After a six-decade wait, there is no immediate prospect of promotion for the Prince of Wales
AS THE Prince of Wales celebrates his 65th birthday today, calls have been made for the Queen to abdicate and let Charles become king. He will spend his first day as a pensioner representing his mother at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, the first time Prince Charles has deputised for the monarch in an official state capacity, says The Guardian. "The 87-year-old Queen remains in good health, but there is now an open acknowledgement in royal circles that the Prince of Wales will increasingly take on more of her duties, in what some constitutional experts can even foresee becoming an unofficial co-regency," says the newspaper. After six decades of waiting, it adds, the "man of strong opinions and contradictions" may have to change his behaviour as he increasingly takes on his mother's role. Prince Charles is "a man of many ideas, most of them bad", says Oliver Kamm in The Times, who believes the "clown prince" does not deserve our deference. Kamm complains about Prince Charles's call for homeopathy on the NHS ("a treatment likened by the BMA to witchcraft"), his experimental town of Poundbury ("visible proof that he has no more idea of taste than you'd find in a mock Tudor building called Ye Olde Englishe Inne") and the Prince's criticism of American English ("ignorant as well as ethnocentric"). "He certainly has his idiosyncrasies," agrees Dominic Sandbrook in the Daily Mail, but in many of his causes he has "simply been ahead of his time". Sandbrook hopes the Queen will allow Charles to take over altogether. "I think abdication would be the best thing for everybody – for Charles, for Britain and for the Queen herself," he says. Charles would inherit the throne when he is "still hale, hearty and bursting with enthusiasm", untainted by sadness at the loss of his mother. And if his early days were tricky, says Sandbrook, his predecessor "would be on hand to offer a few tips". In the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore believes Prince Charles will do a fine job when he finally does become king. "One of the many things he has learnt in his long apprenticeship is the fundamental difference between waiting for the crown and wearing it. He has successfully made something unique out of the first," he argues. "Why should he not succeed in the second?" As for the Duchess of Cornwall, she believes there is no chance that the Prince of Wales will be taking a step back now that he is a pensioner. Life with Charles is "exhausting", she tells the Telegraph, as he is always "working, working, working". The Duchess says her idea of "bliss" would be to sit in the sunshine with her husband enjoying some peace and quiet, but reveals that she rarely gets the chance because "he's not one for chilling". · For further concise, balanced comment and analysis on the week's news, try The Week magazine.Subscribe today and get 6 issues completely free. Source: The Week UK
