The prince has to choose

reposted from: http://www.guardian.co.uk

If Charles wants to lecture us on the plight of the world he must renounce his claim to the throne

Comments (9)

• Dick Taverne
• The Guardian,
• Friday October 31 2008

Prince Charles is a man of passionate convictions who expresses his views publicly, assiduously and provocatively. For instance, he believes he has a mission to save the world from GM crops, which he described in his recent Sir Albert Howard Memorial lecture as

"a gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong"

. He tells us that only organic crops are truly sustainable. He has also urged the government to

promote alternative medicine and homeopathy in particular.

In fact

we must go Back to Nature, because he trusts Mother Earth to see to it "that plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease". Science is clearly out of control, and he questions its contribution to modern medicine as well as agriculture.

Such views are held by many, if not generally in such extreme form.

His comments about GM crops have no basis:

authoritative bodies including every national academy of science in the world, the World Health Organisation, the European commission and our own Food Standards Agency have found

no evidence they cause harm.

His views also conflict with present government policy that encourages new GM trials. As for organic farming, its basic principle, which Charles strongly endorses, is that natural chemicals are good and synthetic ones bad: a principle every scientist would describe as a scientific howler.

Charles also believes that homeopathy could save costs in the NHS if used to treat asthma. This would be true only because more people would die.

However,

the merits of his views are not the issue. If Charles were a private citizen no one could question his freedom to say what he thinks. The snag is that he is the heir to the throne, yet seems unaware of the proper role of a constitutional monarch.

The Queen sets an impeccable example. No one knows her views on GM crops or other controversial topics. She has given no hint what she thinks about any aspect of government policy. Nor do the constitutional monarchies in Europe stray into politics. They have all recognised,

since the death of the doctrine of the divine right of kings, that hereditary monarchs have no right to interfere.

Not so Charles. He feels he has a duty, almost a higher calling, to speak out - or, as he put it, to "keep sticking my 60-year-old head above an increasingly dangerous parapet". Even more inexcusably, he does not restrict himself to speeches. He has used his position to damage the careers of those he disapproves of, or, on a more charitable interpretation, has been blind to the effects the strong expression of his views are bound to have.

Many years ago, he famously claimed that architects had done more damage to the City of London than the Luftwaffe and described the proposed extension of the National Gallery as "a carbuncle". Whatever the merits of his opinions about modern architecture, their expression by the heir to the throne severely damaged the practice of several architectural firms. Recently he jeopardised the career of Professor Edzard Ernst, the chair of complementary medicine at Exeter University, who has spent 15 years studying the effectiveness and safety of alternative treatments such as acupuncture and homeopathy. When Ernst criticised a report on alternative medicine commissioned by Charles, the prince's private secretary, as Ernst revealed in a recent letter to the British Medical Journal, complained to the university about an alleged breach of confidence. Ernst endured "a gruelling 13 months of inquiry" before he was cleared.

The prince faces a clear choice. If he feels he must speak out, because the dangers to the planet posed by the excesses of modern science are so great that it is his moral duty to save us from impending doom, he should renounce his claim to the throne. If he wants to succeed as a constitutional monarch, he must shut up. He cannot have it both ways. A democratic country cannot tolerate a monarch who meddles in political matters and whose views only command notice not because of expertise, but because of a position that he owes solely to the accident of birth.

• Lord Taverne is a Liberal Democrat peer and author of The March of Unreason - Science, Democracy and the New Fundamentalism
taverned@parliament.uk