It all started innocently enough. I watched the testimony of a 19-year-old Californian, Chloe Cole, before a committee of the U.S. Congress last Thursday.

She was giving evidence about the experience she underwent in her transition to becoming a boy and it was pretty harrowing stuff.

Chloe revealed she had been given puberty blockers aged 13 and underwent a double mastectomy aged 15. Now de-transitioning, she fought back the tears as she revealed to the politicians before her that she had scars on her breast, her nipples weeped fluids, she would never be able to breastfeed, she struggled to look at herself in the mirror and when she did she saw a ‘monster’.

I fought to hold back my own tears.

Why had her parents gone along with all this? The doctors prescribing the drugs and proposing the mutilation, she explained, had asked them if they wanted a ‘dead daughter’ or a ‘live trans son’.

I decided to tweet to my 1.2 million followers an excerpt from her testimony, commenting that it was ‘heart-breaking’, ‘barbaric’ and asked: ‘What have we become?’

That’s when the balloon went up.

I’ve never commented publicly before on any of the issues swirling round the transgender debate. Readers of my columns and viewers of my TV shows will know I tend to stick to mainstream politics and economics, my areas of expertise. My tweet was a baptism of fire.

A Cabinet minister texted me: ‘Welcome to the dark side.’ They weren’t wrong. I was quickly denounced as a ‘Terf’.

I’d seen this term used to smear JK Rowling and other critics of the transgender lobby but, I explained, it wasn’t effective abuse against me since I didn’t really know what it meant. Someone helpfully explained that it stood for ‘Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist’ (meaning, I think, advocating feminist rights at the expense of trans rights).

I’ve always regarded myself as something of a feminist, having appointed the first-ever female editor of The Scotsman, for example, and the first female editor of The Sunday Times colour magazine in the days when these things didn’t really happen. But a ‘radical feminist?’ I can’t wait to tell Germaine Greer, I tweeted in jest. In truth, there is nothing funny about the trans debate.

A number of fellow ‘Terfs’ posted tweets welcoming me to the cause but pointing out, correctly, I was something of a johnny-come-lately.

Times columnist Janice Turner said she and other women had been writing about the use of drugs and surgery on transitioning teenagers for at least six years and taking no notice was a lesson for me ‘not to tune out women’.

I replied that it was usually wiser to welcome converts to the cause rather than upbraid them. But I now see that was ungracious. Women like Janice (and it’s nearly always been women) who’ve been in the vanguard of exposing the horrors of this scandal have experienced the vilest abuse — and received precious little support or comfort from the rest of us.

They have been vilified by the more extreme elements in the transgender lobby as ‘hysterical bigots’ and regularly threatened with violence, including rape and murder.

One woman showed me evidence of threats to ‘come to your house’ and ‘rip the nipples off your bare chest’. Another was promised a ‘night of the long knives’. And there’s much worse than this. It’s simply unrepeatable in a newspaper.

It’s not just threats. Women who’ve dared to question the trans consensus have lost their jobs or been sidelined. A senior Arts Council England official was driven to resign (she later won her harassment claim before an employment tribunal).

Journalists, such as Suzanne Moore from the Guardian, have quit after being shunned by colleagues. Even academics, such as Professor Kathleen Stock, have been hounded out of their university posts by aggressive student campaigns.

These injustices happened under my nose. Either I took no notice, or didn’t think it was my fight — when it should be everybody’s fight.

Of course, journalists like me were not entirely unaware of transgender controversies. We watched, shaking our heads, as men who had transitioned to women started winning events in women’s sports.

Lia Thomas, who’d once competed in American university male swimming teams, became one of the most notorious causes celebres as her tall, muscular body towered above women swimmers on the female winner’s podium.

That seemed simply unfair to all the women who’d given up so much of their youth to become champion swimmers.

Then there was the case of Adam Graham, sentenced to eight years for raping two women, but who — between arrest and sentence — decided to transition to a woman and become Isla Bryson.

At one stage it looked like the rapist’s jail-time time would be served in a woman’s prison and that the SNP government in Scotland would uphold that — until there was an outcry and common sense prevailed. That episode contributed to the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon so, as a Scot, it naturally appeared on my radar.

But I didn’t know the half of it. Fortunately, the brave women standing up against extreme transgender ideology did. And with precious little support from the rest of us, they have had their victories.

London’s Tavistock NHS Trust is closing its Gender Identity Development Service, the main English clinic responsible for treating teenagers similar to Chloe Cole.

The use of puberty blockers has been curtailed, which is just as well since, despite claims they’re ‘life-saving’ and ‘reversible’, a study into their use in the NHS concluded they could disrupt the long-term brain development of youngsters.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of disinformation floating around. My attention was brought to a Swedish study which, relying on information stretching back over 50 years, found that less than 3 per cent of individuals who transitioned ever de-transitioned.

But even a cursory look revealed that the study ended in 2010, covered only adults and mainly natal males. So it tells us nothing about the recent explosion of teenagers, mainly girls, seeking to dissociate themselves from the bodies with which they were born.

There is a growing suspicion that many of the young people currently suffering from what’s called gender dysphoria are simply gay and that, if allowed to come to terms with their sexuality with help and counselling, will turn out just fine.

Instead they are being subject to barbarous treatment much like, in more intolerant times, gay people were subjected to electric shock treatment to ‘cure’ them.

If this analysis proves broadly right, we’re living through a medical and societal scandal of massive proportions.

I have merely reached the foothills of all the issues involved in the transgender debate. I now have a new summer reading list whose authors represent a roll call of honour to those who have fought in the trenches, often at great personal cost: Helen Lewis, Julie Bindel, Sarah Ditum, Hannah Barnes, Helen Joyce, Labour MP Rosie Duffield, Hadley Freeman and others too numerous to mention (and, yes, you’ve noticed — there are no men on this list, which only underlines who’s been doing the heavy lifting).

I’m ready for the further abuse that awaits me for siding with such company. Frankly, it’s water off a duck’s back. And it’s never as brutal against men as it is women, which speaks volumes for those dishing out the abuse.

Who cares? If it means I’m a JK Rowling ally and that makes it harder for what happened to Chloe Cole to happen to other young, vulnerable teenagers, then I’m delighted to be a foot soldier in a just cause.

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Freddie Mercury’s girlfriend Mary Austin asks for £1.2 million for the handwritten lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody… but did the Queen singer actually bequeath the iconic scribble to his last boyfriend Jim Hutton?

By Ephraim Hardcastle for the Daily Mail

Updated: 02:06 EDT, 4 August 2023

Daisy Goodwin’s account of being groped by Daniel Korski, a former special adviser to David Cameron and now one of three Conservative candidates for Mayor of London, is quite shocking. 

In yesterday’s Daily Mail, she recounted how ten years ago, having been ‘summoned’ to Downing Street to discuss an idea for a TV programme (Goodwin is an acclaimed producer), Korski flirted with her throughout their meeting and then, as they were saying goodbye, ‘put his hand on my breast’.

‘Are you actually touching my breast?’ she asked him, at which point, she claims, ‘he dropped his hand and laughed nervously’ before Goodwin ‘swept out in what can only be called high dudgeon’.

She is careful not to over-dramatise or to cast herself as a helpless victim. Indeed, her approach to the incident is resolutely pragmatic: ‘What he had done to me in the Thatcher Drawing Room had not ruined my life.’

Goodwin’s story is both laced with self-deprecating humour and commendably balanced — which is partly what makes it so credible.

Instead, she talks about facing a ‘genuine moral dilemma’ about whether to name Korski or not. What happened wasn’t ‘the end of the world’ — but still, if a man is going to be mayor of London, doesn’t that cast his actions in a slightly different light? Shouldn’t he be held to a higher standard than others?

On balance, Goodwin, now 61, decided that it does, and he should — and so she named him.

Korski has denied the allegations ‘in the strongest possible terms’. But perhaps the damage is done. Even though it would be almost impossible for Goodwin to prove her story or Korski to disprove it (it happened ten years ago and there were no witnesses), even the whiff of such behaviour tends to coat the nostrils in an indelible smell.

I remember Korski from those days. Super-bright, charming — and undeniably rather in love with himself, a bit like Matt Hancock. Some might call him cocky, though a more polite way of putting it would be self-assured. But as Goodwin says, that was the vibe in No. 10 back then.

‘As I waited to see him [Korski], I drank in the aroma of Downing Street, which took me back to the boys’ public school I attended [for sixth form]— a sweaty combination of testosterone and socks.’

The working culture doesn’t excuse his alleged behaviour. Then again, it could be that Korski, in his youthful enthusiasm (he would have been in his mid-30s), catastrophically misread the situation. As Goodwin says, they met at a party, then arranged over email to meet again. Perhaps he mistakenly thought there was something more on offer.

She claims he was flirtatious from the off, telling her she looked like a ‘Bond Girl’ in her sunglasses. Sexual assault — or ill-judged attempt at seduction? I would err towards the latter — especially since he backed off immediately after being rebuffed.

Sometimes these things are not malicious or predatory; sometimes it’s just a case of crossed wires, an awkward and embarrassing misunderstanding. Seen in the right light, these episodes can even be mildly amusing: so awful they’re quite funny.

Because, you see, Goodwin isn’t the only woman to have had her breasts allegedly groped at Downing Street. And I have witnesses.

It was at a party very early on in David Cameron’s premiership — probably late 2010. I think the event was a general ‘thank you’ to everyone — either way, the place was crammed with a mixture of friends, relatives, supporters, MPs, journalists, politicos and more.

I was standing around, as you do, glass in hand, chatting to various people, when Harry Enfield, the comedian, joined the conversation. I remember it was very loud, and everyone was a bit hyper, all over-excited about being there. Enfield, I think, was slightly in his cups.

I can’t remember what I was wearing but it must have been some kind of party dress because at one point my gay friend commented on it and said — in a fruity Oscar Wilde sort of voice — that it made my breasts look ‘rather magnificent’.

Everyone laughed — including Enfield, who concurred. He then said something along the lines of ‘do you mind if I have a go?’ before reaching out, grabbing them in both hands and sort of jiggling them around with a vigorous enthusiasm that, I must confess, rather took me and everyone else by surprise.

Afterwards, I really wasn’t sure what to make of it. I wasn’t particularly upset — after all, he did it in full view of everyone, so it wasn’t threatening or sinister. But it did rather take the wind out of my sails. In the end, I decided to file it under ‘someone having a bit of fun at my expense’.

Then, not long after, Enfield released a sketch in which two posh old blokes — played by him and Paul Whitehouse — are sitting in a gentleman’s club discussing my ex, Michael Gove.

‘I met his wife once, she’s a fine woman,’ says Enfield. ‘I wanted to grope her breasts.’

‘Did you ask her why she married a queer?’ says Whitehouse.

‘No, I wanted to grope her breasts,’ says Enfield. ‘Have you seen his wife?’

‘No . . .’ says Whitehouse.

‘You’d like to grope her breasts, you really would,’ says Enfield, before going back to his newspaper.

‘Wife’s breasts gropable,’ declares Whitehouse.

Maybe that was Enfield’s way of apologising. Or at least acknowledging his behaviour. My point is: life is a rich tapestry, and not all the stitches are even. We do and say things that later, with hindsight, seem more than a shade inappropriate. But does that make us bad people? Not necessarily. Ten years is a long time. People grow and change.

If Korski did what Goodwin alleges, then he made a stupid mistake. But should that be the end of him? Unless concrete evidence emerges of more incidents in a similar vein, no. There is not yet, nor do I hope there will ever be, a law against flirting, larking around — or simply just being a damn fool.

Research shows that electric cars cause twice as much pothole damage to roads as old-fashioned combustion engines — for the simple reason that their batteries are so heavy. Yet their owners contribute nothing to the upkeep of the network as they pay no road tax. Time to reconsider? 

Tragic lesson from Ukraine boy heroes 

Next time either of my children complain about the fact I’ve bought supermarket own-brand of tomato sauce instead of Heinz, I shall point them firmly in the direction of two Ukrainian teenagers, Tigran Hovhannisyan and Nikita Khanganov, killed on Saturday during a gunfight with Russian forces in the occupied city of Berdyansk.

We’re talking 16-year-old boys here: they should have been chatting up girls and going to pop concerts, not wielding Kalashnikovs.

By comparison, our kids don’t know they’re born.

The inquest into the death of Nicola Bulley has confirmed what most people suspected: it was all a tragic accident.

But while no one was to blame for what happened, there is one thing I can’t forgive: the decision of the police to cast poor Nicola as some kind of menopausal drunkard. That is something her family will have to live with for ever — and it’s disgraceful.

Glasto should focus on music 

Glastonbury was interesting this year (not that I went — no tickets left after they were all snapped up by the BBC). But the main acts either seemed to consist of geriatrics (Elton John, Candi Staton, Debbie Harry) or vulnerable youngsters — in particular poor Lewis Capaldi, who was so crippled by his Tourette’s that the crowd ended up singing his songs for him. Meanwhile, Lana Del Rey spent most of her time whispering into her hair.

Admittedly I was watching from the sofa, but it seemed more like an extended therapy session than a rock festival to me.

The truth is out on the Sussexes 

Why are so many people suddenly popping out of the woodwork telling their ‘truth’ about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex?

First, an executive at Spotify brands them ‘f*****g grifters’, and now Jeremy Zimmer, chief executive of United Talent Agency, has said: ‘Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent . . . And you know, just because you’re famous doesn’t make you great at something.’

Looks like the Hollywood honeymoon is well and truly over.

The most uncomfortable journey of my life I spent squashed in economy class between two enormously fat passengers, on a jam-packed overnight flight from London Heathrow to New Delhi.

Veritable human elephants they were, with bottoms, thighs and tree-trunk upper-arms spreading far into my territory in the middle seat.

For nine hours I suffered there, hardly able to breathe, my shoulders hunched and my elbows tucked in front of my chest, finding it almost impossible to manoeuvre my food and drink into my mouth without spilling it down my shirt.

If you’ve ever sat down to a Christmas dinner for ten, round a kitchen table designed for six, you will understand my difficulty.

I thought of that flight this week, when I read that an American woman described as a ‘plus-size travel influencer’ is campaigning to make airlines offer free extra seats to passengers of her substantial proportions, who take up two or even three each. It’s a question of their human rights, apparently.

‘People with smaller bodies get to pay one fare to get to their destination,’ says Jaelynn Chaney, who keeps her weight private but admits that her frocks are an impressive size 6XL (that’s 24 UK, or European size 50). ‘But we have to pay two fares, even though we’re getting the same experience. If anything, our experiences are a little bit more challenging.’

Call me a brute, but I would have thought that if she wanted her experience of air travel to be a little less challenging, the remedy might lie in her own hands.

Isn’t it just possible that her discomfort in single seats may have something to do with the quantity and quality of her diet?

Dare I say it, wouldn’t it be within her power to slim down, if only she were to limit her intake of calories?

Not possible, says her champion Gabor Lukacs, the founder of an organisation called Air Passenger Rights. ‘Being a large-size person is not a choice,’ he says, ‘as many people mistakenly believe.’

Thus, in a single sentence, he dismisses the age-old notion that human beings are endowed with free will.

I’m reminded of that brilliant comedian Peter Cook’s waspish rejoinder when someone said that it wasn’t Elizabeth Taylor’s fault she was putting on weight. It was all down to her glands.

‘I know, poor woman,’ he said. ‘There she is, in her suite in the Dorchester, harmlessly watching television. Suddenly her glands pick up the phone and order two dozen eclairs and a bottle of brandy.

‘No,’ she screams, ‘please, I beg you!’ but her glands take no notice. Determined glands they are, her glands.

‘You’ve never known glands like them. The trolley arrives and Elizabeth Taylor hides in the bathroom, but her glands, her glands take the eclairs, smash down the door and stuff them down her throat.

‘I’m glad I haven’t got glands like that. Terrible glands.’

All I will say, cruel though this may sound, is that you don’t see many morbidly obese people among the wretched souls fleeing from famine in refugee camps.

Now, as regular readers will be quick to point out, I am the last person on Earth qualified to get on my high horse and preach against people in the grip of addictions. After all, I have a revolting 50-a-day cigarette habit, and I know how terribly hard it is to quit. I imagine the same must be true of people who are addicted to doughnuts and sweets, Big Macs and chips.

Indeed, I’m sure that it’s only my half century of addiction to nicotine that has kept my own weight down to between 10½ and 11 st since I was 18 — or rather less, over recent months, since my rotting teeth began to make eating a bit of an ordeal.

It’s almost certain that if I were to give up smoking now, and get my teeth fixed, I would exchange the hit I get from my Marlboro Reds for the comfort of over-eating. No doubt my figure would balloon, as has happened to so many of my friends, with stronger wills than mine, who have managed to wean themselves off the evil weed.

(I hasten to say that I can’t recommend chain-smoking or avoiding the dentist as wholly satisfactory ways of losing weight. The former is cripplingly expensive, at well over £14 a packet these days. As for the latter, I find that children tend to shriek and run away, terrified, when I smile.)

All I will say in my defence is that I fully acknowledge my weakness, I don’t blame anyone else for it and I try, as far as possible, to avoid letting my self-indulgence cause discomfort to others, never lighting up in the presence of people who object.

Oh, and unlike Jaelynn Chaney, who appears to believe all passengers on a flight should share the cost of awarding her an extra seat, I don’t expect anyone else to suffer financially because I won’t make the effort to kick my anti-social habit. Yes, I know. Anti-smoking fanatics will tell me that my vice costs the health service a fortune, estimated by NHS England at £2.6 billion a year.

To them, I can only point out the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimate that tobacco duty alone will raise £10.4 billion in the current financial year.

What’s more, the obesity epidemic is claimed to cost a whopping £14 billion a year, which is the amount the NHS would save if everyone were of a healthy weight.

That’s according to an authoritative study last month, led by Dr Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard, a public lecturer at Imperial College London and head of health analytics at a consultancy firm, Lane Clark & Peacock.

But, no, I’m not for one moment disputing Jaelynn Chaney’s right to be fat. Nor do I begrudge overweight people the subsidy from other passengers which they already enjoy if they occupy single seats, since every extra pound of flab aboard increases the amount of fuel a plane needs and so pushes up fares for all.

Still less would I suggest that in the UK, the NHS should refuse to treat patients who have brought their suffering on themselves — whether smokers, fatties, speeding motorists or enthusiasts for dangerous sports.

All I am saying is that Jaelynn should acknowledge her personal responsibility for her enormous size, and accept that she could do something about it, if only she put her mind to it. As with me and my smoking (all right, Mrs U, and my drinking too), she has a choice.

No doubt I’ll be roundly condemned for ‘fat-shaming’. But then we nicotine addicts are constantly shamed for our habit, banished like lepers from enclosed public spaces, and scolded by warnings on our cigarette packets that our selfishness harms others around us, and stunts our unborn babies’ growth.

But you won’t hear many of us whimpering that this is an abuse of our human rights.

I would even argue that the shaming of smokers, whether by governments of every hue or by hosts at private parties who tell us to light up in the garden or the street, ‘if you really must’, has improved the health of the nation’s lungs.

Of course, the annual increases in tobacco duty have been by far the most influential factor in bringing the number of UK smokers down from roughly 40 per cent of the adult population in the 1970s, to the mere 13.3 per cent recorded in the 2021 census. But the campaign to shame us must surely have helped.

By the same token, mightn’t a spot of concerted fat-shaming help slim down the Great British buttocks, and save our own growing army of Jaelynns from themselves?

But let me end with a plea to airline check-in staff the world over. As a nicotine addict, I have a great deal of sympathy with people who can’t bring themselves to say no to that extra slice of cake. But the next time a pair of human elephants waddle up to your desk, please don’t seat me between them.

Deep breath. Are you OK? The Duke of Sussex was back in court on his second and final day of giving evidence. He entered the witness box just before 10.30am, did a little neck roll, took a sip of water and prepared for the ordeal ahead.

The prince was still in his smart suit and had swapped Tuesday’s purple tie for a snazzy silver one – but something else was different, too. Something more elusive. Did I detect a new spritz of lemon in his cocktail of complaint, a rousing grind of pepper on his ongoing beef?

It was almost as if he’d been instructed overnight to answer questions with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and stick to the script, for God’s sake. For example, he had a better response to the important question of when he had read the newspaper articles in question.

On Tuesday he repeatedly told the court he couldn’t remember, end of. Yesterday it was: ‘I can’t remember but that is to suggest that the stress has been reduced and it hasn’t been.’

Soon we were roving over evidence about his wild and crazy younger life, including an injured knee that delayed his entry to Sandhurst, his trips to lap dancing clubs, his ‘boozy playboy lifestyle’ and his relationship with Chelsy Davy.

Prince Harry – so very vague about so very much that happened back then – had a sudden illuminating jolt of memory. He argued that he did not go to a London nightclub called Amika once a month (‘I don’t believe I was there that often’) and doubted the newspaper’s version of events (‘I don’t see any quotes from the Lithuanian lapdancer who sat on my lap’).

However, we all know Harry by now. Give our guy a public platform and it won’t be long before he is complaining about his privacy. Although to be scrupulously fair, this IS a phone hacking trial and not an exercise in vengeance. Or is it?

During his cross-examination by Andrew Green KC, acting for Mirror Group Newspapers, Prince Harry revealed that he decided to bring the case after meeting lawyer David Sherborne in the south of France, sometimes known as a sunny place for shady people, but of course that is not relevant here.

Harry also revealed that part of his impetus for the lawsuit was a desire to do something about the ‘abuse and hate that was coming towards me and my wife’ in recent years. So an exercise in revenge and punishment rather than one in justice and ethics?

In his witness statement, Prince Harry grandly described himself as someone who wants to ‘save journalism as a profession’ and ‘a soldier upholding important values’. It would be simply crushing to discover that this warrior of morality was motivated, even a little bit, by less noble sentiments.

Despite his new focus, it wasn’t long before the prince was drifting far from shore again, answering the questions in his head rather than the ones he had just been asked and taking any opportunity to expound on his general grievances to the judge. ‘Doesn’t mean it is true, my lord,’ he would say. ‘I highly doubt that, my lord,’ he would add. Mr Green got a little exasperated at one point. ‘Could I just repeat what I said yesterday – this is about me asking you questions, not you asking me questions,’ he said.

‘So be it,’ sighed the KC, after another dead-end exchange with the prince. There was a discussion, yet again, about what was and what was not in the public interest. Prince Harry was asked to define the former, and gave the matter some thought. ‘A life-threatening injury?’ he suggested. ‘I’m sure there are others.’

I’m sure there are. Again and again we got a glimpse of the unique struggles of the young prince’s cloistered life, a miserable-sounding existence constrained by suspicion and privilege. He was chary of everyone and inside this corral of distrust he was ministered by people he variously described as ‘my security’, ‘my point person’ and even ‘my police’.

Sometimes you have to wonder, who on earth was looking after this lost, motherless boy? At other times, his lack of acuity is gasping.

Towards the end of the day the focus switched onto a news story about his break-up with Chelsy Davy, printed with the headline, ‘Hooray Harry’s Dumped’. ‘My Lord, this was hurtful to say the least,’ said the prince, adding that he found it ‘a little bit mean’ that such a private moment was ‘turned into a bit of a laugh.’

‘You are not suggesting that they [the newspaper] were celebrating you had been dumped,’ said Green, incredulous. ‘Yes, I am. For me,’ said Harry, touching his heart with fluttering fingers, ‘as the subject or victim of this, to see that word used in this term is hurtful.’

If only a newspaper sub-editor – or anyone with a rudimentary grasp of grammar – had been on hand to explain the difference between Hooray Harry’s Dumped and Hooray, Harry’s Dumped.

How can a man come through an expensive education without knowing the basic rules of punctuation? Or expect to single-handedly ‘save journalism’ if he doesn’t even know how a comma works?

When he had finished giving his evidence, Prince Harry took a seat in the courtroom for the rest of the day. How had it all gone? That morning, Mr Green had asked him if it was true he was brought back early from his tour of duty in Afghanistan. ‘I was evacuated, yes,’ said Prince Harry.

You could say much the same about his hours in the witness box.

Poolside revenge! Vacationer sparks a furious etiquette debate by admitting she removed ALL ‘reserved’ towels from hotel pool chairs after getting annoyed with people hogging spots

• Redditor @konijn12 said she found it impossible to find any free sun loungers 
• This was because ‘most spots were taken by towels’ but some were never used
• To prevent chair hogging, she took the towels off every lounger 
• It appears her tactic worked, with the user revealing: ‘By the end of the week a sign said unattended towels would be removed’

By Sadie Whitelocks For Dailymail.com

Updated: 15:59 EDT, 26 May 2023

What are the lasting memories of the Coronation? The solemnity and costumes in Westminster Abbey? Or the pantomime moment when the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared to screw the crown to the King’s head like a bottle top?

Perhaps it was the approval of the cheering, waving crowds as King and Queen took their curtain call from the Buckingham Palace balcony. And what about that spontaneous jig Charles performed at Sunday night’s concert? Was this the embodiment of a people’s monarch in action?

For some, doubtless, it will be William’s failure to mention Camilla by name in his otherwise generous tribute to his father’s achievements — along with the distracting glamour of his wife Kate, a sublime figure of glacial impassivity.

If nothing else here was proof that no matter how hard the Netflix show The Crown tries to recreate the dramas of the House of Windsor, it cannot compete with the real thing.

Yes the three days of celebrations to mark the start of the reign of Charles III were a triumph, but, beyond the spectacle and the ceremony, the King faces some real challenges that will not just define how favourably the Coronation is remembered, but also the future direction of the monarchy.

Charles never gives the impression of being a man in a hurry, but he knows that time now is pressing. In the eight months since the death of his mother, he has projected a reassuring mix of continuity and familiarity.

But issues are crowding in: how in the era of a slimmed-down monarchy can he hope to meet both targets of having fewer working royals while fulfilling all the obligations of charity and patronage inherited from Queen Elizabeth?

Abroad, the Commonwealth seethes with a clamour for change. Barely was the crown settled on Charles’s head than St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean became the latest country to demand a consultation about whether to become a republic.

Closer to home he has to address the issue of the crown’s staggering property portfolio. In the midst of a cost of living and housing crisis, the sheer number of royal homes is an embarrassment.

This, of course, reopens the debate about just who should receive these lavish houses. And, inevitably, whatever solution he finds, they are inextricably linked to the most pressing problem of all: the Andrew and Harry question.

The King knows he will be judged more on this matter for his decisiveness — or lack of it — than by any other.

Allowing Andrew to wear his robes as a member of the ancient Order of the Garter to Saturday’s ceremony was a kindly, fraternal gesture. But then relegating him to the also-rans of the Royal Family in the row behind his younger brother Edward’s teenage children was scarcely magnanimous.

And what about Harry, the running sore of the Windsor story? If his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance at the Coronation was a source of sadness for the King, the decision to banish him to the outer fringes of the Royal Family seats seems questionable.

These first months, the transition between the reign of his mother and his own, were always likely to be unremarkable for Charles when the focus was the meticulous planning of his crowning.

It meant, of course, that there was dither. He promoted William and Kate to Prince and Princess of Wales within a day of the Queen’s death. But he waited six months before elevating Edward to Duke of Edinburgh, while Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex didn’t bother to wait for his father to confirm Archie and Lilibet’s titles as prince and princess, they did it themselves.

In the course of a reign such details probably do not matter. However, over the next year, there will be a series of announcements which will tell us about the King’s direction of travel and his priorities.

They will be a mixture of public and personal. Included are the future of Highgrove.

A sanctuary during the years of his unhappy marriage to Princess Diana, it remains his favourite home. But how many homes can the man who owns Buckingham Palace, Clarence House, Balmoral Castle, Windsor Castle, Sandringham and Birkhall — as well as boltholes in Wales, Scotland and Romania — possibly need?

And it is not just Charles’s properties. Can Andrew, who has no official role, be permitted to remain in Royal Lodge? Evicting him risks the King being cast as vindictive. Allowing him to stay put might suggest weakness. The booing that greeted Andrew as he travelled down the Mall on Saturday may determine which option his brother chooses.

There are likely to be changes for the Waleses, too. At the moment, William and Kate are living in homely Adelaide Cottage in Windsor Home Park, chosen for its convenience to their children’s school.

There are now questions about whether it is practical for the prince’s enhanced role. Running the vast Duchy of Cornwall estate and the huge increase in the number of their day-to-day engagements may mean them relocating to their Kensington Palace apartment sooner than they planned.

As for Harry, the housing issue has already been settled, he has forfeited Frogmore Cottage and has almost certainly spent his last night there. Charles who desperately wants to be reconciled with his son, will keep the door open and has assured him that he will always have somewhere to stay.

For all his talk of the apology he says he wants from the Royal Family , there have so far been no concessions. Charles is aware that this is a situation of considerable delicacy. Not only was Camilla upset by many of Harry’s comments which included him accusing her of leaking stories about him, William has also insisted that it is he and Kate who deserve the apology because of his brother’s comments about them in his memoir.

Many around Charles wonder if Harry will ever be seen at a royal event again, such is the depth of the rift.

As heart-breaking as this undoubtedly is to the King, it is not the only testing problem he faces. With Commonwealth countries apparently lining up to register their wish to break away, the King faces a tricky dilemma.

Should he simply wait as each makes their case for republic status, or does he get on the front foot and make the case for continued membership?

‘It’s going to have to be finely judged,’ says one former royal adviser. ‘He needs to show he is not being driven by events but is in control of them.’

In the short-term, he must answer the increasingly anxious calls from the charity world. What will happen to all those organisations he supported as Prince of Wales? And what about those that were served by the late Queen?

These are almost certainly what Princess Anne had in mind when she suggested that slimming down the monarchy was beginning to look rather foolish. No Harry and Meghan and no Andrew meant the numbers of working royals had already been scaled back. How will Charles’s vision of a leaner monarchy actually function?

As his reign formally begins, it is one of only countless problems the new King faces. Planning all the facets of the Coronation may seem simplicity itself in comparison.