Mission accomplished as king’s speech to Congress goes down a storm

Charles quoted Wilde and Dickens in measured masterclass – and no tirade as yet from mad monarch in White House A flick of Oscar Wilde here, a nod to Henry Kissinger there, a sprinkling of Charles Dickens here, a dollop of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt there. Job done! The British monarch mobilised an elite squad of dead white men, leavened with humour and subliminal politicking, on Tuesday in a charm offensive aimed over Donald Trump’s head and squarely at the US Congress. Judging by the cheers and minute-long applause he received at the end, the soft power flex worked a treat and the special relationship lives to fight another day. But the king’s central message – of two great nations entwined in destiny – was also an inadvertent reminder of two empires that look increasingly shabby these days with rightwing populists on the march and the ghost of the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hovering in the shadows. Charles became the first British king to address the Congress almost exactly 250 years after the US denounced his fifth great-grandfather as a tyrant and declared its independence. “You’ll be back,” predicted George III in Hamilton and yet cricket,