could have met her today, tomorrow or next week,” said Peter Hunt, a former BBC royal correspondent.
“It is your people’s and your responsibility to decide if the time is right, and this is not. Their judgment was clouded because they felt flattered for the prospect of being the center of attention.”
Monarchs meet regularly with foreign leaders at the request of the government.
Sometimes those leaders are ill-advised:
Queen Elizabeth II met Nicholas Ceausescuthe reviled dictator of Romania, and with the Russian president Vladimir Putin who once made her wait.
Carlos has organized a banquet for the president Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, a week before facing a vote of dismissal on charges of money laundering.
“We don’t know whether he opposed it or not,” Bogdanor said of the king’s meeting with von der Leyen, “but in any case, he had to go through with it.”
What makes this episode darker is that Carlos, by instinct and experience, would likely embrace the Windsor Frame.
The deal is intended to strengthen the UK and restore relations between Britain and the EU.
While the king has never spoken publicly about Brexit, he hinted at his opinion in a speech to the German parliament in 2020, when he said:
“No country is truly an island.”
Plus, Carlos is a man of passionate political convictions who embraces causes, from climate change to organic farming, in a way his mother, Isabel, never has.
He was frustrated, according to people with ties to the palace, when the government of Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Trussadvised him not to attend the UN climate summit held at sharm el sheikh (Egypt) last fall.
Carlos acknowledged after taking the throne in September that he would have to give up any political commitments.
He made no protest against government advice not to attend the conference, instead giving a glittering reception at Buckingham Palace before the event;
among the guests were John Kerry, envoy of the president Joe Biden for the time, e Stella McCartneyfashion designer and daughter of Paul McCartneywhich promoted sustainable production.
Climate change was one of the items on the agenda of the king’s meeting with von der Leyen, according to the palace, as was Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Last month, Carlos received the president of Ukraine at Buckingham Palace, Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited London to address Parliament and ask Britain to supply fighter planes to the Ukrainian Air Force.
Noting that visit, the government declined questions about the king’s meeting with von der Leyen.
“Ursula von der Leyen is an international representative of the highest level,” the foreign minister said, James Smarton LBC radio.
“So it’s not unusual, as part of our hospitality to international guests, to facilitate a meeting.”
But British support for Ukraine is widely accepted by the political establishment.
commercial status post-Brexit for Northern Ireland, on the other hand, is the subject of an almost theological debate between hard-line Brexiteers in Sunak’s Conservative Party and Northern Ireland’s unionist politicians.
Both groups expressed their discontent with the visible presence of the king.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Eurosceptic Conservative MP and former cabinet minister, told GB News that ‘the sovereign should only get involved when things have gone wrong. completed and accepted“.
Arlene Foster, former First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said on Twitter:
“It’s crude and will go very badly in Northern Ireland. We have to remember that it’s not the king’s decision, but the government’s, who seem to have no ear.”
Some of that unease may reflect the importance of the monarchy to Unionists.
Bogdanor argued that Unionists tended to view their loyalty to the king in more contractual terms than the British, for whom loyalty was usually automatic.
The core of that contract, he said, was to preserve the union.
“The King has a huge resonance in Northern Ireland,” he said.
“The king is what separates unionists from nationalists.”
Yet Charles has been on the throne for less than seven months.
His mother reigned for 70 years, making her an iconic figure in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, where her portrait appears on murals and walls in loyalist neighborhoods across the city.
Some pundits predicted that the debate over the king’s role would quickly peter out as unionists grappled with a close reading of the text of the Windsor agreement.
“If it had been the Queen, it might have been important,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University Belfast.
“But I haven’t seen or heard anything to indicate he raised more than an eyebrow.”
c.2023 The New York Times Society
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.