‘King Charles walking tightrope as Burnham leaves Buckingham Palace in deeply uncomfortable position’

OPINION: With brief warning and what appears to be a great lack of collaboration between Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, Andy Burnham decided to say what no prime minister or monarch had done before

15:59, 01 Nov 2026Updated 16:00, 01 Nov 2026

The constitutional role of a monarch can be tricky at the best of times. When your Prime Minister fancies going off script, the challenge can only increase.

For the last week, King Charles has walked the most delicate of tightropes across the Caribbean. After Buckingham Palace prematurely lauded his endeavours a “diplomatic success”, despite a backdrop of demands for an apology over slavery and growing calls for reparations, Andy Burnham decided to give it a shake.

Even before the King set foot in The Bahamas last Tuesday, the official line was that he would not shy away from acknowledging Britain’s dark past, and yet would not deviate from previous statements of sorrow and regret. In short, those calls for an apology from the monarch would go unanswered.

In Nassau, Charles spoke of the “great suffering of the past”. In Georgetown, Guyana, he bowed his head at Independence Park, where 33 enslaved people were executed after the Demerara uprising of 1823. At every turn, he has chosen his words with the care of a man who knows exactly how far he can go.

That limit has always been clear. The King acts on the advice of his ministers, and on slavery that advice has been that sorrow and regret are permitted, but an apology is not.

Then, with brief warning and what appears to be a great lack of collaboration between Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, Andy Burnham decided to say what no prime minister or monarch had done before.

Just as the King was landing in Antigua, the Labour leader declared he was “open” to calls for a formal apology on behalf of the British state, and offered Caribbean nations a structured dialogue on the issue.

It is a seismic shift. And it leaves Buckingham Palace in a deeply uncomfortable position.

The Palace insists it was informed in a timely manner and that not a word of the King’s speech to Commonwealth leaders due on Tuesday has changed. Aides promise he will speak with “unflinching honesty” and “sincere sorrow”.

But sorrow, however sincere, now sounds very different. For years the King could point to his ministers and say the matter was out of his hands. Today those same ministers appear to be edging towards the very word he has been unable to say.

It is hard to see how the institution does not end up looking like the last holdout. There is a precedent here, and the Palace will know it well. In the Netherlands, the Prime Minister apologised for his country’s role in slavery in 2022. Months later, King Willem-Alexander followed, telling his people that “as your king and as a member of the government, I make this apology myself”.

If Burnham’s dialogue ends the same way, the question will inevitably turn to who delivers that apology and in whose name.

The pressure is coming from every direction. In The Bahamas, where Charles remains head of state, Prime Minister Philip Davis, within hours of the King leaving, declared he was “open” to losing the King, and that Britain must “appreciate the weight of that history”. In Guyana, President Irfaan Ali has called an apology the next step. Campaigners have promised widespread protests in Antigua.

And at home, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has dismissed the whole debate as a “navel-gazing distraction”, ensuring that any royal step towards an apology would be dragged straight into a party political row.

And therein lies the major issue. The King cannot move without his government, yet he cannot be seen to lag behind it. He must stay above politics on an issue that has suddenly become intensely political.

But when Charles rises to open the Commonwealth summit, every word will be weighed against what his Prime Minister has said and what he himself still cannot.

For a King who has spent years trying to get this right, it is no wonder this tour is being billed as the most perilous of his reign so far.