The Queen is wrong to interfere in politics – even if most people agree with her

It may seem innocent enough to chide world leaders on green issues, writes John Rentoul, but it is a short step from there to telling people that we know what’s best for them

Queen Elizabeth II made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the sixth session of the Welsh Senedd (PA)

Did she mean her comments to be made public? The Queen was talking to Elin Jones, the presiding officer of the Welsh parliament, and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, at the opening ceremony for the Senedd in Cardiff, but was audible on the live stream of the event.

“We only know about people who are not coming” to the UN Cop 26 climate summit in Glasgow at the end of the month, she said. “It’s really irritating when they talk, but they don’t do.”

Grant Shapps, transport secretary and minister for the morning round of media interviews, said: “I don’t think her comments were for broadcast.” It certainly doesn’t look as deliberate as her intervention in the Scottish referendum campaign in 2014, when she stopped to talk to members of the public outside her church near Balmoral Castle and said: “I hope people will think very carefully about the future.”

That was done with the subtle ambiguity that has made her so successful as a modern monarch, but it was still wrong of her to interfere in politics. I agree with her that the UK should stay together, but I think it was a mistake to say so, even in code.

As it happens, there are a lot of things I agree with the Queen about. She doesn’t support proportional representation, as was revealed by Joyce Gould, a Labour peer who served on the commission chaired by Roy Jenkins to devise a new voting system in 1997. And I agree that there is a gap between the words and the actions of many world leaders on the climate crisis.

But whether or not the Queen intended those particular words to be broadcast, the royal family does seem to regard the environment as a safe, non-political issue on which its members may expound. Jones replied to the Queen’s comment about not knowing who is coming to the Glasgow summit by praising Prince William’s interview that day “saying there’s no point going to space, we need to save the Earth”. I agree with him about that, too, but the environment is a deeply political issue, and the royal family should stay out of it.

There is a distinction to be made between the facts of the climate change in particular, and the policies devised to respond to it. No one could object if the royal family were to say that the climate is changing as a result of human activity, and even that political leaders ought to work together to do something about it. But beyond that, we are in the territory of political debate about what policies are right and who should pay for them.

One of the reasons for admiring the Queen is that she has done a remarkable job of acting as a unifying symbol of the nation while staying out of politics. Given that she is a unifying symbol of a united kingdom, her coded intervention in the Scottish independence debate may be forgivable. But she stayed out of the business of forming governments in hung parliaments, in 1974 and in 2010, and while she seems to have used her acumen and knowledge in private advice to prime ministers and other politicians, she has done so without ever appearing to take sides.

The very existence of the monarchy is incompatible with democracy in principle – it cannot be right that a position of influence is inherited. So the royal family can exist only if it is a pragmatic option that people prefer to an elected president or some other more explicitly democratic arrangement. That means staying out of matters of political contention, even if they may seem harmless and consensual.

I mean, I even agree with a lot of what Prince Charles has to say about architecture, but a lot of people do not, and that kind of controversy is not good for the broad base of consent needed by the future king.

It may seem innocent enough to chide world leaders for talking rather than doing on green issues, but it is a short step from there to telling people that we know what’s best for them because “everybody agrees”.