Are people still getting up out of their Christmas Day sloth to hear the monarch’s message to the nation at 3pm? It used to be the one unvarying point of the day: the only time of the year when the Queen – and it has always been the Queen for living memory – spoke directly to the nation in her own words, unwritten by the ministers. Yet its familiarity and — let’s face it — frequent emptiness make it seem less relevant or meaningful to many these days.
Although the Queen often used the program in her later years to speak movingly about her own faith, she kept her distance from politics, one could say religiously. But was there a slight difference this year in praising the new king for public sector workers and volunteers – those who help at panels and deliver aid to disaster areas around the world?
Speaking of the “selfless dedication” of the armed forces and emergency services who worked tirelessly to keep the nation safe, he added: “We see it in our health and social workers, our teachers and indeed all those who those who work in public service, their skills and dedication are at the heart of our communities. And in this time of great fear and need – whether for people around the world facing conflict, famine or natural disasters, or for those at home finding ways to pay their bills and feed their families and keep them warm – let us see it in the humanity of people in our nations and in the Commonwealth who respond so readily to the needs of others.”
Have Conservative ministers shifted somewhat uneasily in their armchairs at such references, made at a time of public sector strikes, increased use of food banks even by these dedicated workers, and cuts in foreign aid? You can imagine a mindless Tory backbencher telling the king to do as he is told, or a minister announcing on the Today program how much the government is already spending on this and that, and that more money for those who keep the services running is simply priceless. In the meantime, they’ll unofficially murmur that Charles doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Of course, Charles won’t join a picket line or publicly criticize the cruelty of the government’s immigration policies (he knows the constitutional limits), but he can – and now it’s clear he will – voice his concerns and present a more unified picture than ministers can make an effort to promote. It’s a kind of petty C-conservatism of a nation that the Conservative Party of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have purposely banned from the ranks and party rhetoric.
In the 90 years of Christmas Day broadcasts, a number of monarchs have spoken out about what unites rather than divides. Old George V gasped and coughed live from a cabinet under the stairs at Sandringham via broadcasting, which made it possible for his voice to be heard across the realm “by one of the marvels of modern science” to people who were of snow, desert or sea were cut off. In the early months of World War II, George VI. up the largely forgotten verse by Minnie Louise Haskins, a former sociologist at the London School of Economics, to mobilize courage and determination in what was then a largely Christian country: “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a light that I step safely into the unknown'”.
The king has his own problems: a younger son who brings up grievances and an institution that must emerge from the darkness into a brighter and more responsive future. Yesterday’s broadcast made no mention of Prince Harry’s worries or Prince Andrew’s future – it was not the time or place to resolve those family issues, as much as some followers of the royal soap opera, let alone tabloid editors, would have liked it.
Instead, Charles spoke to an equally concerned nation and did the unity thing. It’s the role of the king and he performed it quite gracefully. The king will never explicitly speak out against the government, but if his statements occasionally hurt a little less than his mother ever thought possible, so much the better.