Ages at the Audience

Peter Morgan’s play The Audience has ended its first theatre run in London. Its subject:

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace – a meeting like no other in British public life – it is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses. The Audience breaks this contract of silence – and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional – sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive. From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next Prime Minister.

In April 2013 Helen Mirren was awarded best actress at the Laurence Olivier Awards for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience. After the 2006 film, The Queen, also scripted by Morgan, she received numerous awards for playing the same part.

I didn’t see the play, but can’t help thinking that the key word in the description above is “imagines”. The confidentiality of these meetings allows a dramatist considerable scope in providing an evening’s entertainment, but one has to wonder if the audience will go home much the wiser. As far as I know, British Prime Ministers’ memoirs all conform to the rules of omertà on the subject. For example, almost at the start of The Downing Street Years, Mrs Thatcher tells her readers:

The Audience at which one receives the Queen's authority to form a government comes to most prime ministers only once in a lifetime. The authority is unbroken when a sitting prime minister wins an .election, and so it never had to be renewed throughout the years I was in office. All audiences with the Queen take place in strict confidence - a confidentiality which is vital to the working of both government and constitution. I was to have such audiences with Her Majesty once a week, usually on a Tuesday, when she was in London and sometimes elsewhere when the royal family were at Windsor or Balmoral.  

Perhaps it is permissible to make just two points about these meetings. Anyone who imagines that they are a mere formality or confined to social niceties is quite wrong; they are quietly businesslike and Her Majesty brings to bear a formidable grasp of current issues and breadth of experience. And, although the press could not resist the temptation to suggest disputes between the Palace and Downing Street, especially on Commonwealth affairs, I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the government absolutely correct.  

Of course, under the circumstances, stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up. In general, more nonsense was written about the so-called 'feminine factor' during my time in office than about almost anything else. I was always asked how it felt to be a woman prime minister. I would reply: 'I don't know: I've never experienced the alternative.''  

After the audience, Sir Philip Moore, the Queen's Secretary, took me to his office down what are called 'the Prime Minister's stairs'. … (pages 17,18)

18 years later, one of Thatcher’s successors had his first audience:

… I practically fell upon the Queen's hands, not so much brushing as enveloping them. I recovered sufficiently to find myself sitting opposite her. I had met her before, of course, but this was different. It was my first audience. There is much to say about the Queen. At this encounter, I noticed two things: she was quite shy, strangely so for someone of her experience and position; and at the same time, direct. I don’t mean rude or insensitive, just direct. 'You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.' We talked for a time, not exactly small talk but general guff about the government programme, the conversation somewhat stilted. Then Cherie was brought in to pay her respects … (Tony Blair, A Journey, page 14)

He notes at the time of his departure from office a decade later, the Queen’s being “as ever, very gracious” (page 662).

In the three volumes of Alastair Campbell’s diaries covering his years in Number 10 working for Blair, the ‘audience’ subject is indexed only in Volume 3, Power and Responsibility 1999-2001, with just the one entry of any real interest:

21 March 2001  

… I tried to pick his [Blair’s] brains on whether the Queen was a hundred per cent happy at the way Prince Charles was piling in [on the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic, see 5 March entry]. He was unbelievably discreet though, occasionally told the odd funny story about their meetings, but even with me, rarely let slip anything of substance from their discussions.

It seems to me that the only thing that most of us can be sure of about these audiences is the identities of the participants and their ages. What would that tell us? Firstly, that it takes some effort to pull the information together, and my first attempt at presenting it led to the chart below. This shows the ages of Sovereigns and Prime Ministers since the start of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1837.

Some points of interest across this period are:

1. Victoria was the youngest Sovereign, just over 18 at succession.
2. Elizabeth is the oldest, currently 87.
3. The oldest PM in office was Gladstone, 84 when he left in 1894.
4. The youngest PM in office was Cameron in 2010, at 43.
5. Between 1935 and 1937, Baldwin was PM to three different Kings. Data visualisation is fashionable, so it seems worth reflecting on the insignificance rendered to the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 by this particular form of graphical presentation.
Also, 6. Until the 1960s, PMs were nearly all over 50 and most were over 60. There has, however, been a downward trend in their ages since Churchill left office in 1955. It seems unlikely that this trend will continue further, so it will either reverse, or PMs from now on will be in their 40s.

Secondly, the same data can be presented in a different fashion (left) to show the age difference between Sovereign and PM over the same period, but with time running down the page. To be of much significance in relationships between adults, their age difference probably has to be large enough for them to be conscious of belonging to different generations - the remarks Blair quotes seem to have the subtext: “I am old enough to be your mother”. In modern advanced societies (or in the higher social strata of poorer ones) generations are usually taken as being 25 to 30 years apart. So once an age difference between adults is more than 15 years, it might begin to affect the view they take of each other. The blue-grey bands on the chart are set to indicate 17.5 to 20 year differences. Some further points of interest emerge:

7. The biggest age difference, over 51 years, between Sovereign and PM was that between Elizabeth and Churchill from 1952 to 1955.
8. The Sovereign and PM closest in age were Elizabeth and Mrs Thatcher, the latter being six months older.
9. The biggest age difference between a Sovereign and a younger PM is that at present, 40 years.
Also, 10. From 1870 to 1936, the Sovereigns and PMs were close enough in age to be regarded as being of the same generation (except during the Rosebury administration of 1894/5). This applied again between 1964 and 1997 but not since.

Finally, what might the situation be in 2017? More confidently than for most predictions, it can be assumed that the Sovereign is likely to be as at present or Charles III or William V. But the PM? If the coalition’s economic policies turn out to be a success and the Conservatives win the next election, Cameron could still be PM or could have stood down. In the latter case, the bookies’ current favourite as next Tory leader is Theresa May. My view, not that I’ve bet on it, is that in those circumstances George Osborne would be well-placed to take the credit for the recovery and the leadership. However, the bookies’ favourite as next PM is Ed Miliband. For the age differences under these scenarios, see the Table below and draw the obvious conclusions about generational age differences, if you think these matter.

As for The Audience, Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph thought it was magnificent and “persuasive”, while in the Observer, Susannah Clapp thought “Morgan's very entertaining play is a skinny thing, a string of sketches dependent on high-grade mimicry”. Robert Hardman, maker of the ITV documentary Our Queen, probably provided in the Daily Mail one of the best-informed reviews and concluded:

… what the Queen genuinely thinks of her Prime Ministers will be sheer guesswork for a long time to come until future historians are one day granted access to the diaries and papers of a sovereign who has listened to them all — and never leaked a thing.

which rather assumes that there will be such access.


NOTES

1. The dates of reigns, of prime ministerships and of birth come from Wikipedia.
2. On a few occasions in the Victorian period the country had to manage without a PM for a day or two – the rise of the British Empire doesn’t seem to have been interrupted. The gaps are not shown. 3. The age differences are those on 1 July each year – regrettably this restriction excludes the Russell administration of October 1885 to June 1886. Edward VIII’s brief reign is captured.
4. I hope that the inevitable errors are not significant. I am happy to correct any that are. The way Excel was used to handle dates was described in a previous post. The graphics were produced using PowerPoint and the alignments are not always exact.


UPDATE 19 DECEMBER 2013

According to an article by Chris Hastings in the Mail on Sunday on 15 December:

Theirs was a difficult relationship that has become the stuff of West End drama – and today The Mail on Sunday can reveal one possible source of the tension between The Queen and Margaret Thatcher. Official papers just made public show the Prime Minister repeatedly rescheduled and cancelled their weekly audiences, risking the irritation of Buckingham Palace. Even Mrs Thatcher’s own aides warned her of ‘pushing her luck’ and potentially ‘spoiling the relationship’ with the Palace over her requests to rearrange the meetings. …

All credit to the MoS for its efforts:

Mrs Thatcher’s bids to rearrange the meetings are revealed in official papers declassified following a Freedom of Information request by The Mail on Sunday, and covering the three years after Mrs Thatcher took office in 1979.

but Prime Ministers are very busy people, rather more so than constitutional monarchs, and this sort of thing may always be happening. There will almost certainly be further FOI requests for other PMs and, if so, we might learn more.

Après elle, le déluge?

Apart from a tongue-in-cheek post last year about the Queen retiring at 90, I’m not much interested in the Royal family. So this post is another exception to the norm and also an excuse to upload an image the Bristolian street artist Banksy has donated to the public domain.

On 6 June Britain went back to work after four days of Queen’s Diamond Jubilee festivities. Even so, The Times that morning, as well as pull-outs and wrap-overs, gave pages 1 to 13 over to Jubilee reporting. Reality finally intruded on page 15 under the headline, Germany must take action to save world economies, warn finance ministers.  Any irony in its being the anniversary of D-day (6 June 1944) was avoided since the media coverage of the latter was minimal.

Whether the additional public holiday on Tuesday 5th (Monday’s Bank Holiday, as they are called in the UK, was part of the normal quota) was really needed to celebrate appropriately, or even sensible given the country’s economic situation, doesn’t seem to have been the subject of much debate. Last year an extra Bank Holiday was thought necessary to mark the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Perhaps we can manage for the next few years with the usual public holidays and avoid worrying about the impact of any extra ones on economic growth.

The media coverage of the Jubilee and its royal participants was mostly fawning and shallow, so Max Hastings’ cooler view in the Financial Times on 2 June was an exception. Headed Long may she reign – with dignity and endearing dullness, (and subheaded Many want her to go on and on; some fear for what is next, in the paper but not on the website) it made the point that:

Most of Queen Elizabeth’s subjects want her to reign for ever, partly because they cherish the continuity she represents in a turbulent age, and partly because of unease about what might follow if her son succeeds her. The Prince of Wales conspicuously lacks his mother’s discipline and discretion; he pursues eccentric causes with messianic zeal. Courtiers assert soothingly that if he assumes the crown he will relapse into Trappist silence, accepting its constraints. But there seem grounds for doubt whether, as a sexagenarian, he will suddenly acquire the prudence that characterises his mother. If he attempted to change the character of the monarchy, to make himself more assertive, trouble could quickly follow. It seems mistaken to confuse widespread public respect for the Queen with inalienable support for dynastic rule. History shows how suddenly and dramatically hostility to the royal family can erupt, if its members behave unwisely. …  

[The Queen] has understood the most important thing about a modern constitutional monarch: that he or she is judged for what they are, rather than for what they do. This is something that the Prince of Wales, forever eager to tackle huge issues beyond his intellectual capacity, has never grasped. While it is true that he sometimes puts himself on the virtuous side of public controversies, the proper function of the royal family in a constitutional monarchy is to stay out of controversy altogether. … the Queen’s successor will do well to consider her conduct a template for his own, rather than indulge perilous notions about creating a “new-style” monarchy.

Not that Hastings is the only commentator in the last few years to express some apprehension about Prince Charles’ future kingship. But there may be a more fundamental problem lurking in the background. A couple of days after Hastings’ article, the FT reported Luxury market set to hit $1.5tn and explained:

The market for luxury, such as yachts, frocks and safaris, is set to hit $1.5tn this year, roughly matching the entire economic output of Spain or Australia, as the income inequality gap widens across the globe. … money is increasingly going on luxury experiences, from spas to safaris, rather than tangible products. Spending on experiences grew 50 per cent faster than on goods last year, according to Boston Consulting Group. The management consultancy expects the overall luxury market to expand 7 per cent this year, a deceleration on the past two years’ 12 per cent but still comfortably ahead of projected growth in global economic output.  

“The gap in income inequality is growing, which is unfortunate, but as a result there are more and more millionaires every year,” said Jean-Marc Bellaiche, a senior partner at BCG and co-author of the latest report. Millionaires, he adds, account for an estimated 45 per cent of the market. Some analysts have questioned how long the inexorable rise of luxury can continue as swaths of Europe are engulfed in economic and financial turmoil and the US remains fragile. …

A major challenge for Western politicians is likely to be finding a suitable response to increasing tensions between the few percent who are on the right side of the ‘income inequality gap’ and the rest of us on the ‘unfortunate’ side. Although the Queen appears in the Sunday Times Rich List (257th equal at an estimated £300m), her wealth has never seemed to be an issue which provokes popular ill-feeling. No doubt this is partly because, as Hastings describes,

Always financially prudent, she has swallowed economy measures at her palaces, together with the scrapping of the royal yacht without replacement, and agreed to pay income tax on her private fortune.

Also, the Queen appears to share an austere streak with many other people who experienced life in Britain during World War 2 and the difficult years which followed it and shows little inclination towards extravagances out of keeping with her role as head of state. However, some of the younger royals, and there are quite a few, seem to have more of a taste for the clothes, cars, houses, holidays and other things that make up the luxurious ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’. That this could alienate many of the public if times get much harder for the majority is obvious.

Robert Hazell, Professor of British Politics and Government and Director of the Constitution Unit at University College, London (no less), surfaced on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on 7 June to explain ‘the significance of the balcony photograph conceived by Buckingham Palace as the last image of the Jubilee celebrations’. He seemed to think that it signalled a focussing on the core members of the royal family, those in the line of succession. Although he didn’t say so, reducing the public profile of the rest could be a sensible precaution. A similar line came from The Times (£) the same day in an unctuous piece about Prince Charles by Valentine Low, which concluded:

If Charles’s speech was one of the significant moments of the Jubilee weekend, so too was the balcony appearance at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday afternoon. The slimmed down team that went out to wave to the crowds, just six of them including the Queen, was an obvious attempt to concentrate on the core members of the Royal Family. As such, it chimes in exactly with Charles’s view that the Royal Family should be pared down to a much smaller team than it is at present. Buckingham Palace would, no doubt, like people to believe that all such decisions were taken by the Queen. The Prince of Wales, however, is not to be ignored. And increasingly he won’t be.

So perhaps Hastings’ misgivings about Charles are ill-judged, and certain problems a future Prime Minister could well do without will never arise.

New Year Predictions 2012

A year ago in a post on this blog, I recorded three predictions (see below) which had surfaced in 2010 and might prove worth revisiting in time.  Here are three more which came up in 2011.

In March in an interview with the Guardian, Adam Posen,

The Bank of England's leading dove has predicted that inflation will tumble to 1.5% by the middle of next year … “If I have made the wrong call, not only will I switch my vote, I would not pursue a second term. They should have somebody who gets it right and not me.”

In May, Henry Kissinger was interviewed by Simon Schama for the FT (£). He offered a scenario for Afghanistan after US withdrawal:

“An India-Pakistan war becomes more probable. Eventually,” says the Doctor, his voice a deep pond of calm. “Therefore some kind of international process in which these issues are discussed might generate enough restraints so that Pakistan does not feel itself encircled by India and doesn’t see a strategic reserve in the Taliban.” He looks directly at me. “Is it possible to do this? I don’t know. But I know if we let matters drift this could become the Balkans of the next world war.”

Finally, and quite immodestly in such company, I made the suggestion in June that the Queen might retire in April 2016 after her 90th birthday.

I will number these 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3 and have applied the same format to last year’s which were:

10.1 “It will be fascinating to see whether the coalition conceived after the 2010 election holds. It may, since the Lib Dem desire for electoral reform is so intrinsic to them. But if that doesn’t come about, I doubt the coalition will last long. However, I may be wrong ...”
Tony Blair, currently looking as though he was “wrong”, but who knows what may happen in 2012?

10.2 “whoever wins this [2010] election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be”
Attributed to Mervyn King, who may be proved right in that many aspects of the UK’s fiscal austerity have yet to be realised.

10.3 Prince Charles would never be King and that William would succeed his grandmother
Attributed to Princess Diana – too soon to tell.

United States of Anglophonia

In a recent comment piece in The Times (£), David Aaronovitch, no doubt with tongue firmly in cheek, proposed that the UK, having given up on Europe, should join the USA rather than go it alone. His proposal was that:

… the nations of the United Kingdom become the 51st, 52nd, 53rd and 54th states of what might be known as the United States of America and the East Atlantic.

Admittedly,

Joining the US would mean Prince Charles not succeeding to the throne after his mother, but would also suggest that this was nothing personal. The Royal Family would continue in theme-park fashion, with hundreds of millions of additional fans in the other states.

which in part matches someone else’s predictions. He concluded:

Reader, as we enter 2012, please say that you too can see by the dawn’s early light, catching the gleam of the morning’s first beam, the contours of our Atlantic destiny.
Switzerland? Meh.

I don’t think Aaronovitch would make much of a negotiator. Consider. The population of the USA is about 313 million and that of the UK a bit over 62 million. Our accession would therefore represent a 20% increase in the number of US citizens and so would justify the number of states in the union increasing from 50 to 60. The population of a state is about 6.2 million on average but ranges from that of the smallest, Wyoming with just over ½ million, to the largest, California with nearly 38 million. So Aaronovitch’s proposal that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each become states seems quite reasonable (see table below).

However, England would then need to be divided into the remaining seven states, and while this might be problematic (to put it mildly), the existing nine regions provide a basis for this to be done as the diagram below shows.

The obvious two candidates for removal are the North East by merger with Yorkshire and the Humber, together a respectable 7.5 million population, and the East Midlands by merger with the West. But the combined Midlands would be 8.7 million, so shedding Worcestershire and Herefordshire to the South West would be in order. The latter could be raised further to about 5 million population if the bloated South East were to lose Oxfordshire. The result would be a set of seven states-to-be with populations between 5.3 and 7.4 million, nicely straddling the US average.

And finally, on a parochial South Western note, in his article Aaronovitch suggested that Wales would take on the nickname of the Dragon state. Here in the state of South West England, although Plymouth was the final departure port of the Pilgrim Fathers, we would probably have to make do with Mayflower state (after their ship), Pilgrim being already in use for Massachusetts.  Also, there might be an interesting first senatorial race in a part of the UK which up until the last election had become mostly split between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. If all the Conservatives (blue in the UK) become Republicans (red in the US), and Labour (red) moved entirely to the Democrats (blue), would the Liberal Democrats just stop being Liberal so Democrats would win both Senate seats? As they used to say in these parts, a pig would win with a blue ribbon!

Great fun, but it ain’t going to happen! Anyway Puerto Rico and Washington DC are ahead of us in the queue.

(UK population statistics 2010/11 from ONS, here)

Blair and Science (yet again)

In A Journey Tony Blair commented on his Chief Scientific Adviser’s contribution to the resolution of the foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in 2001:

When l got back to Downing Street on Sunday I decided to grip the whole thing, and got my close advisers together. By some masterstroke - not mine, I hasten to add, but Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary's - our chief scientific adviser, Sir David King was invited to join the inner circle. If anyone tells you that scientists are impractical boffins, refer them to David. What he told me sounded a trifle wacky, but over the weeks to come it was to be of priceless value in defeating the disease. Essentially, by means of graphs and charts he set out how the disease would spread, how we could contain it if we took the right culling measures, and how over time we would eradicate it. The officials were extremely sceptical. So was I. How could he predict it like that, with so many unknowns? But almost faute de mieux, I followed his advice - and blow me, with uncanny, almost unnatural accuracy, the disease peaked, declined and went, almost to the week he had predicted.

The first post on this blog drew on this remark and others in A Journey to bewail the gulf between politicians and science, subsequently confirmed by Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, in his memoir of Number 10. Now, the third volume of diaries, Power and Responsibility 1999-2001, by another Blair consigliere, Alastair Campbell (Chief press secretary and the PM’s official spokesman), provides another account of the uses of top scientists during a time of pestilence:

… After Cabinet, Jeremy H{eywood PM’s principal private secretary} and I discussed whether David King [chief scientific adviser], who TB had taken to, and was affectionately calling ‘Dr Strangelove’, should do a media briefing showing various possible projections. … I met David King and we agreed to go for a detailed, heavy briefing Sunday for Monday. I felt that despite the risks of it being misinterpreted, he would do it well, and it was important we give a sense of being on the front foot, and stop the whole thing from being dominated by burning pyres and a politically driven agenda from elsewhere. … (p564-5, 29 March 2001)

… TB called and said Scotland felt better. We agreed to postpone Dr Strangelove’s briefing to Tuesday. … (p564 ,30 March)

We finally agreed David King would do his presentation to TB and Nick, so he could frame it at PMQs, and then King see the media after that. He was clearly a clever bloke, and very keen to help, but both Jeremy and I had concerns the media would stitch him up, or at the least exaggerate and take out of context what he was saying, or verbal him into an over-interpretation that would scare the hell out of people. I told him not to imagine he was about to engage in a rational conversation with rational, intelligent people. They are intelligent but in the main they are out for trouble, and he needs to be very careful. In the end he probably came over as a bit too optimistic, and we had to recalibrate a little … (p570 4 April)

which is probably valuable advice for anyone trying to put something complex and objective before an unsympathetic audience. Blair’s team seemed to take Churchill’s view of scientists almost literally:

… We agreed to get King up again to try to get the focus on the figures showing the cases coming down. … (p579 19 April) 

(Randolph Churchill is the source for his father’s often-quoted comment that ‘Scientists should be on tap, but not on top’).

Campbell, a vet’s son, is chairman of fundraising for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research.  @campbellclaret tweets about visits to cancer research labs when, presumably, he is coming across more scientists than at any time since leaving Cambridge. Perhaps he will get round to blogging about his perspectives on science when in government, and whether they’ve changed now.

ADDENDUM 15 JULY

This week The Times (£) has serialised The unfinished life. An odyssey of love and cancer by Philip Gould. Lord Gould, as he is now, had played a key role in establishing New Labour and in the elections which Tony Blair won in 1997, 2001 and 2005. In 2008 Gould was diagnosed with and treated for oesophageal cancer, but later realised that the disease had recurred:

In November I had dinner with Tony [Blair]. I was not so much low as lost; I could not see a way through. Why had it happened? The first diagnosis I understood: I got cancer as others did and I fought it, with as much determination as I could muster. I had taken every pill, undergone every treatment, done everything required of me, got through the crucial two-year mark and still it had returned. Why had it come back? He paused for a second and said slowly: “Because the cancer has not finished; it is simply not done with you, it wanted more. You may have changed but not by enough, now you have to go on to a higher spiritual level still. You have to use this recurrence to find your real purpose in life.” Tony was right, I had to find meaning in this recurrence, to finally come to terms with the purpose of the cancer.
… Tony came to see me, just as he had on the eve of my previous surgery. He said one of his most precious possessions was a 6th-century ring he had got from Mount Sinai. He gave it to me to give me luck. I was touched but anxious, certain that I would lose it, …

Much of Gould’s account of his illness is about the application of science-based medicine to his case, and he has donated his fee for the articles to cancer research. In so far as Gould found comfort and support from Blair’s words (and the ring) in a dark hour, the reader can only be pleased. But just what was Blair talking about? It’s odd that Blair didn’t get on a lot better with Prince Charles than seems to have been the case according to Campbell (eg p151-152 Vol 3). Charles’ views and Blair’s are not altogether dissimilar, to judge from this extract (kindly provided by Amazon) from the former’s Harmony A New Way of Looking at Our World:

The essential point here is, how far our empirical knowledge can go before it begins to encroach on territory it is not qualified to discuss. Let me be clear about it. Science can tell us how things work, but it is not equipped to tell us what they mean. That is the domain of philosophy and religion and spirituality.

Will the Queen Retire at 90?

I have no idea, but it is something to speculate about in an idle moment. Prince Philip was 90 last week (17 June), and told the BBC that he is "winding down" and reducing his workload as a senior member of the royal family. In an interview with the BBC's Fiona Bruce, the Queen's husband said: "I reckon I've done my bit." So might the Queen follow his example after her 90th birthday in April 2016?

Usually when the possibility of the Queen’s standing down is discussed, the idea is quickly ruled out on the grounds of the A-word. Certainly the Abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 represented a major crisis for the Royal Family at the time, but for most people who have seen The King’s Speech this year, Edward was as historically remote as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown. Very few people would begrudge the Queen’s stepping down after so many years of service, or would now regard it as being constitutionally destabilising. Although it might take a little time and effort to induce popular enthusiasm for Charles’ accession, if his sons were to make their support clear any public misgivings would probably soon disappear. All the better if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were to have produced an heir by 2016.

There might be political attractions too. Bruce Anderson in the FT recently described David Cameron as a man, “Absolute in his own intellectual self-confidence”. So presumably the PM is certain that coalition policies will lead to the British economy being well on the way to recovery by 2015. If so, in the election due that year the country could be expected to return a Conservative government. The PM at the time of the last Coronation, also towards the end of a period of enforced austerity, was Winston Churchill. David Kynaston in Family Britain 1951-1957 remarks (page 305) that the Coronation and the preceding period of anticipation “were not comfortable days for the British left, or indeed the progressive intelligentsia as a whole”. He goes on to quote Barbara Castle: “Winston has just introduced her [the Queen] on the radio, exploiting the romantic mood of the moment to its fruitiest uttermost.” Churchill left government two years later at the age of 80. If Cameron were to stand down in 2017, probably in favour of George Osborne, he would be only 51. But like Tony Blair he would then have time to earn a substantial amount, and he would be able to remove his children from Downing Street before their teenage years. SEE ADDENDUM 22 JUNE BELOW.

Some statistics provide another perspective. The chart below shows the lengths of the reigns of the Queen’s 10 predecessors (excluding Edward VIII) plotted against their age at accession. The data points for the Queen (QE2) and the future King Charles (C3) assume that they leave the throne at the age of 90 (ignoring actuarial considerations). Most sovereigns have been crowned in middle age or later, with only the two Queens and George III (G3) acceding under the age of 30. Queen Victoria (QV) was on the throne for more than 63 years, a record which the Queen will overtake by the end of 2015. If Charles were to accede in 2016, and follow the precedent set by his mother of retiring at 90, he would have reigned for over 15 years, longer than his grandfather and four other sovereigns in the preceding 300 years.

This all seems so neat that it is most unlikely to happen. The relevant non-conjectural data is tabulated below.

Beware of the change from the Julian to Gregorian calendar during the reign of George II!

ADDENDUM 22 JUNE: In his Daily Telegraph blog today, Benedict Brogan, who is reputedly close to Number 10, makes a good case for Boris Johnson being the other likely successor to David Cameron.  Johnson’s intimes “expect Mr Cameron to step aside some time in a second term to pursue other interests.”

ADDENDUM 20 MARCH 2012

This post still gets the occasional hit, so I should draw the attention of anyone who reads this far to the following. The Queen gave a speech to Parliament today to mark her 60 years on the throne. She said:

I have been privileged to witness some of that [nearly a thousand years of British] history and, with the support of my family, rededicate myself to the service of our great country and its people now and in the years to come.

Expect golden days, actuarially

In the FT Weekend Magazine 23/24 April (£), there is a pre-Royal Wedding article by Matthew Engel, Welcome to the firm, in which he remarks that:

Actuarially, it is very plausible that he [Prince Charles] will predecease his mother, whose constitution seems more robust than Britain’s.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) provides data on life expectancy in the form of life tables. Within these, ONS proposes that the “Cohort expectation of life, 1981-2058” is the “more appropriate measure of how long a person of a given age would be expected to live, on average, than period life expectancy.” Various projections are available, but the “Principal projection” provides a life expectancy for a UK female of 85 of 7.5 years, and for males of 62 and 63 life expectancies of 20.9 and 20.1 years respectively*.

While it is impossible to proceed from the general to the particular, and also there will presumably be some inheritance of longevity, mother to son, actuarial plausibility would seem to suggest that good King Charles III's golden days** will last more than a decade!

Engel might have been influenced by Princess Diana’s prediction that Prince Charles would never be King and that William would succeed his grandmother.

*Queen Elizabeth II (85) was born on 21 April 1926, and Prince Charles (62) on 14 Nov 1948.

**Song: The Vicar of Bray

In good King Charles's golden days,
When loyalty no harm meant;
A furious High-Church man I was,
And so I gain'd preferment.
Unto my flock I daily preach'd,
Kings are by God appointed,
And damn'd are those who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord's anointed.
And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my dying day, sir,
That whatsoever king shall reign,
I will be Vicar of Bray, sir!
Etc etc