When King Charles III stepped back onto UK soil late on Sunday, May 3, he returned triumphant, a monarch who has finally managed to step out of the late Queen’s shadow, owning the international diplomatic stage in a way that will, without doubt, define his reign.
In a world where the calibre of political leadership appears to be sorely lacking, even the most diehard republican would have to admit that King Charles, by being true to his core beliefs and, indeed, his character, gave what one UK newspaper described as a “masterclass in global leadership”.
Charles Phillip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor had met 19 US presidents – from Dwight Eisenhower to Donald Trump – even before he ascended the throne. By comparison, his mother, Queen Elizabeth, only met 13 POTUS in her extraordinarily long lifetime.
And yet before he left London, a YouGov poll found that pretty much half the people surveyed in the UK did not support King Charles and Queen Camilla’s decision to visit the United States for the 250th anniversary of independence, implicit in their view a distaste and despair with the Trump administration.
Polled again after the US leg of the trip, when the King and Queen were winging their way to Bermuda, the last stop before the return home, more than three-quarters of the British public polled reported that the King handled the “trip well”. And a solid 43 per cent reported that they believed his visit would in fact “improve US policy attitudes toward the UK.”
Charles’ speech to the joint session of Congress sparked a standing ovation from both Democratic and Republican sides of the House and won glowing headlines the world over. What was drafted with precision to be a 20-minute address stretched past the half-hour mark, so long were the pauses as he waited for applause to die down.
Of course, the speech was reported differently depending on the international viewpoint, although several remarks made by the King were widely interpreted as subtle reprimands of the Trump administration by commentators on both sides of the Atlantic.
That said, as a long-time correspondent based in London, I would not hesitate to say that there was not a single observation made by King Charles in his speech where he strayed from issues that could all be distilled back to historical fact or observable truth.
From his gentle, pointed defence of NATO and the British Navy to the placement of climate change at the very epicentre of global challenges, including reference to “our shared responsibility to safeguard nature” and direct reference to Ukraine “being under attack again following Russia’s invasion”, Charles managed to deliver a carefully targeted message cloaked in the genteel language of diplomacy sprinkled with a smattering of regal self-deprecation.
President Trump himself, not exactly known for self-effacement, described the speech as “fantastic…he got the Democrats to stand, I’ve never been able to do that, I couldn’t believe it,” he later told guests at the White House State Dinner.
And who can forget the photograph snapped by Getty’s Alex Brandon of a laughing Melania Trump, usually as unsmiling and stony-faced as Victoria Beckham, hand placed gently on the smiling King’s shoulder.
The PR optics of that one-off encounter for UK-US relations is priceless.
In many ways, a careful examination of the tour itinerary itself – particularly outside Washington – said just as much as his words as the King made clear his long-standing personal passions through the places he chose to visit.
He spent time at Harlem Grown, the 134th street farm in Upper Manhattan, an urban project long at the forefront of sustainability and addressing food insecurity, addressed a reception for the 50th anniversary of his King’s Trust and in Bermuda, where he was the first reigning monarch to visit, he even addressed the previously taboo subjects of British colonialism and the slave trade.
“I won’t see the long-distance future, but I am enormously grateful to you for what you can all do”, he told the assembled guests at the Trust celebration, a quiet and poignant reminder that this king, just three years into his reign, is 76 years old – and still having cancer treatment.
After this first, jubilant tour as monarch, the heir to the throne ridiculed for decades by the British press as an eccentric, tree-hugging Prince has come a very long way.
And there are many on his home soil – and abroad- who are quietly shouting to themselves, ‘Long live the King’.
