MAGA v the monarch: Is King Charles blowing royal raspberries at Trump?

In perhaps the most historically anomalous example yet of Trump-induced topsy-turvyism, the British Crown has become a counterpoint to a US president acting more and more like an American king.

Canada, where King Charles III on Tuesday became the first monarch to open parliament in nearly 70 years, provided the latest background for this regal role reversal. At a time when US President Donald Trump is threatening Canadian sovereignty, his north-of-the-border nemesis, the new Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, deployed the country’s constitutional monarch.

King Charles III (right) delivered a bilingual speech in Canadian parliament this week that read like an anti-Trump cri de coeur.Credit: AP

On the very day that Trump offered free Canadian access to his proposed “golden dome” missile shield in return for becoming America’s 51st state, the Maple Leaf nation showed off its own defence system: the man with the golden mace.

The 76-year-old King seemed to revel in his mission. From his throne in the Canadian parliament, he delivered a bilingual speech that read, both in English and French, like an anti-Trump cri de coeur.

It began, “on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people”, with an Acknowledgment of Country, and praised the Canadian virtues of “diversity and kindness”, an unmistakable dig at Trump’s contempt for “DEI”.

“Democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, self-determination and freedom are values which Canadians hold dear,” proclaimed King Charles, while also calling for “open global trade” with “reliable trading partners” and “a coalition of like-minded countries that share its values”. The speech reached a rousing climax, with its biggest applause line: “As the anthem reminds us: the True North is indeed strong and free.” O Canada. Oh la la, King Charles.

The Canadian government primarily authored the speech. Clearly, however, every carefully chosen word came with a royal seal of approval and would have been vetted by Buckingham Palace. Even before opening his mouth, King Charles had made a defiant statement simply by crossing the Atlantic.

Donald Trump during his first presidential term, with then-Prince Charles in 2019.Credit: AP

The King could easily have turned down this eleventh-hour invitation. Royal diaries, after all, are fixed months in advance. Protocol is ordinarily conducted at a stately trot rather than a gallop. Besides, King Charles could have cited his ongoing cancer treatment as reason for not venturing into such diplomatically tricky territory.

But venture he did. And, not for the first time since Trump’s restoration, he seemed happy to become the leading man in an intricately choreographed act of geopolitical theatre directed against the White House.

In Ottawa he essentially reprised the role he played on the weekend after the Ukrainian president got roughed up in the Oval Office by Trump and his vice-presidential henchman J. D. Vance. Then he welcomed a bruised Volodymyr Zelensky to Sandringham, his East Anglian estate. Arranged at warp speed, that meeting was also rapid royal rebuttal. A very British middle finger.

The government of Keir Starmer also knows how to play the royal card, using it both to charm Trump and to chide him. Trump, whose mother was born in the Western Isles of Scotland, is an arch monarchist who idolised Queen Elizabeth II and does not seem particularly perturbed that Charles is the most “woke” monarch ever to occupy the British throne.

The simple fact that Charles comes with the title “his majesty”, and enjoys the kind of dynastic privilege money cannot buy, gives him a form of diplomatic immunity. No matter that Charles is gently mocked by family members, I am told, for being to the left of George Monbiot, one of The Guardian’s most progressive columnists.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer hands an invitation from King Charles to US President Donald Trump. Credit: AP

So Trump, who is so easily flattered, instantly took the bait when Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in full reality TV mode, pulled out an envelope during an Oval Office fireside chat in February that contained a personal invitation from the King for an unprecedented second UK state visit.

Since then, Starmer has been at the forefront of the European rearguard to protect Ukraine from both President Vladimir Putin’s warmongering and Trump’s supine peacemaking. Yet despite Starmer playing a double diplomatic game, the promise of that presidential visit to Britain seems to have kept him in Trump’s good graces.

Proof came in the form of a new trade deal with the United States earlier this month, the first negotiated by an international leader since Liberation Day. What of Independence Day, I hear you bellow. Why is Trump being allowed by his party, the Republicans, to act like a monarch? This is not so historically perverse as it seems.

The American revolution, after all, was primarily a rebellion against the British parliament rather than the British king. The complaint of some leading revolutionaries was that after the Glorious Revolution in the late 17th century the British parliament had usurped too many monarchical prerogatives, and that King George should have overruled Westminster in managing his insurgent North American colonies. In 1776 it was possible to be both a revolutionary and a royalist. Alexander Hamilton, despite the myth-making of the brilliant Broadway musical, fitted this description.

After the Americans triumphed over the British, this strand of thinking shaped the new US Constitution, and in particular its creation of a strong executive branch. An irony of the War of Independence is that the United States ended up with a new head of state with more powers than the deposed king. The titles under consideration for what eventually became known as the presidency reflected this kingly bent: “his elective highness”, “his supremacy”, “his mightiness”, “his magistracy” and, yes, “his majesty”.

As for Britain’s current monarch, Trump’s subversion of America’s postwar alliance system means he now stands at the head of a revitalised Commonwealth of Nations, a friendlier pact altogether.

Trump’s antagonistic relationship with Europe has also enabled Starmer to reset relations with the European Union, sealed earlier this month with the renegotiation of the Brexit deal, and become a more weighty global player.

Perhaps Trump has helped Britain, after losing its empire, finally find a role: to use the soft power of the monarchy, its one-time figurehead of imperialism, to thwart the territorial expansionism of its former colony. It’s a joust for the ages. The monarch against MAGA. King Charles against King Donald.

Nick Bryant, the host of ABC Radio National’s Saturday Extra, is the author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.

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