Is King Charles the ultimate poster boy for Starmer’s Labour?

Back to work following a spell in hospital, King Charles – with his commitment to environmentalism, housing projects and improving the lives of socially disadvantaged young people – appears fully in lockstep with the aims of the new government, says John Rentoul

King Charles cancelling his royal engagements because of the side-effects of his cancer treatment prompted an outpouring of public support. It also had a more curious effect – it reminded me how, historically, Labour prime ministers tend to get on better than expected with the monarch.

The establishment’s fear of socialism is usually allayed by politicians eager to prove themselves responsible. Ramsay MacDonald made a good impression on George V when he formed the first minority Labour government in 1924. “He wishes to do the right thing,” the King wrote in his diary. “Today, 23 years ago, dear Grandmama [Queen Victoria] died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour government!”

MacDonald was determined to show that Labour could be trusted, and was accused by some in his party of being too keen to ingratiate himself with the aristocracy, the royal family at its apex. He was accused of much worse when the King persuaded him to form a national government in 1931, after the stock market crash, because that required MacDonald to abandon the Labour Party and throw in his lot with the Conservatives.

Nevertheless, Clement Attlee, who took over what was left of the Labour Party and became prime minister after the war, was just as devoted a monarchist. He praised George VI when he died as having “a great sense of duty, high courage, good judgement and warm human sympathy”, and said: “He was in the fullest sense of the term a good man.”

Harold Wilson “flattered” Queen Elizabeth II by behaving “towards her – unexpectedly – as an equal”, according to Ben Pimlott, who wrote biographies of both Wilson and the Queen. Wilson took her into his confidence, and their audiences grew longer, as was noted with interest by the royal household.

Of prime ministers in the democratic age, it was the radical Conservative, Margaret Thatcher, with whom the Queen had the most difficult relationship. Elizabeth’s unhappiness with Thatcher’s divisive social policies became public knowledge towards the end of her longest-serving prime minister’s tenure.

The royal family had a better relationship with Tony Blair, but it was complicated by his appropriation of the “People’s Princess”. The Queen could never forgive him for helping to save her reputation after she initially misjudged the public mood over the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

It may also have been New Labour’s ban on hunting that accounted for the failure of William and Catherine to invite Blair or Gordon Brown to their wedding in 2011, which was attended by Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron. Those resentments may also explain the delay in appointing Blair to the Order of the Garter, a personal award finally made by the Queen to the “persona non garter” three years ago, a few months before her death.

Whatever the truth behind that, it seems that relations between the monarch and a Labour prime minister are back on – despite Keir Starmer confiding to a TV documentary in 2005: “I got made a Queen’s Counsel, which is odd, since I often used to propose the abolition of the monarchy.”

The most dramatic symbol of the mutually supportive relationship between the King and his first minister came when Starmer, in the Oval Office, produced from his jacket pocket a letter from Charles inviting Donald Trump for an “unprecedented” second state visit.

The prime minister knows that the president’s love of the royal family is one of the few cards he holds, and he wants to exploit it for all it is worth. What is telling, though, is that the King is willing to be played as a “Trump card”.

It may be that he sees a surprising overlap between the interests that have animated his lifetime of public service and the priorities of the new government. His environmentalism, his interest in housing, and his work with socially disadvantaged young people all seem to be aligned with Labour.

Despite his being supposedly non-political, there does seem to be more of a common interest between the King and his ministers than between him and Reform or the Conservatives – especially since Kemi Badenoch’s repudiation of the 2050 target date for net zero.

Some Tory eyebrows were raised by the visit made last month by Starmer and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, with the King to one of his housing projects in Cornwall. It looked as if Charles was endorsing the government’s ambition to build 1.5 million new homes by the next election. The prime minister’s spokesperson, when asked if the TV pictures risked dragging the King into politics, said: “No.”

So that is all right, then. And if the circus of pageantry of a state visit can save us from tariffs on British car exports next week, perhaps we should be grateful for such warm relations between the King and his formerly republican prime minister.