When it comes to pitching into any passing controversy, the Prince of Wales evidently likes to enjoy power without responsibility. He is unhappy that his behind-the-scenes role in the collapse of a £3 billion plan to redevelop Chelsea Barracks has been made public (see opposite page). To have a future king who seeks to contribute animatedly to the debates that are shaping the country he will one day inherit is welcome. To have a future king who seeks to use his royal power and privileges to secretly skew the outcome of those debates — and then to bridle when this backroom lobbying becomes public — well, that is not so welcome.
Prince Charles sought to use the old princes’ network to convey his concerns about the project to both the Prime Minister of Qatar — who is also chairman of the Qatari investment company that was co-funding the scheme — and to the Emir of Qatar over tea at Clarence House last year.
A High Court judge yesterday ruled that the redevelopment plan was unlawfully withdrawn after the Prince’s intervention. It emerged that in a letter to the Qatari Prime Minister the Prince of Wales wrote of how “my heart sank when I saw the plans . . . I can only urge you to reconsider your plans for the site before it is too late”. Recently discovered e-mails further suggest that the views of the Emir and the Prince were key to pulling the planning application. You can happily share Prince Charles’s view that Lord Rogers of Riverside’s design for the Chelsea site is “brutalist” and still feel that the architect has been treated shabbily.
Prince Charles has strong views about many subjects, and likes to air them. On issues ranging from modernist architecture, through alternative medicine, to modern farming methods, the Prince has punchy opinions. He often shares these opinions in the manner of someone who does not suffer fools gladly; even when many architects, scientists and doctors may consider him to be the one harbouring the foolish opinions.
But he must accept that if he is to get embroiled not only in public debate, but embroiled especially in commercially sensitive affairs, then he must be willing to accept the sort of public scrutiny he so evidently finds uncomfortable. If Prince Charles has strong opinions, he should have the confidence and courage to have them interrogated and tested in public. If the Prince has objections, then the proper place to lodge them, as the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects points out, is the UK’s “democratic and properly constituted planning process”. Architecture creates the landscape of our lives. It is right that all should be allowed to voice a view on it. Prince Charles voices more than most. Capping his denunciation of a proposed extension to the National Gallery as a “monstrous carbuncle”, he said the Luftwaffe had done less damage to London than Lord Rogers’s scheme for Paternoster Square beside St Paul’s Cathedral.
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Typically, in his correspondence with the Qatari Royal Family, the Prince sung the praises of traditional architectural design, particularly that of his favourite Neo-Classical architect, Quinlan Terry. Nobody suggests that architects do not occasionally produce eyesores. But the Prince is still transfixed by the merits of classical architecture over modern architecture, when the true battleground is between good architecture and bad. This is a debate that should be aired in public among the people who will buy and live in those buildings, not in private among princes.