Nearly 20 years ago, Keir Starmer, a wry young human rights lawyer, said to a documentarian that it had seemed “strange” to him to receive the title of advisor to the queen, “since I often used to propose the abolition of the monarchy”.
Mr Starmer, now head of The British Labor Party, has long disavowed his anti-monarchical statements as youthful indiscretions. In 2014, he knelt before Charles, then Prince of Wales, who tapped him on the shoulder with a sword and awarded him a knighthood.
If Sir Keir Starmer is elected to 10 Downing Street in next week’s general election, as polls suggest he willhe could find himself more politically in tune with Charles than the last two Conservative prime ministers, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, whose terms of office overlapped with the king’s reign.
On issues such as climate changehousing, immigration and Britain’s relationship with the European Union, experts say Mr Starmer is likely to find common ground with a king who holds a long history, often ferventopinions on these issues, but is constitutionally prohibited to play any role in politics.
“A Labor government led by Keir Starmer will be more attentive to the plight of citizens as a social problem,” said Ed Owens, a historian who studies the royal family. “These kinds of issues have long been in the king’s sights. There is a convergence of views on social issues. »
If elected Prime Minister, Mr Starmer would occupy a weekly meeting with Charles, the content of which would be strictly between them. But people who know Buckingham Palace and Downing Street said they could see a fruitful relationship between the 75-year-old monarch and the 61-year-old barrister, knighted for his services to criminal justice as director of public prosecutions .
Beyond Mr Starmer’s progressive policies, academics said Charles would appreciate the stability a Labor government could restore after the divisions, political upheaval and revolving door of leaders that followed Brexit. After all, with less than two years on the throne, Charles could soon be on his third prime minister.
“The monarchy seeks to be a unifying force, keeping the country together, so it favours consensus over division,” said Vernon Bogdanor, a professor at Kings College London and an authority on constitutional monarchy. “That’s how the king sees his role.”
But Professor Bogdanor added: “While his mother represented the war generation, the king is more representative of the 1960s generation.”
As sovereign, Charles does not vote. But during his decades as heir, he spoke out about the issues he cared about, such as biological agriculture And architecture. Sometimes his opinions on subjects more politically charged issues leaked.
In 2022, Charles was would have criticized the Conservative government’s plan to place certain asylum seekers one-way flights to Rwanda as “terrible”. His comments, made during a private meeting, surfaced in the Times of London and the Daily Mail weeks before he represented Queen Elizabeth II at a meeting of Commonwealth countries in the Rwandan capital Kigali.
Clarence House, where Charles then had his office, declined to comment on the reports, but did not deny them.
That prompted Boris Johnson, who was then prime minister and had proposed the Rwanda plan, to complain to Charles, according to Mr. Johnson’s communications chief at the time, Guto Harri. In the email, he described Mr. Johnson “confronting the prince and confronting him about what he – as unelected royalty – had said about the actions of a democratically elected government. »
After that, Charles said nothing about Rwanda. In April, after Parliament passed a revised version of the legislation under Mr Sunak’s leadership, the King gave it his royal assent, as is his duty, making it law. But Mr Starmer vowed that a Labor government I would abandon the plancalling it costly and impractical.
Climate policy is another area where the King may find a Labor government more aligned with his views. Ms Truss has asked Charles not to attend a UN climate change conference in Egypt in 2022, depriving him of a platform to speak out on what is perhaps his most cherished issue. Mr Sunak then returned to some UK emissions reduction targets, citing their onerous cost at a time of cost of living crisis.
Labor, by contrast, announced a green investment plan worth 28 billion pounds, or about $35 billion a year, although it has since suspended its spending targets until the British public finances are improving.
“It looks like a new Labor government and Charles would be in sync on these issues,” historian Mr Owens said. “But Labor has a lot of nice words about the importance of a green agenda. Can they translate these beautiful words into action?
Mr Starmer’s dedication to the law could also spare the king the kind of dilemma his mother faced in 2019. Mr Johnson asked him suspend or prorogue Parliament at a time when lawmakers were maneuvering to delay his plan to withdraw Britain from the European Union.
The Queen agreed, but the British Supreme Court later ruled that the decision was illegal. Critics have criticised Mr Johnson for putting Elizabeth in an untenable position, as she could not challenge an elected government. Mrs Truss raised similar governance issues when she proposed Radical, unfunded tax cuts in 2022, triggering a backlash in financial markets that sank his premiership.
“These prime ministers were able to flout the rules,” Mr. Owens said. “Generally speaking, the monarchy does not like too much attention focused on” constitutional issues, he added.
As counterintuitive as it may seem, historians argue that Elizabeth had more cordial relations with Labor prime ministers than with Conservative prime ministers. She was considered to particularly comfortable with Harold Wilson, a down-to-earth Yorkshireman, while his exchanges with Margaret Thatcher, conservative icon, were it is said that it is sometimes thorny.
It is certain that the first Labor Party had an anti-monarchical tendency. Its first parliamentary leader, Keir Hardie – Mr Starmer has the same first name – once wrote: “Despotism and monarchy are compatible; democracy and monarchy are an unthinkable link.
Conservative political operatives dusted off the video of a young Mr Starmer and played it in adverts suggesting Labor hated the monarchy. But even before Mr Starmer took power, Labor had become a reliable constitutional party. And analysts say residual anti-monarchist sentiments have most likely been swept away by his purge of the far left of the party after he became leader in 2020.
At work party conference in 2022, after the death of the Queen, the national anthem was played for the first time. Mr Starmer, the man who once spoke of abolishing the monarchy, raised his voice and sang “God Save the King”.
