King Charles’s aborted trip to France – and particularly a proposed state banquet at the Palace of Versailles – risked conjuring up images of the French revolution, a UK former national security adviser has said. Lord Ricketts was speaking after the trip was scrapped, a move an editorial in the major French newspaper Le Figaro branded a national “humiliation”, amid concerns over violent riots in protest at President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to push back the French retirement age, with the nation today bracing for further unrest.
The peer, who was the UK’s ambassador to France during the Queen’s final state visit nine years ago, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said: “I think when the state visit was planned, it was going to be the culmination of a period of real improvement in UK-French relations, marked by the summit between Rishi Sunak and Macron a couple of weeks ago.
“The fact that there are now these violent protests which seem to be growing made, in particular, the idea of a banquet in Versailles a particularly bad idea.
“That had all kinds of echoes from the past going back to the revolution.”
Referring to the south-western city widely regarded as the world’s wine capital, where demonstrators set fire to the town hall earlier this week, he continued: “Bordeaux looked to be difficult as well for the visit the King was planning to make.
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“So, as it turned out, the circumstances were not right, in which case it is right to postpone.”
The King’s visit to France could have been “overshadowed” by “potentially awkward incidents” if it had gone ahead, Lord Ricketts continued.
He said: “I think both sides will have been watching the deteriorating situation in France pretty closely and I suspect that up to the last moment the French wanted it to go ahead.
“But it was those violent demonstrations on Thursday, I think, that probably tipped the balance, at which point the president called – and it is right that the president should take the initiative, it was his invitation for the King to come – but I’m sure Buckingham Palace was very happy to accept his advice and to agree jointly that the visit should be postponed.
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Echoing Lord Ricketts’s point, she added: “It is true that the dinner in Versailles would not have given a good image while there is unrest in France.”
The relevance of Lord Ricketts’s French revolution reference was given credibility by graffiti scrawled, in French, at Place de la Concorde in Paris, saying “mort au roi” (‘death to the King”) and adding, in English: “Charles III do you know the guillotine?”
Explaining his decision to pull the plug during a press conference after a summit in Brussels yesterday, Mr Macron suggested the four-day state visit was likely to be rescheduled for the beginning of summer.
He said: “From the moment last night when the unions announced a new day of mobilisation on Tuesday – and with the King’s visit planned from Monday to Wednesday – I think we wouldn’t be being serious, and we’d be lacking some sense, to propose His Majesty the King and the Queen Consort to come and make a state visit in the middle of the demonstrations.”
Going ahead with Sunday’s visit “would have prompted incidents” which would have been “detestable”, he added.
Further clashes were predicted today, with 3,000 police gearing up for clahes with 1,500 protesters drawn from a crowd of 10,000 at a construction site in Saint Solines, central France, The Daily Telegraph reported.
