King Charles should go to Cop27 conference, says Jennie Bond

She told GB News: “I think it’s a shame that he’s not going to Cop27.

“He’s a perfectly sensible adult who has made it clear he knows that he has got a new gig and a new responsibility as King that he can’t act as he did when he was Prince of Wales.

“He’s perfectly capable of going to a conference like that. He’s perfectly capable of going there and wishing them well, hoping the conference goes swimmingly and making a neutral speech in the way his mother did to Cop26, so I don’t know why he’s been told he can’t go.”

She told GB News: “I think we have to distinguish between political with a small P and party political, as monarchy can’t be party political.

“I personally think in the 21st century we can have a monarch who expresses his views which we know that he holds in a neutral fashion on subjects that you cannot argue against.

“Climate change, for example, is something we all surely believe in, don’t we? Or most people do. So I think that he can be a modern monarch.

“We can’t pretend that after 50 years of campaigning, we don’t understand them and we don’t know them.

“I think it’d be hypocritical if he wasn’t allowed to at least voice some of his opinions, but he’s wise enough to know that he can’t be party political.”

But fellow royal commentator Michael Cole said: “The Monarch has the right, he has a royal prerogative and that’s the right to be consulted, informed, the right to encourage and the right to warn.

“And you can bet your life that in his weekly meetings with the Prime Minister, when the Prime Minister has an audience with the monarch, I’m sure he will make his views known.

“The Queen did… but there were never any leaks. If she ever raised her eyebrow and she said ‘Prime Minister, do you think this is entirely a good idea?’, then every Prime Minister went away and thought ‘well, perhaps I have got that wrong’.

“With regards COP, we don’t actually have to speculate about this because when he was Prince Charles, he was asked if he would change when he became King.

“Would he continue lobbying ministers, writing the black spider letters and championing his pet projects? And he said, ‘of course I’ll change, I’m not as stupid as all that’, and of course he made it very clear that he had to change.

“On this he’s quite right, as monarch, if he’s going to be successful, he has to be politically neutral and rise above the fray…”

He added: ‘Every decision, every topic at the end of the day is political. And if you take it beyond political, it becomes theological.

“And what they are going to be talking about in Sharm el Sheikh are very, very important political issues. These are the decisions that governments must take. They each take a slightly different view on what’s to be done about the terrible problems of climate change.

“Prince Charles, as he was, made his views very, very clear. And they were quite respectable views and some people agreed and some people didn’t.

“But now he’s moved up to the top job, as Princess Diana once called it, he has to stay out of those sorts of conflicts. And if he doesn’t, he’ll be in trouble.

“I’m encouraged by the fact that he started off in the right decision, made the right call here and he’s staying out of it and he’s not going to this conference.”