Richard Davies is a journalist and podcaster. He runs the podcast consultancy, DaviesContent and co-hosts “How Do We Fix It?” and “Let’s Find Common Ground”.
You could be forgiven for thinking that this weekend’s coronation of King Charles III will be a right royal yawner. But history’s judgment could prove to be quite different.
As usual with great royal spectacles, Saturday’s lavish occasion will be full of pomp and ceremony. The soaring setting itself is remarkable. During a recent month-long stay in London, I spent several happy hours at Westminster Abbey, the one-thousand-year-old site of countless coronations of kings and queens. The Abbey is brimming with history and the greatest of all examples of Britain’s long and layered history.
Prince Charles himself has been described as stiff, formal, and awkward. He certainly waited long enough to take over the job from his "mum". But friends say he has a lively mind and a wry sense of humor. Charles may also be the UK’s most seasoned diplomat.
The new King speaks several foreign languages. A recent visit to Germany was widely viewed as a resounding success. He personally knows more international leaders than almost anyone else.
The King may well help his small island nation continue to punch above its weight. At the coronation alongside foreign royals and British political leaders will be EU President Ursula von den Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron and other top officials. Press reports in the UK suggest that Charles will play a leading role in healing the UK’s toxic relations after Brexit.
Americans may be bewildered at the relevance of the monarchy in modern times. The US media have recently played up reports of discontent and doubt. But the great problem for British republicans is the issue that dogs so many radical reformers: Once you tear down the monarchy and all of its traditions, who would you replace them with?
A directly-elected regime could end in tatters, as we saw last year with the demise of Boris Johnson— once the UK’s most popular politician.
This is not to say that the British are impervious to change. During the four decades since I last lived in London, the city has become brighter, less polluted and quieter with greater prosperity and racial diversity. A visit to several of the most prestigious law courts revealed that more than half of today’s up-and-coming solicitors and barristers are women.
The city's skyline and infrastructure underwent more alternations than either New York or Washington, D.C. London’s beautiful parks and efficient public transportation system would be the envy of any large U.S. city. Careful planning has helped bring a sense of order and shared pride in many public spaces.
Without doubt, the ill-advised Brexit break-up with Europe seven years ago has taken its toll on the economy. Growth has slowed to a crawl. According to the UK government's Office for National Statistics, the UK remains the only nation in the Group of Seven large industrial economies that has yet to fully recover its lost output during the COVID pandemic. Trade with the EU— still its largest trading partner— has fallen in recent years. Red-tape faced by businesses is considerably worse since the UK left the European single market and customs union.
But Brexit has not been the disaster that some EU “remainers” had forecast. The view south from Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath revealed clusters of cranes at large building projects in several parts of the great city.
Perhaps in the old days London had more character and chaos. I went to two soccer games in April (the rest of the world calls the game football), and witnessed a few striking differences.
Today’s fans at both Loftus Road, home of Queens Park Rangers, and the mammoth new stadium built for Tottenham Hotspurs, were mostly good-humored and polite. Both games were family-friendly events. Beer is no longer drunk in large amounts in the stands and smoking is now banned. The most passionate supporters still sing and chant. But the old hordes of English football hooligans belong more to the storied past than the (mostly) stable present.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.