Oman’s ruler is due at the castle from 20 to 22 October, and the guest list for the King’s grandest occasions is written by people who are not the King
State Visits: How They Are Arranged
Later this month there will be a carriage procession through Windsor, a guard of honour in the castle quadrangle and a banquet in St George’s Hall at a table long enough to land a small aircraft on. The King will make a speech about friendship. The guest will reply.
The guest is the Sultan of Oman. The public record of the King’s incoming state visits lists it as the ninth of the reign, from 20 to 22 October, at Windsor Castle, and cites a news agency report from early September announcing it.
I am often asked, usually by someone cross about a particular visitor, why the King invited him. The answer is that he did not. Not in the sense people mean.
Who Chooses
A state visit is an act of government. The invitation is issued in the monarch’s name, on the advice of ministers. In practice a committee of officials from the Foreign Office and the Royal Household draws up a list of candidates some years ahead. The Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister approve it. The Palace is consulted about dates and practicalities.
The King’s role is to be the host. He does it very well. He does not choose the guest any more than a hotel chooses who books the ballroom.
This is the same principle that governs almost everything a constitutional monarch does in public. The sovereign acts on advice. If a visit is controversial, the people to complain to are in Whitehall.
There are usually two incoming state visits a year. That makes them a scarce resource. Deciding who gets one is a statement of priorities.
Why Oman
I am not privy to the Foreign Office’s reasoning and shall not pretend to be. But the general logic is not hard to see.
Oman sits at the mouth of the Gulf, on one side of the narrow strait through which a large share of the world’s oil passes. It has for decades been the region’s quiet intermediary, a country that keeps lines open to everyone. In a year when conflict in the Middle East has pushed up the price of energy and unsettled the markets, a friend in that position is worth cultivating.
The relationship is also unusually old and personal. British officers helped build Oman’s armed forces. The previous Sultan trained at Sandhurst. The present one studied at Oxford. There are few countries where the governing family and the British establishment know each other so well.
And it is a monarchy. This is the part that makes some people uneasy and that diplomats find extremely useful. A sultan may deal with presidents and prime ministers all year. Being received by a king, with the full ceremonial, is something a republic cannot offer in quite the same way. Monarchs are, in a sense, colleagues.
What a State Visit Is For
The cynical view is that it is a dinner party with soldiers. The truer one is that it is a tool.
The ceremony is a way of paying a compliment that costs comparatively little and is valued highly. A head of state who has ridden in a carriage with the King and slept at Windsor goes home having been honoured in a way that will be reported in every newspaper in his country.
Around that, the real business is done. Ministers accompany the visitor. Agreements that have been negotiated for months are signed. Companies announce contracts. The banquet is the wrapping paper.
This is what is meant by soft power, a phrase I dislike but cannot improve on. Britain no longer has the hard kind in any great quantity. It does have a thousand-year-old institution that can put on a show nobody else can match.
Windsor, Not London
The visit will be at Windsor because Buckingham Palace is still, as I wrote last month, largely a building site. The reservicing has moved state visits to the castle for the time being.
I rather prefer it. Windsor is a real castle, lived in for nine hundred years. The procession comes up through the town. St George’s Hall, rebuilt after the fire of 1992, is a better room for a banquet than the palace ballroom, which has always looked to me like a very grand railway hotel.
The Objection
There is a serious criticism, and it applies to this visit as to many others.
Oman is an absolute monarchy. The Sultan rules by decree. There are no political parties. Human rights organisations have documented limits on free expression and assembly. By rolling out the red carpet, the critics say, Britain lends its prestige, and the King’s, to a system it would not tolerate at home.
The same has been said, with greater force, of other guests over the years. Some past state visitors make uncomfortable reading now.
The government’s answer, in all such cases, is that diplomacy means dealing with countries as they are. That engagement gives more influence than isolation. That Oman in particular has been a moderating presence in a difficult region and a reliable partner.
I think both can be true. A country may be a valuable friend and have a political system one would not wish to live under.
Where That Leaves the King
It leaves him in the position he is always in. He must be equally gracious to every guest the government sends him. He cannot show enthusiasm for one and reserve toward another. His toast will be warm, and it will have been cleared by the Foreign Office line by line.
The late Queen entertained, in seventy years, a number of people she can hardly have relished meeting. She never let it show. That discipline is what the job consists of.
The one freedom the sovereign has is in the private conversation. What is said between two heads of state at dinner is not recorded. A monarch with long experience and no election to fight can sometimes say, quietly, what a minister cannot. Whether this King does, we shall not be told.
What to Watch
The guest list for the banquet, which is published. It tells you which ministers and which business leaders the government wanted in the room.
The King’s speech. Listen for what is mentioned and what is not.
And the Court Circular the following morning. As I never tire of saying, it is the dullest and most accurate document in Britain.
The published diary of forthcoming royal engagements shows a full month besides. More on the rest of it shortly.
For an account of state occasions with rather less deference, The London Prat provides its British satirical news on state banquets and its London satirical news about carriage processions. Bohiney Magazine covers a country that holds its state dinners in a tent.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
