Prince Sakharov

I’ve been refraining from commenting on the sad story of the noted dissident Prince Charles, still held under palace arrest by Chairman Blair’s brutal moderno-realist junta. When will the world speak up in favour of absolutism and hereditary privilege against these brutal elected politicians?

OK, sarcasm over. Charles, who seems more pathetic from day to day, has placed a story with the papers that says he will refrain from public comment on contentious issues when (if) he becomes King. Of course that doesn’t mean he’ll actually understand his role as the powerless figurehead of an ossified hereditary system. For starters,

the Prince will keep circulating journals of his thoughts to a close group of friends

even though a free Blogger account would surely save a few trees.

Second, and more disturbingly for fans of democracy,

he will not need to write to ministers because he will see the Prime Minister every week and be able to make his views known then.

Just like he does now, in fact.

Final point on this depressing story. According a senior Clarence House source, quoted in the Observer, no-one can tell whether Charles’s views are left or right. That at least is right, because if you showed me a royalist and a member of the landed aristocracy, who was a strong supporter of tradition, hated modern architecture and intensive farming, was deeply suspicious of foreigners, supported fox hunting and thought that people should just know their place, I would be absolutely unable to say whether their views were right wing or not.

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