King Charles is right to add shouty social media to his royal hit list

King Charles III doesn’t actually namecheck Facebook, Twitter/X or TikTok when he urges us to turn down the volume on public debate writes Sean O’Grady – but we all know what he’s (quietly) talking about...

An ancient institution dating back a thousand years can still have a role, and, one year on from his accession, the King seems to understand this (Getty)

The King is a worried man. That’s no great surprise. He often gives the impression of being a troubled, even tortured soul, anxious about the state of the planet (rightly), the state of the nation (ditto) and his own constitutional position (probably a shrewd instinct in his line of work).

He cannot be alone. The last few years of his mother’s reign were obviously tumultuous ones, where the very fabric of parliamentary democracy was stretched to breaking point. As we’ve seen in recent days, too, there are other divisions, albeit driven by causes and passions far away. All of our arguments – the normal ones and the extraordinary – have been amplified and exacerbated by social media, channels that have a unique ability to provoke rage in the otherwise mild-mannered (not to mention the bots).

In his own tangential manner, the King made clearer his discomfiture about something in our national way of life that feels as though it has been in rapid retreat since the EU referendum of 2016 (though he doesn’t, naturally, make reference to Brexit let alone migration, net zero or the Middle East – wise old king that he is):

“Even in the most fractious times – when disagreements are polished, paraded and asserted – there is in our land a kind of muscle memory that it does not have to be like this; that the temptation to turn ourselves into a shouting or recriminatory society must be resisted, or at least heavily mitigated whenever possible, especially in the digital sphere where civilised debate too often gives way to rancour and acrimony.”

He doesn’t actually use the phrase “social media” – let alone mention Facebook, Twitter/X, Musk or TikTok – but we all know what he’s on about. Nor does he find a place to mention the Online Safety Bill, shortly to complete its passage through parliament and on course to be granted royal assent with one of the King’s “frustratingly failing fountain pens” (unless they’ve gone over to biros now). That’s not his job, and he is not in a position – practically or constitutionally – to offer policy solutions.

What the King is entitled to do, on the advice of his ministers, is to warn his people of dangers, and to describe what the nation both is and should be. That’s true of the basically corrosive nature of social media, and also about the wider nature of society. Without actually uttering the phrase “multicultural society”, which the present government dislikes, he nonetheless characterised contemporary Britain “as a ‘community of communities’; an island nation in which our shared values are the force which holds us together, reminding us that there is far, far more that unites us than divides us”.

That is nicely put, and a timely appeal to recognise and cherish the successes of our multicultural “community of communities” – and not to reject that achievement as a failure, as some demagogues in public have seen fit to do.

Some of the more passionate demonstrations in recent days have caused some to cast doubt on that achievement, but they lack perspective. Think of the bitter race riots of the past, the angry protests for and against Brexit, the ugly industrial disputes, the violent hate-filled language of neo-Nazis and hate preachers. Britain shouldn’t be complacent about its ability to absorb such stresses, but they have not yet overcome the “community of communities”.

One modest factor in that is a monarchy that makes itself useful to the nation, as the late Prince Philip put it. An ancient institution dating back a thousand years can still have a role, and, one year on from his accession, the King seems to understand this – and has managed to retain his sense of humour to boot. He really should worry less.