Transcription
I'll give you a lovely example of a critical non-essential, but having a king. And it's called a Chesterton's fence that we often get rid of things because we don't know why they're there. Because we don't know what the function of the thing is, we never then account for the disadvantages of not having it.
We had just this occasion where there was a royal visit to the United States. I don't know who was behind it. Obviously the king was partly behind it. He's actually pretty shrewd. We ought to give him the credit for being, you know, ahead of the curve on environmental and ecological questions way before it was fashionable. Along with bizarrely Margaret Thatcher, actually. There were some very strange early voices in the environmental movement who never get any credit.
Whoever, including him, planned that visit was something of a genius because I was the first to admit a monarchy is a complete non-essential. But on in this instance, he was able to do with a few jokes and the weird anthropological quality of kingship, he was able to obtain certain diplomatic achievements.