The Queen is entitled to protection when she's saying humdrum things – but the same doesn't apply to Prince Charlie's commercial interests
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'There good reason for the Queen keeping her political opinions to herself.' Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
What an extraordinary tangle we seem to have created in the space of a few weeks over the thorny question of royal privacy. It's bad enough that the Guardian has to fight its way through the courts to gain access to Prince Charles's covert interventions into public policy. Now we have the BBC apologising to Buck House because one of its more distinguished correspondents let slip her wholly unremarkable view that the self-styled radical cleric Abu Hamza should be required to shut up.
All this and Prince Harry's willie on display in a Las Vegas hotel, not to mention the Duchess of Cambridge's boobs not on display but photographed in the private grounds of a French chateau. How could we fill acres of great national newspapers without them or Andrew Mitchell?
Quite easily actually, since major world events happen daily with little coverage or understanding. But that's another story. Each of these cases is different and required a more nuanced response. In the case of Frank Gardner, the BBC's estimable security correspondent, the issue is easily resolved. Gardner's misjudgment was surely not in what he said – "Queen horrified that mouthy cleric gets away with it" – but in sourcing his story to Her Maj.
When Radio 4's Today programme anchor, Jim Naughtie, asked Gardner how he knew what the Queen thinks, all he had to reply was, "I heard it from a pretty reliable source, Jim" and leave it at that. As a former Westminster lobby correspondent, Naughtie might helpfully have either not asked or steered him to safer ground. Instead Gardner said: "She told me."
No harm done, but I know from personal experience over the years that the suits at the BBC get very anxious whenever royalty is in the frame. Perhaps it's because they fear for their garden party invitations or because many of them are probably high-minded republicans and therefore have little instinct for their subject. Hence routine dropped catches, Peter Sissons's cheerful tie when the Queen Mum died or the corporation's woefully inept coverage of the diamond jubilee celebrations.
There's a good reason for the Queen keeping her political opinions – they are probably patrician liberal Tory ones of the old school – to herself and for others to do the same. Unlike wannabe president Mitt Romney, who wants to govern for 53% of Americans, she's all our Queen, whether we like it or not, and vocal opinions are bound to offend.
So Gardner was guilty of a small discourtesy, a show-off moment he probably regrets. He could have got the information into the public domain without breaching the rules. His standing is high and Fleet Street could easily have worked out where he got the story from without difficulty. Unsourced stories pop up in journalism all the time, not just in politics, as many innocents imagine – and rightly so in my view because sources often have to be protected. The issue is whether or not their information is true, important and worth reporting.
But we don't employ Her Majesty to do the heavy lifting. We elect governments to do that for her and to call MI5 to account for its tolerance – as Richard Norton-Taylor explains here of Abu Hamza's career at the Finsbury Park mosque.
Which is why Prince Charles, our king-in-waiting, has been persistently unwise in backing into a string of political controversies – from architecture to GM crops and the green agenda – even before the Guardian's Robert Booth revealed that civil servants have to consult him over Duchy of Cornwall-related issues, as they must also do the palace over others.
The Guardian won one round at an information tribunal last week, but the Cabinet Office has decided to appeal the case, which would otherwise have led to publication of a series of Charles's "black spider memos" to seven Whitehall departments during 2004-5. On today's edition of Today, John Kirkhope, a PhD student at Plymouth University, who is researching the powers of the duchy – it yields the prince an £18m annual income – reveals that if you die intestate in Cornwall the duchy may get your money. I don't think my ancestors, most of whom died in those parts, knew that.
So the Queen is entitled to a bit of protection, even when she's saying humdrum things about fraudulent preachers of a kind familiar the world over. British Muslims – many of whom like living in a monarchy, so a senior cleric said recently in my hearing – probably agree with her. That's not the point. But such protection does not apply to Charlie Windsor's commercial interests.
As for the young royals and their bits, Prince Harry invited complete strangers to his hotel room and got carried away, silly but fairly harmless. No national security issues were involved in internet photos of the Prince's dick, but nor was there any legitimate public interest in printing the photos. Seen one, seen 'em all, eh? Would the Sun's editor like it to happen to him or – heaven forfend – to his grizzly old proprietor, Rupert the Bear? No, he would not. I shudder even to contemplate it.
As for the covertly taken shots of Katie's boobs – intrepid Simon Hoggart assures me they are very hazy shots – I thought the best word to describe the action was "mean". Whichever way you look at it, an international pack of paparazzi helped drive Prince William's mother to her early death on French soil and to see similar treatment emerging towards his wife must have upset him, as it would anyone.
The usual pack of scumbags emerge from the drains to plead the public's right to know – and their right to make a quick buck – or in the case of porn baron Richard Desmond, to deplore it all in sanctimonious terms (arise, Sir Dick?), and the royals have gone to court to protect their privacy. Quite right too, and we must hope Lord Justice Leveson is watching so that he may realise the ineffectual nature of France's draconian privacy laws against calculated abuses. They work better to protect crooks.
So let's score this month's privacy dramas as 2-1 to the royals with one own goal (Prince Harry). That means that Prince Charles deserves the spotlight of unwelcome publicity. During a discussion I once heard of the money the NHS spends on homeopathy, a senior Whitehall official wrinkled his nose and explained that it might be a waste of money but that if they tried to do away with it, Prince Charles would make too much fuss. The new health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has pro-homeopathy form on the CV. Watch this space.