Peter Black points out an article about Prince Charles on the <spit> Daily Mail website.

Meanwhile, new questions arose last night over the Queen’s faith in Prince Charles’s ability to succeed her and about her view of Mrs Parker Bowles.

According to Royal sources, she was ‘having to do a lot of deep thinking’ about Charles’s future as King – with a suggestion that the best outcome for the Monarchy would be to skip a generation and for Prince William to be crowned instead.

In the unlikely event that the Queen really is considering this, she would be proposing a massive change to our constitution. In one move the Royal Family would declare that the hereditary principle doesn’t work: that the oldest son of the monarch isn’t, after all, the best person to be king. And once that is established, what justification is there for the hereditary principle to continue at all?

Little though I want to stand up for Prince Charles, I would question the public’s support for Prince William to succeed the Queen. Prince William may not have said or done anything yet to turn the population against him, but he’s only in his early twenties. If you’d asked people when Charles was William’s age how they viewed him, he would have had a glowing report. Charles has alienated people but he has had more than fifty years to do so. For all we know, Prince Williams’ views may be even more curious than his father’s.