Farage under attack

0:02The Telegraph

0:09The knives are out for Nigel Farage Accusations of racism Elections stolen And now an allegation of election fraud Is he the victim of a vicious witch hunt Or do his critics actually have a point And a rare win for Prince Harry In his battle against the Home Office To secure taxpayer-funded bodyguards I reveal why I have developed a soft spot For Meghan Markle Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tominey.

0:48Tim, Tony Diver joins us in The Daily Tea studio. Do you know what we started calling him? What have we started calling him? The ice cream salesman. Because I tell you what, he comes up with scoop after scoop. Boom, boom. I say that as the grandchild of an ice cream salesman. Tominey's City Ices. It's made its way by the way it's made. Often licked, never beaten. That's very good. Tony Diver. Sorry, I digress. You've got a good scoop here about Farage being reported to the police. That's right. This guy who we've spoken to was a member of the reform campaign team in Clacton last year. And he has made a complaint to the police because he says that the party didn't claim for a lot of the stuff that they were spending money on.

1:30and he also claims that they chalked some things up as national party spending where the budgets were a lot bigger, but it should have been local spending. He says that overall he thinks the party spent about£9 ,000 more than it should have done in Clacton last year when, of course, Farage won his first seat ever. Can you just explain to us what are the rules on election spending and what is the cap? Well, the rules on it is quite complicated, but if you're talking about a specific candidate in a constituency, what they call the candidate spend, the cap is actually very low. It's£11 ,300. That's all.

1:59plus 12p for every elector who's in the constituency. So in this case, it's£20 ,660 that reform was allowed to spend. And in their return last year, they claimed to have come in just slightly under£400 less than that amount. But this guy who worked on the campaign has claimed that actually they went well over it and they got around it by misreporting the spending. And he's gone to the police with those claims. And we've heard this afternoon that Essex police, which covers the Klaxon area, is now assessing those claims and considering whether or not to launch a full investigation. I mean, I'm assuming that this guy's fallen out with Nigel Farage.

2:36That's correct. He was a reform councillor up until earlier this year. He had a big falling out with the party. And there were lots of claims backwards and forwards about what exactly happened. But he is now sitting as an independent on Tendering District Council. The party says that they expelled him. He says that he resigned. OK. Before we get into motivation, if this were proven to be correct, what would the punishment be? And is Nigel Farage liable? The answer to the second question is yes. The two people who are personally liable in this case would be the candidate, which in this case is Farage, and the election agent, who in this case is a man called Peter Harris, who has just been selected by reform to be their candidate in the mayoral election in Essex, which was meant to go ahead in May, now been delayed by the government for two years.

3:22So those are the two people who are personally liable. We have actually seen a precedent of this in 2015. Craig McKinley, now Lord McKinley, was accused of overspending in his campaign against Varage in Thanet. Yes. And that went to court about four years later after a lot of backwards and forwards investigation. McKinley himself was cleared. His agent was cleared. But there was a conviction, a suspended sentence given to someone working in Conservative Central Office at the time. So there is some precedent, fairly recent precedent for this, on overspending and exactly where you say the money has been spent.

3:53At the time, of course, Farage came out and said that electoral fraud had happened. He said that we needed tighter rules to stop this kind of thing from going on. Uh-oh. He's on the record of that in 2015. And now, of course, he's been accused of the same thing. I don't get lost in the detail, but it intrigues me because I've covered American elections. and there the limit of£20 ,000 and£660, where you could add sort of six zeros to the end of that, right? Well, the Americans would spend that having lunch. I know, it's a preposterously small figure. Is there an argument for saying Clacton was like ground zero in that election for reform?

4:28So yes, it did local campaigning, but it also did general election campaigning because, for instance, that's where he had that massive rally where his helper had the speaker system on his head. Yeah, Gwaine, Gwaine Tower. So if Clacton is just where you're trying to get national attention, are you allowed to spend a bit more because really that's a national thing? Well, the rules on this are quite complicated. But basically the way that it works is if you are spending money on promoting a particular candidate in the constituency where they're running for election, then that has to be counted as candidate spending, i.e.

4:59local spending subject to this quite strict cap. Now, in this case, Farage was the party leader, but he was also campaigning in the constituency with the voters who he hoped would elect him. So actually, generally speaking, during a general election campaign, we don't see party leaders campaigning in their own constituency. Because if Keir Starmer was to hold a big rally in Hobart and St Pancras, he would wipe out his local spending cap. Well, we should say that I've looked through the spending return. I've seen line by line all the things that reform claimed for. We obviously can't see things that they didn't claim for because they're not on the form.

5:30but reform categorically denies that there was any kind of rule breaking here. They say the party will clear its name if it comes to that and there's been no rule breaking whatsoever and they accuse this guy, Richard Everett, of being a disgruntled former councillor who'd fallen out with the party. They're saying that he's got other motives for trying to take Farage and his agent down. What's the deal with the reform bar that we've got photographed on the Telegraph website? Well, this is maybe one of the most fun line of expense that's claimed inside the reform Clacton office, which sounds like a pretty ramshackle place prior to the general election.

6:02They had some work done and they put in some more doors and a partition wall and that kind of thing. And they also had a bar put in. Full bar. Into the corner of the office. With optics and everything. Pictures on the Telegraph website. I mean, it's all in teal. Yes. Reform colours, some gold bars coming down the side. On the pictures we've got, there's sort of booze all over the bar. Can't think whose idea that was. In reforms world, that's not an election expense. That's a necessity. That's a necessity, yeah. It's an essential. Bordering upon a medical. Exactly. Utilities, fully stocked bar, carpets, curtains, windows.

6:37Ashtrays. Wowzers, Tony. And you've got more to come, we hear. There is a little bit more to come. I mentioned earlier there was some dispute about why Mr Everett left the Reform Party. We're revealing that he was expelled from the party, according to documents that we've seen, for storing sex toys in a locked drawer in the office. Sorry? That is a claim that he denies. He claims that that has been invented to try and smear him and the claims that he's making about election expenditure documents that we've seen show that that's the reason, at least internally, that reform gave for his expulsion from the party.

7:12Giggling at the idea of dildos in desks gate. Yes. I mean, honestly. Tony Diver, thank you very, very much indeed for yet more great reporting and for joining us on The Daily Tea. Thank you. Camilla, it must feel like the knives are out for Nigel Farage right now If he were a paranoid man, which I'm sure he's not, he would feel that was a conspiracy against him. And we can discuss these things separately, but you've had the Guardian's investigation into things he allegedly said when he was a child. He's accused of saying anti-Semitic and racist things. I think more substantially, elections were cancelled last week for the new unitary authorities and mayors, where it looks like reform might have won all of them.

7:51Yes, funny that. Including, curiously, Brighton and Sussex on the South Coast. What's all that about? Because if you look at the numbers, Green and Labour split their votes so much that reform would possibly just win by one or two percent. So if you've got media coming after you, you've got elections that you might win being cancelled, you can understand why it all feels a bit JFK right now. It does. And also I feel like it's only the tip of the iceberg. I mean, according to Nigel Farage, we're only two years away from a general election because he thinks he's going to be called early. According to everyone else, we may be four years away.

8:25And I'm thinking, how much longer is this going to go on for? I mean, this is just the beginning. There is an entire sort of cabal of lefties, perhaps justifiably, perhaps not, absolutely out to get him. They are going to stop at nothing to stop him from becoming prime minister. Jacob mentioned it last week on the Daily Tea. What we've seen in Trump land, what we've seen in terms of the Democrats' behaviour towards the Republicans in a bid to keep the US president from returning to the Oval Office, we're going to see over here on steroids. Because it isn't just that they don't think Farage is fit to be prime minister, they don't want him to be prime minister because he's an evil righty bigot, as far as they're concerned.

9:06We must point out that the allegation in the case of spending in Clacton is brought by a former reformer. So to what extent is this a conspiracy, or is this just that his project has gone as far as it could before it imploded? Two problems with that story as well, Tim. The numbers are insignificant in the scheme of things. Petty numbers. Well, why would you start sort of moving the goalposts on pounds and pennies? It just isn't enough money to sort of justify some kind of major scam. And we must reiterate that they deny that there's any problems with their accounting at all. But it's the look of that.

9:39It looks murky. It looks disorganised. Why aren't you across the figures? You then add into it the fact that this is a disgruntled former reformer that has had a go at Nigel Farage. And it once again raises the specter of why can't this guy just get on with people? Yes. How many people does this guy need to fall out with? Then it plays into he's got a God complex. He thinks he's the next messiah. In fact, he's only just a naughty boy. And let's be honest, if it ends in a conviction, even if for an insignificant amount, We saw what happened with Partygate and Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak being fined again for something pretty petty.

10:15It's the beginning of the end and it will be used by his enemies against him. Oh, I think it's too soon to say that. I think it's too soon to say that. One thing that's become clear is I think Farage is developing genuine open contempt for the British political scene. It's obvious from the House of Commons, which he doesn't attend as much as he perhaps ought to. there was one week at PMQs where he actually sat it out. I understand his frustration because of our strange, arguably arcane rules. He and his party, which are currently leading in the polls, because they are so few in number and MPs, don't get called to speak.

10:50So he has to sit there in PMQs and take Labour MP after another, standing up and getting a free crack at him. Yeah, Labour MPs? How about the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, who's obsessed with this guy? Precisely. And they are obsessed because 18 months in, And Labour and the Lib Dems have worked out that actually the Conservatives are not coming back anytime soon. The reform spike is real. It has lasted. They are the people who they're really against. So they're turning all their political guns on him. And you can sense that Nigel feels done with Parliament, that this is not his arena. Kemi Badenow's making it work for her.

11:23Yeah, she's enjoying herself. Of course, she's got a guaranteed spot as leader of the opposition. But she's figured out, and I like this thing which she's doing now, whether it comes to plans for welfare, whether it comes to providing guidance on how to handle grooming gangs. She's starting to say, if you can't govern, we'll do it for you. I think that's quite clever. Farage can't do that. So he's exhausted. He's had enough with Parliament. He's had enough with the media because he feels they push things personally against him. And we have to talk about the Guardian story and the allegations being made there.

11:51And the attack on the BBC at the presser last week where Farage just completely lost it. I thought this morning's performance by one of your lower-grade presenters on the Today programme was utterly disgraceful. I think to frame a question around the leader of reform's relationship with Hitler, which is how she framed it, was despicable, disgusting, beyond belief. The double standards and hypocrisy of the BBC are absolutely astonishing. At the time I was alleged to have made these remarks, one of your most popular weekly shows was the black and white minstrels. Right? The BBC were very happy to use blackface.

12:37Oh, and not just in the black and white minstrels. You did it in It Ain't Half Hot Mum as well. And what about Alf Garnett? I cannot put up with the double standards of the BBC about what I'm alleged to have said 49 years ago and what you were putting out on mainstream content. So I want an apology from the BBC for virtually everything you did throughout the 1970s and 80s. Until you apologise for all of your output, your appalling output, at the same time that I'm accused of saying these things which I deny, I'm not speaking to you. I thought that was quite clever. I liked the fact that he made the point that the BBC were total hypocrites.

13:18And you and I both know, because we grew up in this era, that people said grotesquely inappropriate things. Yes. Not just about people of colour, about homosexuals, about disabled people. I mean, the playground of the 1980s is like some kind of study of sort of, you know, inappropriate... It's like Lord of the Flies. It is, isn't it, really? Bernard Manning scripts Lord of the Flies. Quite. But I think here was the ultimate test of Farage's different way of doing politics. Any other politician would have said, and I think this might have been appropriate, I don't recognise those comments, but they are horrifying.

13:54And if that person wants to personally come to me and say this happened, then I will personally express an apology to them. What I will not do is publicly litigate something you can't prove that happened 30 years ago. No. Which that is an inappropriate thing. And if we go down that path, my goodness, no one in this country is safe. I know I'm not safe. If you were to scroll through, go through everything I said when I was 12 or 13 in a playground. Oh, God forbid. It's an absurd proposition. So he should have shut it down by saying, if the individual wants an apology, I'll give it to them privately.

14:24I'm not going to discuss it publicly. And that's what most politicians would have done. Instead, he chose the Trumpian line of just saying, it's not true. Yes. It's just not true. But he hadn't started out saying that. No. He started out saying, I don't quite recall it, but anything I might have said as a schoolboy at Dulwich College, I never said with malice. Yes. So it was almost an acceptance that he had. But he can't have it both ways. He can't say, everybody talk like this in those days, and then say, except me, because I didn't say this specifically. He may want to discuss the nuance of precisely what people recall he said.

14:59I understand that. But if you're making the Bernard Manning point, you're basically saying that we were all complicit in really bad language towards minority groups. And Justin Trudeau wore blackface, for goodness sake, to a fancy dress party. Twice. Twice, I love it. Well, it got such a good reception the first time, he thought he would have another go. So why couldn't he have said, particularly to Peter Ategi, who's the main accuser, he's the one who said that as a Jewish student he was intimidated and bullied by Farage, that Farage went up to him and whispered things in his ears like, gas the Jews.

15:32He could have turned around to those accusing him of using this really, really offensive and upsetting language and just said, if that's your recollection and you're still affected by it half a century on, then I'm sorry. That's not an admission. It's just showing some compassion to people that are saying they're affected. Obviously, he suspects that it's all politically motivated, that it's a witch hunt against him. And that's why he got so tetchy in the press conference. Having said that, having been on the receiving end of his tetchiness and quite a few people noticed that, by the way, quite a few people came up to me and said, what the hell is Nigel Farage's problem with you?

16:05When I asked that completely legitimate question about who would be his next chancellor at an event where he was unveiling his alternative budget. just him bristling it's not a great look because it suggests that somebody can't maintain calmness and composure under pressure also there's a contradiction at the heart of his man of the people shtick if he appears to be quite thin-skinned yeah the whole thing about saying well i'm going to do things my way and i'm going to shake up the system and we need reform of legislation and we've got to govern like we've never governed before you've got to be tough as nails.

16:40You can't be showing any vulnerability at a press conference full of media. So I do agree that the point he made, the counterpoint he made to the BBC was a good one. But this tetchiness never looks good. It's also quite reminiscent of Starmer. And you've described his body language on this podcast and in sketches, how he can't cope with too much journalistic scrutiny. What's the point of trying to be Trump and saying, OK, I'm going to answer every question in the room. if you're then just, well, no, I don't like your question, so you can shut up. That's not quite right. I argued in his favour in a column on Saturday saying, right, let's get all this out in the open.

17:17Let's have people say what they recall and have his right of reply. But hang on a minute. This isn't fair if it is just a politically motivated witch hunt with people piling in like Chris Bryant is then on X saying to me, this is grotesque hypocrisy. I said, ultimately, we can report all this stuff till the cows come home. It's going to be for the electorate to decide. And by the way, Chris Bryant and others, the more, Ed Davey, the more you stoke this up, the more you might shore up his support. That's what happened with Trump. They tried everything in the book to keep him out of the Oval Office and look what happened.

17:54I know. And Trump has been able to get away with it in part because American media just thrives on antagonism. So the bit where he called a journalist a piggy, for instance, which was particularly unpleasant. Wasn't a great moment. But it feels par for the course now in Trump's in America. By contrast, I think British politics is a little more polite. And as I say, I think Nigel is being motivated by having picked up a real disgust for the way the game is played. But I think he's going to have to get used to it. He can't ape nasty Trump, by the way, because that's the other thing about Farage.

18:26The thing about Farage is the cabbie effect. It was the same with Boris Johnson. But actually, if you left his company, you would do so with a smile on your face. OK, everyone knows Trump's a bit of an arsehole. Yeah. The whole Farage thing was meant to be, look, I'm hardline when it comes to my policies, but come and have a pint with me because I'm great fun. Yes, yes. But he does, I come back to what we discussed at the beginning, he does have a point on local elections. Yes, he does. It's an affront to democracy. And the paradox here is he's against the creation of the new mayors. but he would have won the elections and now he's protesting at the delay of the elections.

19:04And he's critical of them for very good reason. I do actually think what's going on here is mad. They're not replacing the old councils. It's a new layer of council with new amounts of money which is going to concentrate power and people won't know which authority they're sitting in. Norfolk and Suffolk combined. Well, that's a massive area. It's enormous. Okay, there are some services which, of course, can be provided across both. And I suppose it makes some sense to reorganize that. But the fact that they're not ready to launch this experiment in democracy tells you that it's going to have many, many problems.

19:41And it's also true that the Conservatives have supported some of these efforts at devolution. And it's true that the Conservatives have won some of them. Peterborough, for instance. And, of course, they've done very well in the Northeast. Ultimately, they are a mistake. The purpose of devolution is to create mini Andy Burnhams everywhere. It is to embed socialism in the system. So there's always a mayor who is going to go to war with the central government to get more money from national taxpayers to give to you. And he'll get re-elected because he hands out certain goodies and the public sector loves him.

20:13It is, we are really going to be paying the price for this in 10 or 20 years' time. And I come back to the irony that we might have been saved from the worst of this had reform been allowed to win it. But, kel surprise, the planets have aligned and we'll not be getting the elections that actually we don't really want. Before we get on to discussing Harry and Meghan, another thought as well, which came up over the weekend. There is a group of people within Downing Street stroke the Parliamentary Labour Party that are desperately waiting for Andy Burnham to have an opportunity to stand as an MP, to then push him forward.

20:51And I did think some of the... King of the North. King of the North. The eyelashes. But I did think it was interesting to see also our own reporting of Wes Streeting and Angie Rayner's joint ticket. And didn't it remind you, as it did me, of us grabbing him after his speech at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool? And he had said something very warm and charitable towards Angela Rayner, who at the time was absolutely at the peak of really being publicly humiliated over the tax staff. And it was like, why has he put this in the speech? He kicked off an arms race of people saying we want Angela back at that conference.

21:24And remember, we then spoke to him outside and he resolutely doubled down. Yes. Now we know why. Yeah. So he thinks he could be the righty to her lefty in some kind of Blair and Brown mashup. The reason why he's doing this is, I wrote up in my column on this, Wes Streeting is the favourite, the darling of the commentariat because he reminds them of Blair. The problem with that is that he also reminds the Labour Party of Blair and they hate Blair. Yeah. So it's true that some polling shows that when Labour members are thinking about who could beat reform, we're back to that subject, then Wes starts to go up in the polls.

21:55But if it comes down to who they like, they don't really like Wes. So Wes knows the only way he could win, if Starmer goes, is to avoid an election. And that means a coronation. And the best way to achieve that is a deal with the person who would be his biggest opponent. And that's Angela Rayner. and my question is why would Angela Rayner sign up to that? Why not just go for the leadership? Yes. She is soft left, she is popular, most of the party doesn't think she should have lost her job. Everyone keeps saying she should be back in the cabinet. So why not run herself? And it comes back to that old thing of Labour, the feminist party, expecting perhaps the most charismatic female leader they've had for a generation to put aside her ambitions so that Tony Blair Mark II can enter number 10.

22:48Doesn't that just say everything you need to know about this party? It does. I think Rosie Duffield's said it well. The party still has a woman problem and it's been evidenced by that reporting. We're going to discuss in just a moment Harry versus the establishment, a rare win for the Duke of Sussex.

23:17Following on from the success of your Jamie Kern-Lima impression, Tim, that I think has gone viral. Yeah. Quite rightly, by the way. Comedy moment of the year. Should we talk about Harry and Meghan? Yes, let's do that. You've gone soft, apparently. Something's happened between last week and this week, and suddenly you've gone soft. Well, I'll explain what it is in a moment, but let's first acknowledge a win for Team Sussex, which is that Harry has just won a Home Office review of the decision to strip him of his automatic right to protection. Yes. So the Home Office is going to think about it again.

23:52It's going to carry out a risk assessment which is the kind of thing that Home Offices do, isn't it? Yes, it just suggests a pencil and a clipboard, doesn't it? If in doubt. And asking him to carry a ladder around the office. The Duke of Sussex last brought Meghan and their two children to the UK in June 2022 but now says it's not safe for him to bring them and he lost a three-year legal battle for taxpayer-funded security in May, something which he called an establishment stitch-up. Well, it wasn't really, was it? They came for the Platinum Jubilee. The argument against Harry's position that he must have taxpayer-funded bodyguards whenever he arrives in the UK, the argument against that is, well, no, hang on a minute.

24:32If you come for a major royal occasion, you're going to be enveloped into the security for the whole thing, which is what happened for the Platinum Jubilee. If you're going to come as an individual, as he did in the past, coming to attend court cases and such like, there was one moment where he appeared to compromise his own security by knocking on a random door. I think it was in Fulham and seeing if a mate still lived there. And people are going, well, hang on a minute. You know, you've made this massive play that you need more security and you seem to be quite cavalier with your own security.

25:01Then he comes out with Spare where he reveals, goodness knows why, that he's killed 25 Taliban. That's how specific he was, Tim. I mean, that's going to put a target on your back, if anything is. Which would have made him a potential target for terrorists. It would have. And to be fair, if you have made yourself more of a target than you once were, then any argument about the stupidity of that should be negated by, look, is he more at risk? We must protect him. At present, if he does want to come, he can come. Not to stop him from coming, right? No. But he has to ring a head. Yeah, give them a ring.

25:3430 days in advance until the Met Police is going to come. and this results in a bespoke security arrangement, which in the past has been quite light. It's not been, as he regards it, big enough to protect him, his wife and their children. I once heard that they were spending an astronomical sum, I think it was$200 ,000 a month, by the way, that was just anecdotal. Somebody was trying to tot up, for the purpose of a story, how much security they had out in Montecito and that it was just using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. If you think about them in the kind of sphere of L.A. A-listers, they're quite far down the pecking order now.

26:10Now, I appreciate because he's a blood-borne prince and because of his service in Afghanistan that it does make him a bit of a special case. But the idea that you need any greater protection in Montecito than, say, Ellen DeGeneres or Oprah Winfrey, who lives down the road, some people argue is for the birds. The other suspicion in royal circles, Tim, that I sometimes frequent, was that he was using the Home Office row as an excuse for Meghan not to come to the UK. Right. Now, why might Meghan not want to come to the UK? First of all, she doesn't really like the royal family, accused them of racism stroke unconscious bias and said that they were treated badly.

26:47She had her passport confiscated and was driven to the brink of a mental health crisis. A less generous interpretation of her unwillingness to return to Blighty might be because she fears being booed. I don't know whether that would necessarily happen, not least if they were with their children. In fact, can I just say now, I really hope not, because that would be a very uncharitable way to receive them back into the UK. But that's also in the background of all this. She may have also heard about all the iPhone theft. Yes, and if she's got a Rolex, in fact, I believe she has a Cartier watch, it may be wrenched from her wrist somewhere near Mayfair.

27:20See that diamond on her hand in the Christmas video? When he last had an assessment like this, it was in 2019, I believe. It was last review. Yes. And he had protection that was equivalent to the prime minister or the queen. Yes. Now, the argument against him getting protection really boils down to you're no longer of the same stature of the prime minister and the queen. No. You're no longer a royal. And there are some who want to deny him protection, not just because they're being penny pinching, but because they feel this is like a backdoor way of Harry coming here and being treated like royalty and us all acting as though he's royalty without him really being so.

27:58He thinks, I think, that it's part of a kind of establishment, stitch-up stroke punishment, that it's vengeful in some regard. Yes. The other problem, of course... By making it physically impossible to visit him in this country because there'll be no one running alongside the limousine in a black suit, a pair of sunglasses. Indeed. Although he did come back to see his dad and they had tea together when he was most recently here. for an award ceremony. So he has managed to wangle it. But again, that was him flying solo. He's worried about the family unit. And as a father of young children with a high profile wife, I do have some sympathy with that argument.

28:29Yes. The other thing we need to take into account here is he had offered to pay for his own non-taxpayer funded police bodyguards. He had said, OK, if you don't want to subsidise this as the state, and I can understand that because I'm no longer a fully fledged working royal, I get that, but just let me pay for Met-trained officers who carry guns to look after me while I'm here. And no, the Home Office said, well, no, hang on a minute, we're not guns for hire. If you start requesting that kind of treatment, any time a member of Saudi or other royalty comes into the country or indeed Taylor Swift or Tom Cruise...

29:07They can hire the Met. They'll be asking, you know, the Met are not for hire. Yes. There's always been this blurring of the lines for the Sussexes between their official role and their private lives. I mean, what are they coming over for that they might request? If they're just coming over to meet up with a few old friends from Windsor and have a knees up at the local pub. Whereas, to go back to what you said earlier, if they're here for a royal event which is appropriate to them, then they're going to have maximum security anyway. Exactly. But if you wanted to find some off-duty police officers to hire in large numbers, just go to a gay pride rally.

29:36Yeah, or a pro-Palestinian march. There you go. Because they're not actually busy policing the march. They've got nothing else to do. They might be free to help him out. But why am I more sympathetic than I was towards Harry and Meghan? It's since doing this podcast with you, Camilla. Oh, what? I've forced you into a... No, not in violent reaction, but rather because of the different stories and people we've interviewed and the insight they've offered into life as a royal. And I think it sounds pretty rotten. So I want to pick up on two things. One is the people we've interviewed about the Martin Bashir interview of Diana.

30:11Yes. And this is at the back of Harry's mind all the time. People conspired to drive my mother mad, to leave her dangerously exposed to the point where she was killed in the course of a paparazzi chasing her. That's not why she died, but in the course of being pursued by the press. We interviewed Andy Webb, who's written a book called Dianarama, exposing the scandal. And then we spoke to her former private secretary, Patrick Jefferson. And to be fair, of course, they can't say the BBC killed Diana. But what they're saying is that that Panorama interview in 1995 set in course a chain of events that led to her being unprotected in Paris.

30:51Yeah. And having spoken to those people, I now have a better appreciation of the paranoia that must run through Harry's mind every single day. and the anger that he must have towards this British establishment that, as far as he's concerned, failed to protect her. Drove his mother mad and then failed to protect her. And the second thing is the interview we did with Norman Baker about the costs of the royal family. Given the sheer amount of money currently flooding in from the Crown lands, can a bit of it not be spared for Harry and Meghan? Well, yes, I think the answer to that question is. They're doing very, very well.

31:22I don't understand why, say, the king couldn't just say, we will provide this maximum security service for you. But then I did the podcast with Robert Jobson who'd written a book about the Windsor legacy and he made the point that one of the reasons why there was a wedge between him and his father and his grandmother, the late Queen, was because Harry and Meghan kept on asking for more and more money. It was like the bank of royal mum and dad and granny. And I think they resented the constant requests and were sort of asking themselves, well, all you're giving us in return is a load of grief, actually.

31:54you're spilling your heart out to Oprah Winfrey you're moaning on Netflix about you know having to curtsy you've just written a book where you've dumped all over us and by the way guys, Newsflash, you're earning a great amount of money to do all of these different tie-ups with publishers and streamers and all the rest of it they're not short of a few Bob they're not but let me throw in a third element which has come in since doing this podcast which is the interviews we've done regarding Andrew and Fergie the way in which they have lived in that magnificent big house for so long, again, it raises the questions, why are they given carte blanche?

32:32And for a long time, he was disgraced because of his Epstein links for a long time. This did not happen overnight. For a long time, he was kept going by the royals until very recently. So I have to ask the question, why is that kind of tolerance not shown towards Harry and Meghan? There's been a double standard because the way that Andrew and Sarah Ferguson have operated has been much more shadowy and opaque than the way Harry and Meghan have basically said, well, you can see how we're now financially independent from the monarchy because we're literally on your screens. We're doing it. We're doing partnerships with companies.

33:06We're doing podcasts. She's becoming the next Martha Stewart in her own mind. And good luck with that. Well, she's selling jam and things, you know. I think she's probably making good money. Can I just say I'm going to just have a little moment of agreement with you. that I have become more sympathetic with Meghan over the weekend. Yes. Having read on the front page of the Mail on Sunday her father's Thomas Markle's plea to see his daughter after he had a leg amputated. Now, I remember if you go all the way back, bear in mind I was covering the Royals at the time, both for a newspaper and indeed the US network NBC.

33:45So I went to every different press conference that we had and back in 2018 after he had popped the question it was made very clear that Thomas Markle was going to walk his daughter down the aisle. She had spent a great deal of her teenage life living with him, not with her mother Doria. Obviously we then have that whole hullabaloo where he's being measured up for suits and it's in the mail on Sunday, he's been papped and they feel that he's sold out and then he has a heart problem and he's suddenly in hospital and then he can't come to the wedding and she has to ask the king to walk her down the aisle.

34:19And I did get told at the time, this couple, on the brink of the second biggest royal wedding of this century, were nearly having a nervous breakdown and in tears most of the time. So they had a horrible, horrible experience. And she had to be taken down the aisle by the future king. Yes, exactly. Which was a nice thing to do. Lovely thing to do. And at the time I thought, who is this Thomas Markle? Is he just a bit misguided? He kept on being papped with like a six pack and a burger. And I just thought, look, maybe he's on his downers. But then he kept on speaking more and more and more to the press to the point that we're now in a situation where he's literally just had his leg amputated.

34:59And the first person he wants to call is Caroline Graham, a reporter on the Mail on Sunday. They featured on Sunday the exchange of text messages between them. They're in the hospital room. He's then trying to communicate with Meghan via that newspaper that the couple hate. They don't like the male group because of everything that they've written about them. We know, being in the trade, that celebrities and other high-net-worth individuals like nothing less than disloyalty and indiscretion among their closest circle. Yes. I can't name names for legal reasons, but quite a few times you discover...

35:35Well, and it doesn't get closer than a father. Well, quite a few times you would discover on stories, particularly showbiz, that they've been sold to you by relatives. Right, yeah. Charlotte Church famously had some experience with this and spoke about it. Yes. And this is a man, you should also add, who's been living in the Philippines for a year. Yeah. And poor Megan didn't even know which hospital he was in, so took to ringing around all the hospitals in that area in a bid to get in touch with him. Having said that, you could then say, I mean, actually, it's hard, isn't it? We've had this whole dialogue about the royal family and Harry's relationship with his father and his brother.

36:12Then obviously we're also making judgments about her and her lack of contact with her father. Then we've had her half siblings, Thomas Markle and Samantha. They've sold stories. They've gone on the telly absolutely roasting Meghan, criticising her. So if you were the Duchess of Sussex, you might be wary of trying to get back in contact. What I've learned from doing these podcasts about royalty is that if you are on the path to the throne, then everything's laid out for you and everything's super disciplined and controlled and you more or less know what you have to do. If at any point you fall off that train because a new heir has been produced in the case of Harry or has happened to Andrew as well, it's not clear what you do.

36:59No. If you have a strong personality like Princess Anne, who I note continues to be rated as one of people's favourite royals, people really respect her. And she's had difficulties in her private life, too. She's had a divorce and a remarriage. But nonetheless, people respect her. If you've got that kind of steely determination, you can kind of get back on the train and find a role for yourself. But it's not like Harry and Meghan are the first people in history to fall off that train and go a bit woo-woo. Because Andrew and Fergie, I feel I'm just discovering, have been doing this for about 20 years.

37:29Yes, that's right. It's just not been noticed. No, you're quite right. There's a path to the throne that is set out literally from birth. And then for the spares, they've basically been left to it. And if you're a diligent spare, a royal trooper like Anne, that goes very well for you. You find things to do. If you're not, if you're like the grand old Duke of York, Andrew, formerly known as Prince, and you can't stay on that path, it's tricky. And equally, if you're Harry and you marry an American that knows her own mind and wants you to actually go off and make shed loads of cash over in the States, then that's also problematic.

38:03And by the way, the other dilemma they constantly have is their commitment to their immediate family versus their commitment to the family firm, capital F. And that's been problematic for basically any royal in history. I'm just, having said all of that and expressed all that sympathy, I feel they could have walked away from this with a little more dignity. Yes. I don't think it had to explode. And I don't think it had to have all that Californian nonsense about, I felt endangered. No. I don't understand why they couldn't have just said, you know what, we have decided we're done with being royal.

38:35We're fine. We're moving on from that. You go ahead and do it. You're doing a great job. We'll just go and make some Netflix documentaries. And we'll see you once a year for Christmas. They did a kind of throwing grenade exit. Yeah. Like, you know, just leave bodies in the street and go off. And what they could have done is just had a bit more respect, actually, ironically, for the privacy of their loved ones. Yes. Because what they did, immortalised by South Park, the global privacy tour, is they started having a go at the media for invading their own privacy and yet they produced in Netflix and Oprah and Spare the biggest invasion of royal privacy we've ever witnessed.

39:12Exactly, yeah. We'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.