The Prince’s apology was rather a grudging affair. That kind of “sorry I was misunderstood” is something we all use when we want to add straight after “but I’m right anyway”. Still, at least it cleared the air.

This was the kiss-and-make-up speech. There were olive branches everywhere. Talk was of “common ground”, joint projects. Instead of singling out Modernist architects for abuse, he even namechecked those he liked, a little. David Chipperfield, the Stirling prize- winner, will never live that down. But then the average Modernist architect always had more in common with the Prince than either party would once ever have admitted.

Not any longer. This was a right Royal love-in. The “S” word — style — was eschewed in favour of warm fuzziness everyone can agree on, like community, placemaking, sustainability, world peace and how awful bankers are. But beneath the chumminess, the same old Prince basically remains, as deluded as ever. If the two sides are ever going to move on from their 25-year-old divorce, HRH is going to have to improve the intellectual paucity behind his thinking.

He still talks in woolly generalisms about “organic architecture”, values “deep down”, the “natural order of things”. He still believes in a clichéd, cartoon Modernism of “soulless estates”.

He grudgingly admits Modernism had “many benefits”, like, er, lifting millions out of Victorian slums.

The postwar “soulless estate” that I live in, for instance, has floor to ceiling windows and more space than the average cramped Victorian terrace. As Sunand Prasad, Riba’s president, said in his reply: “I don’t see this monolithic philosophy called Modernism.”

Modernism has a thousand strands and, anyway, three decades before the Prince piped up in 1984, its architects had moved on from Modern Architecture Mark I, the style the Prince so despises, to engage with tradition. These days, modern architecture at its best, like Tate Modern and Norman Foster’s Gherkin, is wildly and deservedly popular.

Beneath it all, the Prince still doesn’t get the basic problems behind all bad buildings and bad environments: money, or the lack of it, and a decent, democratic planning system.

What he is really railing against is not Modernism but modern global capitalism, the kind that lets developers rule our cities for profit, not people, and that’s going to take a whole lot more fixing than a couple of classical columns.

Modernism, at its best, still remains the most convincing method of mass-producing decent architecture for as many people as possible, not just for princes.

His alternative — “organic” architecture — with all its locally sourced stone and handcrafted details, might seem attractive to some. But like organic Duchy Original biscuits, it doesn’t half cost a lot.

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