Newton Emerson: King Charles sends Jeffrey Donaldson a blunt message

By accident or design — and it looked like design — King Charles humiliated DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson at Hillsborough Castle on Tuesday.

Dignitaries had gathered at the royal residence in Northern Ireland for the king’s first visit as monarch. Leaders from the five main Stormont parties stood in line, by order of their electoral mandates, to be introduced by Alex Maskey, the Sinn Féin Assembly speaker.

That meant Sinn Féin vice-president Michelle O’Neill was first. After warm handshakes, condolences and reminiscences on previous meetings, the king said: “What are you now, the biggest party?”

“Don’t be telling Jeffrey that now!” interjected Maskey.

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O’Neill, Maskey and the king then laughed, while Sir Jeffrey did not.

Since the queen’s death there has been excitable speculation on the demise of the monarchy, the United Kingdom and unionism

“All this skill and ingenuity” were the monarch’s parting words to Sinn Féin, before turning to the DUP leader, who tried to regain some authority by welcoming the king “to my constituency, actually”.

“Oh it’s here is it?” said the king, adding: “I have seen you occasionally ... in the past”.

“Yeah, yeah, you have,” replied Sir Jeffrey, who has been a member of the privy council for the past 15 years. It was excruciating, and all recorded for television.

Maskey then introduced the king and queen consort to a larger audience in the throne room, where he delivered an unsubtle dig at the DUP’s boycott of Stormont, contrasting the late queen’s leadership with that “lacking from others when it is most required”.

The king nodded throughout.

[ 'What are you now... the biggest party, are you?': when King Charles met Michelle O'Neill ]

[ King Charles resolves to ‘seek the welfare of all inhabitants of Northern Ireland’ ]

[ ‘He knows what he’s let himself in for’: Belfast well-wishers welcome new king ]

Maskey was present only because of the boycott. He should have been replaced four months ago by a speaker from another party, possibly a unionist.

The king will have known that, and known the boycott prevents Northern Ireland’s government being represented at his mother’s funeral.

O’Neill will attend as “first minister designate”, as Sinn Féin styles her — a title that has no legal standing without an Assembly. Donaldson says he will become deputy first minister once his Brexit protocol demands are met but he is not yet even a member of the Assembly. He is still hanging on to his Westminster seat, representing Hillsborough, as the king claimed not to know.

Since the queen’s death there has been excitable speculation on the demise of the monarchy, the United Kingdom and unionism. All will endure, but Sir Jeffrey’s dressing down shows things are nevertheless going to change. The UK’s new head of state is a curmudgeon who cannot resist making his views and impatience evident, even on the most formal occasions. In another incident caught on camera at Hillsborough, he lost his temper with a leaky fountain pen while Camilla bit her lip with practised stoicism.

Donaldson met the king privately at Hillsborough, where he was questioned at length on his party’s Brexit and Stormont positions

Once this would have raised anxious questions about the sort of king he would become. Now he is king, his well-known character with all its flaws is suddenly just a fact of national life. It turns out this is how the magic of monarchy works. The nation’s grandmother, an inscrutable figure on to which any opinion could be projected, has been succeeded by the nation’s cantankerous dad.

The new political fact immediately established in Northern Ireland is that the monarch has no difficulty with Sinn Féin as the largest party, or with Sinn Féin in general, while being plainly contemptuous of the DUP for disrupting devolution.

For Sir Jeffrey, this is an undeniable fiasco. There are unionists capable of considering themselves more loyal than the sovereign, and others who never give royalty a second thought, but both types and all shades in between are likely to find it embarrassing and a failure of leadership for the DUP to have so prominently sidelined itself. A burst of public confidence in the union, due to national cohesion around the succession, only gives confidence to unionists to ask what their leaders are doing.

Donaldson also met the king privately at Hillsborough, where he was questioned at length on his party’s Brexit and Stormont positions. The DUP leader felt the need afterwards to say he had told the king there were positive noises from the European Union. Until one week ago, such meetings with the monarch were sacred, secret communions. They already appear more like being summoned in for a talking-to. While that may not happen often, British politics is reframed by knowing it can happen.

Sinn Féin, which threw itself into the royal visit, will say its outreach was preparation for a united Ireland. For the foreseeable future, it looked like preparation for leading Northern Ireland. ‘Making Northern Ireland work’, to quote an SDLP slogan, has always been seen by republicans as a unionist trap, but one Sinn Féin now apparently believes it can use to its own ends.

Of course, that is a low-risk position while the DUP refuses to let Northern Ireland work — an absurdity, as the new king has wasted no time making clear.