The New ‘Social Leadership Monarchy’ Is Thriving – But Is It Compatible With the Constitution? – UK Constitutional Law Association

Back in November, I wrote a blog post on the progression of the Public Service Monarchy (‘PSM’). It is a topic I wish to return to. I now believe that what we are seeing is not a progression of the PSM, but a new, identifiable form of monarchy – the Social Leadership Monarchy (‘SLM’), which poses more challenging questions for the constitution than the PSM.

Just as the PSM came to be defined by Charles as Prince of Wales in the 1990s (Vernon Bogdanor, The Monarchy and the Constitution (OUP, 1996), 308), it is the current Prince of Wales who exemplifies this new form of monarchy. The name I have ascribed it borrows from his own terminology: Prince William has publicly stated that he wants to show ‘social leadership’ on key issues.

There are three main ways in which the SLM differs from the PSM. The first is that the PSM was characterised by an increase in the depth and breadth of charitable work undertaken by the royals, as illustrated by a sharp rise in the number of royal patronages and public engagements during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. But the SLM sees the number of patronages and engagements reduced as royals focus more narrowly on a select few passion projects. For example, Prince William undertook 178 engagements in 2023 (a far cry from the 457 conducted by Princess Anne), currently holds just 30 patronages, and focuses more time on key causes, such as tackling homelessness. The Princess of Wales also exemplifies the SLM: in 2023, before her recent illness, she undertook just 128 engagements, holds fewer than 30 patronages and focuses on the early years. The aim of taking a narrower focus is to create more of a longer-lasting impact. In William’s words:

it’s about going deeper (than)…just having loads of causes that you sort of turn up and keep an eye on. If you spread yourself too thin you just can’t manage it and you won’t deliver the impact or the change that you really want to happen.

The second way in which the SLM differs from the PSM is that royals openly engage in public dialogue with the government to help achieve the impact they want. Under the PSM, any royal correspondence with the government tended to remain private, as attempts to prevent the publication of Charles’ infamous ‘black spider letters’ written as Prince of Wales illustrate. But the SLM sees royals publicly collaborate with the government in order to solicit support for their causes and encourage action to be taken on them from those at the highest level. Again, to use William’s words, the ultimate goal is to ‘see policy shifts… see governments being incredibly engaged’ on issues the royals are passionate about. For example, Prince William spent weeks courting political support for his ‘Homewards’ initiative aimed at ending homelessness by meeting then-Housing Secretary Michael Gove and Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer to brief them on his plans. It seems to have worked: a week after the launch the government publicly praised the initiative in Parliament and reiterated its commitment to achieving his aim of ‘ending rough sleeping’. The Princess of Wales has also demonstrated this feature of the SLM. For example, she invited government ministers including then-Health Secretary Sajid Javid to Kensington Palace for a roundtable meeting on early years. She encouraged ministers to ‘bring this issue up on all of our agendas’ and told them that ‘there is more we can all do’. This helped gain influential support and action for her cause: MPs later praised the Princess’ work, which helped induce the Select Education Committee to launch a Parliamentary inquiry into early years and the state of childcare.

Both the Prince and Princess have continued to campaign on these issues even since they have risen up the political agenda. For example, William made an ITV documentary showcasing his work on homelessness, while Kate recently announced an expansion of her early years work. This demonstrates the third main way in which the SLM differs from the PSM. According to Bogdanor, under the PSM royals ‘would drop the issue when the politicians take it up.’ But the SLM sees royals continue to champion issues even after they enter the political arena. Indeed, both William and Kate describe homelessness and early years as their ‘life’s work’ respectively, showing they have no intention of dropping the issues.

It is these latter two aspects of the SLM which the King appears to be embracing. Under the PSM Charles campaigned on a number of issues, and he was never shy of making his views known to ministers – the black spider letters are testament to that. But they were written privately to ministers (and only made public because of a legal challenge), and Charles would drop the issue once taken up by politicians. For this reason, Bogdanor argues that the PSM was compatible with the constitution because it did not compromise the heir’s political neutrality. He gives the example of when Charles’ Prince’s Trust charity began to promote a programme of after-school clubs for disadvantaged children in 1990. The Trust had created more than 100 such clubs by the time Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a major speech in 1996 announcing that homework clubs would be adopted as Labour policy, which subsequently forced the Prince and his Trust to step back from promoting the programme.

Now, however, Charles seems to be publicly collaborating with the government on issues he has long supported in order to bring about the ‘policy shifts’ referred to by William. He also appears to have no intention of dropping the issues even after they have been adopted by the government.

The first public sign of Charles’ shift from the PSM towards the SLM was an international summit on biodiversity which the King held at Buckingham Palace in February 2023, attended by ‘politically-partisan agenda setters’ including the UK Environment Secretary (Robert Hardman, Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story (Pan Macmillan, 2024), 314). Charles, who as Prince of Wales described biodiversity loss as ‘the biggest threat that humanity has ever faced’, let it be known to the Prime Minister that he would like to host a reception aimed at driving forward global financing in support of the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework (Ibid). It seems to have had the kind of ‘impact’ he was looking for: a couple of months later the UK launched a joint biodiversity credits initiative with France allowing individuals and companies to invest in nature-based projects. Charles has continued to press for action to be taken on addressing biodiversity loss since. In his COP28 speech, he described it as an ‘existential threat’, warned leaders they ‘remain so dreadfully far off track’ and told them that they ‘must work towards being nature-positive’ by 2030 – the ultimate goal of the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Later in July 2024 the King invited the newly-elected Prime Minister and members of the government to St. James’ Palace, where he held a roundtable discussion on how best to tackle the issue of knife crime and youth violence. Charles publicly expressed his view on how best to tackle the problem: ‘we need to listen to young people and listen hard…decide what we are going to do, and then get on with it.’ Looking for the government ‘engagement’ referenced by Prince William, Charles also publicly told the PM, the Home Secretary and the Culture Secretary that he would be ‘watching and hoping for progress reports’ – a sign that he has no intention of letting the matter drop. Starmer assured the King that his government would work closely with him on ‘this shared ambition’. Less than two months later, the PM pledged to halve knife crime in a decade and ‘double down’ on efforts to tackle youth violence at an event launching a new anti-knife crime coalition aimed at stopping young people from being dragged into violent gangs – the very sort of impact that Charles was seemingly looking for.

Then, in an unprecedented first, last month we saw the King giving the PM and Deputy PM a guided tour of Nansledan, the housing project developed by Charles. The 540-acre extension to Newquay comprises of 3,700 sustainable, environmentally-friendly homes and amenities including a school. The joint visit came about following discussions between the monarch and PM on their shared interest in housing, in which the King highlighted the new suburb which he began developing in 2013 and offered to show it to the PM. It appears to have led to the policy enactment he was hoping for: just a week later the government announced plans to build the ‘next generation of new towns’, which will have environmental sustainability and social infrastructure (like schools) at their heart. The PM explicitly stated that his visit to Nansledan had ‘inspired’ this new government policy.

Charles seems to be wanting to show, in William’s words, ‘social leadership’ and encourage government action on these issues, which he has long supported: much of his work as Prince of Wales under the PSM focused on the environment, housing/ecotowns and knife crime. But it is one thing for William as heir to take a more activist approach under the SLM; it is quite another for the monarch to assume the role of ‘activist king’, (Ibid, 318) as it challenges long-standing constitutional principles arguably like never before.

The Social Leadership Monarchy and Constitutional Conventions

Take the Tripartite Convention, for example. According to Bagehot’s classical formulation, this gives the monarch the right to be consulted, the right to encourage and the right to warn (Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867)). The second of these rights has an interesting history: although it was originally formulated by Bagehot as the right to encourage, somewhere over time it appears to have developed into the stronger right to advise, as the Cabinet Manual now states. Even accounting for this more active reformulation, however, Charles is arguably still stretching the Convention beyond its constitutional limits: he seems to be not just ‘encouraging’ or even ‘advising’ government policy, but pressing for it to be implemented. While Prime Ministerial autobiographies suggest that the late Queen might have privately and occasionally encouraged Prime Ministers to ‘take an initiative’ during one of their weekly audiences, it seems unprecedented for a monarch to take such a public lead on government policy.

The royals have huge soft, convening power. The king especially is ‘recognised as a leader in some of the most pressing matters’, and since becoming monarch ‘his convening power has grown even higher and now it is unparalleled’ (Hardman, 315). It means that when he publicly presses for action to be taken on an issue, it is hard for the government to ignore. This is especially so when such public pressing takes place in powerful and influential royal settings, such as Buckingham Palace and St. James’ Palace. Furthermore, the royals’ ‘contract’ with the media means that receptions, roundtables and visits with politicians are publicised in the national press.

It is also interesting to consider the Cardinal Convention, according to which the monarch must act on the advice of his ministers. While there is no suggestion that Charles is not following the Prime Minister’s advice on every other matter, it seems like it is the Prime Minister following the King’s advice (or lead), particularly on knife crime and housing. This is something of a ‘chicken and egg’ problem, as much of the policy which Charles seems to be pressing for appears to have been Labour Party policy. For example, Labour’s 2024 manifesto pledged to ‘halve knife crime over the next decade’ by introducing a ‘Young Futures’ programme and ‘build a new generation of new towns.’ Nevertheless, there is a perception of the Cardinal Convention being turned on its head, as Charles appears to be using his recognised status as a leader to publicly press the government to implement these Labour policies. And it is the new SLM – characterised by open collaboration and dialogue with the government and the continued pressing of issues even once they have been taken up by politicians – which gives him the vehicle to do so.

But the constitutional convention most at risk here is that of political neutrality. The monarch and the heir are expected to remain politically neutral at all times. William’s campaigning to end homelessness can perhaps be categorised as politically neutral: all three of the main parties pledged to end homelessness in their manifestos. But as anodyne as Charles’ causes may seem, they are not apolitical. Indeed, all three have experienced increased politicisation in recent years: during the 2024 election, the ‘gap between the two biggest parties could hardly (have been) wider’ on the environment, housing was a ‘key battleground’ for the parties, and knife crime was ‘top of the parties’ law and order policy agendas’. Whereas the Conservatives’ manifesto envisioned an ‘affordable and pragmatic transition’ that will ‘cut the cost of tackling climate change’, Labour’s manifesto stated that ‘the climate and nature crisis is the greatest long-term global challenge that we face’. Whereas the Conservatives’ housing policy was to prioritise building on brownfield sites, Labour, as noted above, pledged to ‘build a new generation of new towns’. And whereas the Conservatives prioritised giving police new powers to seize knives and increase sentences, Labour described their ambition to halve knife crime and support young people as a ‘moral mission’.

Charles is thus strongly aligning himself with Labour Party policy. His very public display of unity with the PM during the Nanlesden visit has only further brought his political neutrality into question. For example, following the King and Prime Minister’s joint visit and the subsequent government announcement of the next generation of new towns, Downing Street had to issue a statement denying that the King was being dragged into politics, while the Palace similarly had to stress that the visit was one of ‘show not tell’. The images of the King ‘cosying up’ to the PM and Deputy PM have since attracted negative headlines in the national media. The political neutrality of the monarch is central to his or her constitutional role. Indeed, case studies from other European constitutional monarchies warn us that monarchs who are too interventionist lose their reputation for neutrality and threaten their constitutional role, so even the perception of any bias is a cause for concern.

Moreover, the need to maintain political impartiality means that royals ‘must always be several steps away from engaging in specific policy problems or making policy proposals for the government to consider.’ Yet, in relation to knife crime and housing, this appears to be exactly what Charles is doing. The very public lead he is taking on these issues might be yielding the results he is looking for, but arguably it is coming at the cost of his perceived political neutrality.

The new SLM is challenging the constitution in ways which the previous PSM did not. The public lead that Charles is seemingly taking on issues might be yielding the results from the government which he is after, but in so doing he is arguably posing unprecedented challenges to the constitution. At the very least he seems to be giving new, liberal interpretations of old conventions like the Tripartite and Cardinal Conventions, and at the worst he is threatening the hallowed political neutrality of the monarch.

Francesca Jackson is a PhD student at Lancaster University.

(Suggested citation: F. Jackson, ‘The New ‘Social Leadership Monarchy’ Is Thriving – But Is It Compatible With the Constitution?’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (10th March 2025) (available at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/))