By Simon Jenkins From The Guardian UK
The publication of Prince Charles’s letters is a victory. But he’s small fry compared with the lobbying industry sharks

If the Prince of Wales had been plain Charles Windsor, he would probably be a green columnist for the Guardian. The “black spider” letters to ministers, published today, are so anodyne as to suggest a Private Eye spoof. We have his various views on hill farms, bovine TB, military helicopters, herbal medicine, Smithfield market, Antarctic huts and the fate of the albatross. They hardly come as much surprise; indeed, most were publicised at the time.

All received a polite ministerial brushoff. The government spent a quarter of million to avert our eyes from this – but of the promised upmarket Russell Brand there is no sign.

The publication of the letters is a signal victory for the Guardian’s 10-year campaign for transparency in government. The information tribunal, the high court and the supreme court all agreed: there had to be a limit to the attorney general’s veto on a freedom of information matter. There was an “overall public interest” in the prince’s “advocacy” letters to ministers.

The case for secrecy was always confused. On the one hand, the prince was regarded as a private citizen entitled to have messages to ministers kept confidential. On the other, the former attorney general Dominic Grieve said “the monarch in training” should enjoy the same privileges as the Queen.

First, the prince is not the Queen, who is anyway too careful to put her views in the post. Meanwhile, letters by celebrities to ministers on specific matters of public policy are nowadays bound to leak. Such letters – many drafted by supplicants – require reply from the Whitehall machine. The best policy is openness from the start.

As for the propriety of the prince’s actions as heir to the throne, it seems the monarchist right and republican left have joined forces in constitutional hysteria. The heir to the throne rules nothing, being heir only to titular headship of state. He has neither constitutional nor political status. He commands no party, no ministers, no peers, no budget, not even Gloucestershire county council. No newspaper dances to his tune.

The only serious privilege he wields is over the Duchy of Cornwall, where his special pleading to Whitehall is no different from that of any landowner. He runs a decent art college and a worthy foundation, which espouse his range of interests. But this hardly endangers the stability of the state.

Indeed, the running message of the black spider letters is not potency but a plaintive sigh of woe at a world going to the dogs. The causes long known as dear to the prince’s heart are organic farming, alternative medicine, opposing GM foods, global warming and traditional architecture. There are strong opinions but no political partisanship in his interventions. The one topic on which he is said to exert unfair influence is over modern architecture. Yet examples are puny.

The prince’s widely shared antipathy to the National Gallery “carbuncle” once proposed in Trafalgar Square was said to “help” ministers reject what they would have rejected anyway. As for Lord Rogers’s modernist estate at Chelsea Barracks, it was local opposition that caused Westminster planners to indicate rejection, leading the Qataris to withdraw their plan. It merely suited the developers to blame royalty rather than democracy for their failure. The claim peddled on today’s BBC Today programme that the prince has “put back British architecture 30 years” is absurd, as any glance at London’s skyline will attest.

The prince’s critics profess worry that by writing letters he jeopardises the neutrality he should observe as a future monarch. Republicans should be delighted rather than dismayed at this. But even monarchists should recognise that the Queen has survived some four decades of her son’s often eccentric preaching on numerous topics.

That heirs to the throne should be silent is a novel concept. Hanoverian princes consorted persistently with oppositions. Victoria herself could never quite see why ministers would not do as she told them. She adored Melbourne and Disraeli but detested Gladstone. In the 1930s Edward, Prince of Wales, toured the Great Depression and maddened ministers by muttering: “Something must be done.”

It is possible, as conjectured by Mike Bartlett’s recent play King Charles III, that Charles might refuse to sign a statute to which he objected on principle. He might draw the line at GM foods or fracking. If so, he would have to abdicate – as Baudouin of Belgium did for a day rather than ratify abortion. That is no problem. There are plenty more kings where he came from.

Somehow the body politic has survived the Prince of Wales. He is a pragmatist constantly striving to make some difference in the world, reluctant to accept that is not his lot.
The Guardian view on the black spider memos: a victory for the rule of law, a warning to Prince Charles
Editorial: After 10 years, Whitehall and Buckingham Palace have finally lost their campaign to keep the prince’s advocacy letters a secret
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His opinions are not extreme. He is careful in his interests and associates. Despite a semi-public flirtation with the Social Democrats in the 1980s, he avoids party dispute. He no longer kills animals for sport. It is surely benign that someone in his position cares, as he clearly does, about public health, the environment and the state of the world. The letters indicate at best a mild concern.

The victory for transparency now needs carrying on to more challenging territory. The black spiders are harmless creatures compared with the multimillion-pound tarantulas of big-time political pressure, uncharted and undisclosed. Where are the construction and property interests, the doctors and big pharma, the beef and barley barons, the defence suppliers and the bankers? During the financial crisis, the publicly owned RBS was paying six lobbying firms to put pressure on ministers.

David Cameron in opposition claimed lobbying as “the next big scandal waiting to happen”. He then appointed Francis Maude “to make the UK the most transparent and accountable country in the world”. The result was a mouse of a registrar. Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell of Spinwatch reckon just 1% of lobbying is even remotely “regulated”. Small wonder that trust in government has gone from 80% in 1997 to 30% today.

The issue here is not the privacy of private communication, which the Cameron government holds cheap when it is intruding on others. The issue is how open should be all processes of Whitehall policy formation. Are we entitled to know the conduits of access enjoyed by those with a massive financial interest at stake? The Guardian has shown the Prince of Wales to be a small fry in this ocean. What about the sharks?

IMAGES:
The Prince of Wales with prime minister Tony Blair. Photograph: Carl de Souza/PA Archive
During the financial crisis, the publicly owned RBS was paying six lobbying firms to pressure ministers.’ Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

For more on this story go to: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/13/black-spider-memos-prince-charles

See also iNews Cayman related story published May 13 2015 “The tiger at the bar: QC who helped win the fight to see Charles’s letters” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/the-tiger-at-the-bar-qc-who-helped-win-the-fight-to-see-charless-letters/