Even the FT manages to be witty when it comes to cover the recent announcement of Prince charles to marry camila, soon to be the duchess of cornwall.
How not to fill a very senior vacancy
By Alan Beattie
Say what you like about the British royal family - and, notwithstanding the Treason Felony Act of 1848, I am about to - the Camilla-Charles wedding announcement shows its news management skills are definitely on the up.
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An April 8 wedding will be a nice distraction ahead of the faintly absurd pomp and ceremony of Tony Blair's re-coronation as prime minister, scheduled for early May. And an eight-week engagement is just short enough to maintain public interest in the royal romance while giving Prince Harry time to have his Afrika Korps uniform dry-cleaned and his jackboots polished for the reception. Even the minor fuss about Camilla's new title, Duchess of Cornwall rather than Princess of Wales, seems overdone. Surely it is a better marketing strategy for the royal brand to be associated with cream teas, sun and surfing rather than with being rained on and losing at football.
But wait a moment. Even for the royal family, this is no ordinary marriage. (The couple seem rather to like each other, for a start.) This is the appointment of a very senior partner to The Firm. Are we happy to let the wife of our future king be chosen in such a casual manner?
If this were any other taxpayer-funded public body, say the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, stakeholders and non-governmental organisations would be up in arms at the lack of transparency. Where were the open tender for bids, the job ad in The Economist, the executive search process, the confirmation hearings? But we hear nothing. The protesters are silent over this stitch-up. Why is there no "300 Years is Enough" campaign against the monopoly control of the Hanover-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha consortium over the British monarchy market? (Rebranding themselves as "Windsor" should not fool anyone.)
If England can have a Swede coaching the national football team and a Zimbabwean in charge of the national cricket side, is it not time to use this opening in the marriage market to widen the royal gene pool? Surely someone from the developing world, or at least a member of Britain's homegrown ethnic minorities, should be given a go?
Perhaps, following the example set by the World Trade Organisation, the job could be split between two rival candidates. (On second thoughts, scrub that idea: they already tried it. Not only was the position of consort filled without a free and fair competition, it seems to have been filled before there was a vacancy.)
If the royal family is indeed a Firm, this is a distinctly amateurish way of appointing an executive assistant to the future CEO. Time for a regulator, Oftoff, to be created to ensure openness and transparency. Some might argue there is enough red tape in British industry as it is. But the alternative might be even less palatable. The first Charles to occupy the British throne could tell the next one all about the perils of ignoring stakeholders.
The writer, the FT's world trade editor, is a subject of Her Majesty the Queen and a republican