Why can't King Charles attend COP27?

Next weekend, COP27 will start at Sharm-El-Sheik in Egypt, the next step in global action to fight climate change. As hosts of COP26, protocol and good manners would suggest that the UK leadership attends to handover the COP presidency to Egyptian government on Sunday 6 November. The fact that neither the British Prime Minister or Monarch will be attending will be felt as a major snub by the Egyptians and raises eyebrows in Dubai (UAE are hosts of COP28 which comes next year). Whilst self-inflicted wounds seems to have become something of a British specialism of late, why would the new Government (the fifth in six years) chose such a course of action? And before we answer why the new King can't attend, we need to think about why the very new Prime Minister won't.

When trying to answer this question, it is first important to dismiss many of the frivolous answers dished out to the media. Neither Egypt or UAE are democracies and both have their human rights issues but don't believe for a moment that this is the reason for the snub. Therese Coffey - the five-day old UK Environment Secretary - defended Sunak’s lack of appearance, stating “big political moments” happen at the conference every five years, like last year’s summit in Glasgow, and that this year’s conference would be more about implementation. I guess world leaders such as Biden and Macron, who are attending COP27, see implementation as important - perhaps more than some of the vacuous Glasgow commitments some of which are already unravelling. Coffey went on to say "The UK is forging ahead of many other countries on net zero" as if forgetting that we still hold the COP Presidency - a position of leadership. Finally, the recent tweet from the former minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, that the Sharm El-Sheik hotels are now too expensive for the PM to attend, are not worth the Musk-acquired algorithmic cloud computing space it is not printed on.

Sunak could have reversed Liz Truss' (UK Prime Minister for just 45 days) decision not to attend but he chose not to. But perhaps here is where we find his reasoning. Truss's pro-growth agenda would have been a bonfire of all the regulations - including environmental restrictions holding back free-trade zones. Her advisors undoubtedly told her that pictures at expensive hotels on the Red Sea would not float well with the British people at a time of approaching austerity due to the cost of living and energy crisis (a situation she made significantly worse). This did not seem to have been a concern of hers when she was UK Foreign Secretary (given her travel requirement list recently leaked to the papers) but her No.10 advisors might well have made this point.

So Sunak might feel that to regain some of the trust of the British people (in light of horrendous opinion poll ratings), the multi- millionaire Prime Minister (the richest we have ever had) needs to be seen as one of the people. The private focus groups from the so-called "Red Wall" Parliamentary Seats might well be telling No.10 that many Brexit-supporting voters are still awaiting the "sunlit uplands" they were promised in 2015 and that the PM should not be perceived as being part of the global elite of which he is part. The appointment of Suella Braverman as Home Secretary suggests that Sunak will pursue an anti-immigration agenda for similar reasons, despite historically low unemployment and a shrinking economy.

If these are the true reasons for Sunak's non-attendance (it is hard to think of others), then it speaks to increasingly diminished Britain. It also makes poor longer-term electoral sense as young people, whether rich or poor, place climate as one of their biggest concerns. The climate-driven transitions ahead, in the UK and worldwide, will affect the poor more than the rich - a truth which also has yet to receive governmental recognition (although it does in Scotland and Wales). Despite his considerable faults, Boris Johnson (remember him) did understand that climate and populist politics could be one and the same - rumours abound that he might attend COP27 in any case.

But why prevent the UK Monarch from attending in your place? It is widely reported that King Charles has been very keen to attend and he has long been known as a committed environmentalist. Perhaps this is the very reason why No.10 are not keen - that the new King's international debut is on an issue where his personal beliefs are so clearly ahead of government. Asked why the King cannot attend, the Truss and Sunak Governments engage in double-speak. Liz Truss said that "with mutual friendship and respect there was agreement that the King would not attend" and this week Theresa Coffey said: "The government doesn't have a view on whether the King should go" adding that it was a matter for him. But the reality is that whilst the Government could not physically restrain our head of state from leaving the country, it would cause a constitutional awkwardness very early in his reign. His inability to bury his personal beliefs is one of his perceived weaknesses and his entourage know this. So the King's advisors will be telling him not to push the issue and the forthcoming gathering of experts at Buckingham Palace is something of a compromise.

So it is likely that it is respective political advisors that have counselled both Prime Minister Sunak and King Charles not to attend - but for very different reasons. Another very British self-inflicted lose-lose scenario.

I will be attending COP27 next week and my room is certainly not ￡2,000 a night as Mr Mogg would maintain. The Prime Minister or the King can share if they'd like to get in touch.

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