Dammit, Mark, look forward!

Yesterday Mark Carney made his first international trips as Prime Minister of Canada, visiting first France and then Britain. He held bilateral talks with Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starmer, as well as an audience with Charles III.

The meeting with Starmer was snapped by Downing Street photographers and uploaded on Flickr. I have already copied them to Wikimedia Commons. These appear to be the first free-licence photographs of Carney’s premiership, as Canada’s own government’s policy on official copyright is some way behind Britain’s.

The conversation at Buckingham Palace had among the strangest opening exchanges I’ve heard from any of these:

• Bit of a disaster today sir. My Order of Canada pin broke.
• Oh.
• Yes. It fell on the tarmac… which is proof that (among) our founding people (are) the British.
• Do you want mine?
• I’m not of that rank.

Obviously, the more substantive discussion in all cases was kept off-camera.

Lest it be forgotten that the royals have other duties, today the Palace revealed more detail about Their Majesties’ state visits to Italy and the Vatican, ending speculation that the latter would be postponed due to the Pope’s recent hospitalisation. The press release explicitly states that there will be an audience with Francis, but it tactfully does not specify where said audience will take place. It would be an interesting (if also tragic) subversion of the concept of a state visit if the host head of state was not actually in his home state at the time of the meeting.