Only 31% of British buildings/hospitals wanted a free portrait of King Charles

*Note: The portrait seen above, painted by Jonathan Yeo, is unfortunately not the portrait referenced in this story.

Here in America, whenever a new president is inaugurated, all federal buildings immediately replace their displayed portraits of the president. Many public schools also display photos/portraits of the president. I never gave it much thought because, hey, we have an elected head of state and it seems reasonable for federal buildings to make that change. But what about countries without an elected head of state? Well, the United Kingdom has had a new king, a new head of state, since September 2022. Soon after QEII’s death, Buckingham Palace tried to interest any and all government buildings, schools, military bases and hospitals with new portraits of King Charles, likely to replace their existing portraits of QEII on display. Only 31% of those buildings/schools/hospitals wanted a portrait of Charles.

It was a celebratory multimillion pound scheme to mark the beginning of King Charles III’s reign. Free portraits of the king were offered to all public bodies – every town hall, university, hospital and even jobcentre – so the new monarch’s visage could gaze down on his subjects. The initiative would provide “a reminder of the example set by our ultimate public servant”, said the then Tory deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden.

But the current government is proving coy about where exactly any of the images of King Charles ended up after it admitted more than 46,000 public institutions had showed no interest. More than £2.7m was spent meeting requests for the pictures and while take-up was patchy, more than 20,000 images of Charles in a medal-laden Royal Navy uniform were sent out – a 31% hit rate.

But the reluctance to reveal where they ended up has emerged from a Guardian freedom of information request which the Cabinet Office has been resisting for many months. Last October it rejected the request for the information by arguing disclosure would be an “actionable breach of confidence”. In effect it implied a public authority which requested a portrait of the king to display in public might sue the government for revealing that it had done so.

When the Guardian appealed on the grounds that “requesting a portrait of the king funded by the taxpayer for the express purpose of being publicly displayed cannot reasonably be considered a confidential matter”, it dropped that justification and changed tack to claim release would “prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs”, a different exemption under the Freedom of Information Act. It said disclosure “would be likely to trigger questions about why certain organisations requested the portrait and (by extension) why others did not” and that organisations would be distracted from operational activity by having to answer them.

One royal historian said it was the latest example of the government acting to protect the reputation of the monarchy and a sign of anxiety in Whitehall about any further undermining of the institution’s reputation.

The refusal comes amid a steady decline in the proportion of the adult population who believe the monarchy is good for Britain, falling from 60% in July 2019 to 51% in March 2024, according to You Gov. The combined proportion of people who thought it was either bad or neither good nor bad rose in the same period from 34% to 44%.

Graham Smith, the chief executive of the anti-monarchy campaign group Republic, said declining public support meant “the chances of there being controversy around spending money on portraits is far more likely than in the past”.

The government has already said that less than a third of eligible public institutions asked for a portrait, including only 3% of hospitals, 7% of universities and only one in four Church of England churches. National and local government bodies were far more enthusiastic with 73% making requests, while every one of the 23 coastguard bodies received a portrait. But overall more than 46,500 public institutions that could have ordered a portrait did not.

[From The Guardian]

You can go to the Guardian story for a fuller picture on the obfuscation regarding the newspaper’s freedom-of-information request. There are several moving parts to the story, and all of them are bad news for Charles and the monarchy. There’s the baseline story of how few people were interested in a FREE portrait of the new king, which is hilarious enough on its own. But then there’s the other aspect, where the government is trying to cover up the lack of interest. They’re behaving as if “asking questions about how many buildings rejected a new portrait of the head of state” amounts to treason, or that it’s everyone’s job to protect the reputation of the monarchy, even when the story is about how few people give a sh-t (and the actual reputation of the monarchy is in the toilet).

All of this reminds me of something else – the buffet of emotional-support polls cropping up these days, all to force-feed the notion that the British public’s enemy #1 and #2 are Prince Harry and Meghan. But even in the most ham-fisted polls, you can see a steady decline in support for Charles and especially Camilla. As it turns out, the whole-ass king and queen have done the most reputational damage to the monarchy.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Jonathan Yeo for Buckingham Palace, Tatler cover, BP’s social media.

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17 Responses to “Only 31% of British buildings/hospitals wanted a free portrait of King Charles”

  1. Poor Chuckles. He waited so long to be king and now people don’t want his free picture in their buildings lol. Karma works in mysterious ways.

  2. Friendly Crow says:

    So. Charles is dressed like a 18th century king – just without the wig or heels – in his portrait?

    And Camilla is wearing a house coat on hers?

    Delightful.

  3. jais says:

    I can only imagine that this is embarrassing for Charles.

  4. Vicki says:

    Because he’s surrounded by souls of the damned?

  5. Eurydice says:

    Charles sealed his fate when he cheated on Diana.

  6. Noo says:

    Breaking news, Britons don’t want to gaze upon the visage of a nasty narc piece of work who is an adulterer, embezzler, terrible father, liar, who flips out about fountain pens and lives in multiple immense castles throughout the year.

    • Kikster924 says:

      We Americans don’t necessarily want to gaze upon the visage of a nasty narc piece of work who is an adulterer, embezzler, terrible father, liar, who flips out about Sharpies and lives in multiple immense golf courses throughout the year… but here we are 😞

      • Noo says:

        We Canadians also never voted for #47 and certainly don’t want to see him or hear the lies he and his minions perpetuate about our sovereign nation. @kikster924 you’ve hit upon the most important part which is that number 47 has an unhinged desire to see his own face no matter the context what if as a piece of resistance we only show his face with a red cross line through it? Just a thought…

  7. Blithe says:

    So, for the institutions that didn’t request portraits of Charles, did they leave up pictures of the Queen? And, is it treason to ask in advance how many might be interested in getting free pictures of William?

  8. Amy Bee says:

    Instead of focusing on Harry and Meghan, the British press should be more concerned about stories like this.

  9. Monika says:

    I thought that his popularity might have picked up last year because of his cancer diagnosis and how openly he dealt with it. People had sympathy with him and he highlighting the importance of awareness and of attending screening programs. But that is probably now waning especially with the latest grift by the heir and Queen taking free yacht holidays.

    If they had offered he portrait, painted by Jonathan Yeo, there would have been probably a higher take up of the King’s portray.

    • Blogger says:

      They should offer the Yeo portrait to incentivise the uptake. Be a collectors item! And how much did the printing cost?

  10. Lady Digby says:

    My local small hospital has a lovely smiling photo of the real Queen in her 90s gazing down in the canteen. No one has asked for it to be replaced by one of Chuck! We don’t want to see a dyspeptic Will wagging his finger at us in the future either! Imagine these bozos turning up at a Commonwealth country like Ed and Sophie did in 2022 and trying to “gift” them a photo of themselves whilst said host wanted to discuss reparations 🤣

  11. Blogger says:

    “a reminder of the example set by our ultimate public servant”

    😂🤣😅🤣😅

    Can’t believe he said that with a straight face. Definitely not going to be ascribed to freebie yacht Willy when he ascends.

    But there are some home truths in this article. The Government is highly aware of, and sensitive to, their declining popularity and who is the Royal historian? They’re watching the monarchy in its death spiral…

  12. therese says:

    He could in charity offer the portraits to people to throw in their fireplaces to warm themselves up in the winter. He could help out in that way. A serious question, could it actually be that the hate campaign actually backfired, and contributed to their unpopularity? (Added to their past doings)

  13. Durga says:

    It’s all just cosplay. Why would grown ups want that?

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