The King's Speech: behind the embassy curtain
What really happens on a State Visit
As Ambassador to Cuba, I saw King Charles tackle a sensitive visit first hand. In Washington and New York, he's shown it again: Royal Class Diplomacy.
The King and Queen’s programmes have hit all the right notes. Not only the State Dinner, speech, gala and garden party. But the sharp end too: tech, innovation, trade. And with ordinary people, at the 9/11 memorial, at a Harlem urban farm.
Everyone’s talking about his speech to Congress. He delivered a pitch-perfect masterclass.
What did you notice that others may have missed?
The speech adresses several audiences simultaneously. Congress in the room. The American public watching. European allies seeing transatlantic solidarity reaffirmed. Ukrainian leadership. Critics who argued the visit should have been cancelled.
The carefully placed jokes came early to disarm the room, members of the legislature of a republic founded in opposition to monarchy.
Policy messaging in non-political terms. The reminder that "our Alliance cannot rest on past achievements" is aimed squarely at those in that chamber who'd rather it did.
The nature passage. It’s Charles’s priority, and a diplomat will think: he fought to keep it in. A King who is also a fine diplomat has latitude.
Should Charles and Camilla have gone to Washington? Of course they should.
Yet some didn't think so. Some argued the same about Cuba.
Florida Senator Rick Scott wrote an open letter to Charles after his visit, designated a State Visit by the host government, had been announced. He warned that “it signals your support for a ruthless dictatorship” and called for cancellation.
There was a little quiet pressure on my modest mission from within the Foreign Office network. Wasn’t the UK relationship with the US more important?
We stayed firm because the visit, we believed, was exactly what ambitious diplomacy should do.
Image: touchdown Havana
It was the right call. The royal visitors achieved successes nobody else could.
A few examples. Artists critical of the government, who’d recently organised relief for victims of a natural disaster in Havana, met Charles at my Residence to discuss how civil society got ahead of a government that doesn’t allow it.
Cultural elements supported self-expression, such as a project putting cameras into the hands of children. Entrepreneurs, whom the authorities viewed with suspicion, took part in a spotlit debate and exhibition.
And the royal couple met normal Cubans in the exactly the way that VVIP visitors to Cuba don’t.
They strode into smiling crowds that gathered in parks and suburbs. The danced to Cuban music at an independent community project. They talked privately with cancer survivors, the Molecular Immunology Centre Directors standing apart.
A senior royal visitor is not there for policy discussions. If His Majesty speaks on foreign policy, he voices the position of the government of the day.
That’s why President Trump’s claim about The King’s views on Iran caused a stir. As the Palace confirmed, HM simply reflected the UK position.
But a royal visit can be entwined with high level ministerial or official talks. And they can get into it.
In Havana a Minister accompanied, a Director (diplomat) stayed on after the royal couple’s departure, and as the Ambassador I was able to raise thornier issues.
The substance and style of our programme took the Cuban government beyond its comfort zone.
Around 30 visit elements in a 3 day programme takes a lot of organising: for around 6 months before, the visit became the embassy’s main preoccupation. As no royal had ever paid an official visit to Cuba before, we had unlimited ideas and unlimited problems of bureaucracy, politics and logistics.
How do you mediate between a Royal Palace that is used to doing everything its own way, and a Communist Single Party State?
You need many months of negotiations and planning. Our work started a year earlier, with the first visit of a Cuban leader to London. At a 1-1 English tea at Clarence House, on the then Prince of Wales’s 70th birthday, HRH passed an invitation to Miguel Diaz-Canel.
Then, for 6 months in a media-sized embassy like ours in Havana, the visit becomes the man preoccupation (while keeping other things running).
The recce (preparatory) visit is itself consuming: you’re fitting in visits for the Palace team to 3x as many options as will fit in the final 3 day SV programme. Here’s me (4th from right, looking a tad less formal) during a late night meeting at the Residence during the Havana recce.
Image: late night recce meeting at the Ambassador’s Residence.
The visit’s success, despite the complexity and the risks, was down to an exceptional extended team around me in Havana. The organisation of a State Visit involves many teams and many hundreds of people. This week from the Embassy in DC to the palace, from US and UK security teams to administrative and serving staff at events.
When it all comes together, it’s one of the most powerful tools in diplomacy.
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NATO: don’t be complacent
Another former Ambassador, David Manning, points out that the visit allowed the King to deliver key messages. One of those: the importance of NATO in “an increasingly complex and contested world“.
I’ll be debating NATO at a public event next month. I’ll argue against complacency. Ukraine proves conventional threats haven’t gone away. And now there are unconventional ones. Cyber and AI-enabled weapons will pass straight through a shield never designed to stop them.
Diplomats must advocate for interests, principles and hard security.
I’ll share how that goes.
Why Vietnam is different than you think
After opening an email with the title “Recruitment interview: Ambassador to Vietnam”, holding my breath and reading “Congratulations”, I walked across the park, bought a glossy DK Travel book, and booked a table at Mekong, my local Vietnamese restaurant in Pimlico.
I’d got the job of my dreams.
[The following section is published in collaboration with the Foreign Affairs Newsletter, that this month focuses a special report on Vietnam. More below.]
