Why we must listen to Prince Charles - Telegraph
Prince Charles's track record for prescience is good, he has valuable things to say and he is often more in tune with the public than ministers are.
Excerpts:
What a to-do there has been about the Prince of Wales's letters. According to reports in a Left-wing newspaper this week, he has been meddling in Government policy, expressing strong opinions on subjects from culture to pensions. Defra, the Department for International Development, the Foreign Office and the Treasury are among the honoured recipients of his missives. And frankly I am aghast. There were eight letters in all. My reaction is: what? Only eight?
His views have been formed by a lifetime spent travelling the world, founding charities, consulting with the most eminent men and women in their fields, and meeting ordinary people. It's a range of experience far beyond that of any politician – and his opinions, so often derided when first made public, have a habit of turning into received wisdom with time. In this lies the Prince's value. He has done things. Sometimes his experience lies in areas that are poorly represented in politics. The House of Commons has become a largely urban institution, whose failure to understand the countryside has been particularly manifest under Labour. It would be surprising, however, if the Prince of Wales did not know about the countryside because he owns quite a bit of it.
Listening to Radio 4's
PM programme in the car on Thursday afternoon, I nearly drove into a milk lorry when Lord Haskins chirped up, criticising the Prince's access to ministers. The millionaire former chairman of the agribusiness Northern Foods, Haskins has access aplenty. He was made a peer; he writes Government reports. Don't tell me that chief executives of multinational companies can't speak to ministers when they want to. It would be rum if they couldn't.
The Prince of Wales deserves the same privilege. Which is healthier: the Prince, as privy councillor, getting out his fountain pen, or a billionaire lushing up Peter Mandelson on a yacht? I know which I'd choose.