Pippa Catterall, Professor of History and Policy, has been interviewed for BBC Radio Sussex about the planning behind the transition from one monarch to the next and how King Charles III may behave as the new Sovereign.
Speaking about the preparation for the death of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Professor Catterall said: “The preparation for these kinds of things has been going on for years. There was a process called Operation London Bridge which you could see moving into action on Thursday as the day unfolded. You saw some Opposition MPs tweeting ‘something odd is going on,’ – well, those of us who knew about Operation London Bridge were aware of what was going on. The planning for the smooth process from the demise of the Crown to the accession of the [new] Crown was already taking place, and this has to take place not just in the UK but also in all of His Majesty’s Commonwealth [countries] around the world.”
Commenting on what kind of monarch King Charles III might be, Professor Catterall added: “The constitutional order is that the Crown is the centre of sovereignty in this country, not the wearer of it but the Crown itself, and that actions take place in the name of the Crown, actions such as the signing of treaties, declaring of wars, the proroguing of Parliament, and so on. So, the actual powers reserved to the monarch are very limited…and they are to be consulted, to advise, and to warn and I expect that Charles III will use those powers fairly fully.”
She continued: “We know that he has rather different views on subjects like fracking than the current prime minister, for instance, so he will no doubt express those views in private audiences, and he has, whilst Prince of Wales, been fairly forthright on a number of issues. As a constitutional monarch, he will find it difficult to express such views, which can be easily politicised or even regarded as partisan, as openly as he has in the past.”
Listen to the full interview on BBC Radio Sounds.
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