Useful advice I received on arrival in Buenos Aires in 2009 as a barely house-trained ambassador was offered by a veteran emissary.
He advised: “The job of an ambassador is to think twice … and then say nothing.”
Go back more than 2,300 years and Demosthenes summed up soft power then and now: “Ambassadors have no battleships at their disposal or heavy infantry, or fortresses; their weapons are words and opportunity … and these are fleeting.”
I toggled between these formulas and survived three years in the post, sans scandal. Ebrahim Rasool did not. He was hoofed out of Washington DC after three months as our ambassador. His comments on supremacism and President Donald Trump led to his expulsion.
If any expectations preceded the now-triumphal march of King Charles III through the US, they would have been on the lowball “say nothing” trope. His late mother, a regal presence much loved by Trump, once said: “I have to be seen to be believed.” Decoded, this means show up and offer serviceable clichés, in a shimmering outfit.
This king went in a different direction.
His visit might not reset the “special relationship”, though it warmed things up after Trump’s anger for the UK no-show in Iran. And it got tariff relief for Scotch whisky. And Charles certainly charmed its often snarling and hypersensitive president and his first lady and courtiers. The king offered a polite and witty counterpoint to the hubristic person he was there to court.
So how did the king and queen of England beguile the king of Queens (as Trump has been called), plus deliver some home truths coupled with a history lesson or two?
And do so in the House of Representatives and the White House respectively, both bastions of the implacable (small “r”) republicans of the US that 250 years ago set its face against a distant, tyrannical monarch, King George III — the present monarch’s ancestor?
“No kings” has been the rallying cry of protesters against king Donald, but this real monarch managed for a day or four to unite the red and blue states of the US.
First, despite their antimonarchical claims and credo, many Americans are fans of British royalty. The Crown was a smash hit among the 66-million US subscribers to Netflix.
Second, Trump reminded the world that his own Scots-born mother had a crush on then-Prince Charles. A genuine royal sprinkles stardust into even the gaudiest faux palaces, such as Trump’s tacky gold redo of the Oval Office where the two heads of state convened.
A genuine royal sprinkles stardust into even the gaudiest faux palaces, such as Trump’s tacky gold redo of the Oval Office where the two heads of state convened
But Charles (and his speechwriters) offered pointed messages that went beyond flummery. He mixed flattery, history and understatement, delivered with old-world aplomb to his new-world audience. Historian Simon Schama judged his oratory in the league of Cicero.
So, how did he do it and what did he say?
He won 12 standing ovations in his speech to Congress. In it he stood up for Nato, environmentalism, Ukraine, constitutional checks and balances, rule of law, and more. Trump and many in Congress are hostile or indifferent to these causes; they cheered anyway.
His Woosterish “by Jove” got the laughs going. He then could remind them that “my prime minister” was in fact the beleaguered Keir Starmer, dismissed by Trump recently as “no Churchill”.
Then the flattery was laid on with a trowel. Congress, usually gridlocked, was rebranded by Charles as “a renowned chamber of debate and deliberation”.
Trump called the speech “great”’ and Charles was in even better form that night at the White House. He charmed Trump with references to the new ballroom (“readjustments”) and how in burning the White House in 1814, the British had offered their own version of “real estate redevelopment”.
Then he gave a riposte to Trump’s jibe that “if it were not for the United States, Europeans would be speaking German”. As Charles reminded him, “Dare I say that if it weren’t for us, you’d be speaking French!”
The New York Times underlined the danger in the riffs Charles offered at his host’s expense, gentle and subtle as they were. “The approach could have been high-risk because Mr Trump is so thin-skinned and almost never makes self-deprecating jokes. But the humour appears to have charmed, not infuriated the president.”
And then an act of genius: presenting Trump, obsessed with slapping his name on everything, with the bell from the conning tower of the 1944 submarine HMS Trump. Unsubtle as this was, so too Charles’s accompanying remark: “May it stand as a testimony to nations’ shared history and shining future.”
The best outcome for King Charles was at home. He emerged as his own man, out of the shadow of his beloved mother. The headline in The Sun, often an outlet for scandals about his wayward younger brother Andrew and his younger son, Harry, was on message this time.
It described him as “Britain’s No 1 diplomat”. No understatement. As a detribalised member of that community, I concur.
Leon was leader of the DA and later served as South Africa’s ambassador to Argentina
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