Princess Diana’s brother made a new bombshell claim about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Earl Spencer has claimed that the relationship between the press and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle “echoes” the way the media treated his sister, the late Princess Diana. In an interview with the BBC, set to be aired on Sunday evening, the earl described the press’s coverage of Harry and Meghan as having a “cancerous influence”, adding it would be “beholden on people to learn from Diana’s example”.
He said: “If you look at an article in a tabloid about Diana or the couple that you were mentioning, Harry and Meghan, you know, they can be really, really unpleasant. And I think it would be really beholden on people to learn from Diana’s example.
“I’m not here to speak for Harry and Meghan, but for anyone who’s being destroyed in this way daily, it must be such a cancerous influence in their life.”
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The Sussexes were defended by Earl Spencer (Image: Getty)
The earl said Diana was “really brought low” by the “criticism” she received from the media, adding it was a “pity” to see “echoes of that” in the press coverage of Harry and Meghan.
The Sussexes, who returned to the UK from the US on August 26, have long been critical of their treatment by the media, with Harry in 2021 telling Oprah Winfrey the tabloid press had created a “toxic environment”.
In July, he and six others, including Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, lost a privacy case against the publisher of the Daily Mail, but Harry has previously won legal battles against the Mirror Group and News Group.
The earl’s latest comments come after he accused the King of gaslighting him following Buckingham Palace’s response to explosive claims that Charles said “we’ll forget her soon enough” after Diana’s death.
The earl has made a series of damning claims about the King in a new memoir chronicling Diana’s life that prompted the palace to push back, saying “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason”.
He accused the King of gaslighting him and called the response a “rather poor imitation of the ‘recollections may vary’ quote” – the late Queen’s response to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s allegations in their Oprah Winfrey interview, The Mail on Sunday reports.
Earl Spencer spoke to the BBC (Image: BBC)
He said: “It is not every day you wake up to find you’ve been gaslit by the King.
“It was astonishingly provocative and below the belt because it was essentially trying to say I’d lied without the King being able to deny what I’d said.
“I also thought it was a rather poor imitation of the ‘recollections may vary’ quote, which was a much more elegant way of putting things, but in these circumstances entirely out of place.”
He also said “Diana would be cheering from the rafters at this book”.
In response to the claims made in the memoir, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said on Wednesday: “While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.”
In an extract of the BBC interview released on Friday, the earl insisted he is “telling the truth” and described the King’s comments about his sister as “monstrous”.
Speaking about an alleged row over Diana’s funeral arrangements involving her sons, the earl said: “(The King) went ballistic, would be the right term, and started really going for my family as a whole, about their sense of duty, not being adequate enough, and ranted for a while, I have no idea how long, but it was a significant period, and I just listened.
“And then he stopped, and I thought, ‘Oh now he’s going to pull himself together and say something more appropriate’.
“And then he said, ‘We’ll forget her soon enough’.”
Asked whether he has “evidence” of the King’s comments, the earl told the BBC: “I told friends and family straight away, close friends and family, about what had been said, because it was so monstrous.”
He added: “I’m telling the truth.”
Charles is said to have made the comments about his ex-wife in a row with the earl over whether the then Prince William and Prince Harry should follow Diana’s funeral cortege.
Andy Burnham accused of ‘fiddling’ while Putin threatens to ‘burn Europe’
Kemi Badenoch has urged Burnham to ‘get serious’ as ‘Europe is at risk of burning’
Putin ‘threatens to burn Europe’ (Image: Getty)
Kemi Badenoch has demanded Andy Burnham to “get serious” as “Europe is at risk of burning” with the latest threats from Putin. The Tory leader accused the Prime Minister of “fiddling” while the continent faces escalating aggression, as former military chiefs sound the alarm over the increasing threats facing Britain.
Mrs Badenoch told The Telegraph: “Our Government is fiddling while Europe is at risk of burning. In France and Poland, leaders are taking action now against the growing Russian threat.
“What is our Government doing? Has anyone heard from Wes Streeting, the former head of the National Union of Students, who has rocked up as Defence Secretary?”
She added: “We have to stop pretending that we are living in a carefree end of history when Russia is testing our resolve week after week. It’s time to get serious.”
Mrs Badenoch told the Telegraph: “Our Government is fiddling while Europe is at risk of burning” (Image: Getty)
The Leader of the Opposition hit out at Mr Burnham for sending a “dangerous” message that he would not cut welfare to fund the military – a signal she warned was “heard loud and clear in Moscow as well as Manchester.” The Conservatives have intensified their attacks on welfare spending after the Prime Minister recently stated that national security cannot “come at the expense of social security”.
Downing Street insisted Mr Burnham remains committed to both funding the armed forces and bringing down the benefits bill, though not through “crude cuts”.
Former military leaders backed calls for urgent rearmament. Admiral Lord West, the former First Sea Lord and Gordon Brown’s security minister, warned that Britain’s military is in “quite a parlous state.”
“In many ways, one could argue we are already at war. We are certainly in the grey zone – whether it’s cyber attacks, drones getting near the edge of somewhere or threats to underwater cables,” Lord West said.
The Prime Minister has been told to ‘get serious’ as threats from Russia escalate (Image: Getty)
Former chief of the general staff Lord Dannatt urged Chancellor John Healey to set out a clear path to 3.5% of GDP on defence at the upcoming Budget, adding: “My bottom line is that Andy Burnham, and regretfully I would now add John Healey, are playing fast and loose with the nation’s security”.
While the UK has promised to reach 3.5% of national income for defence by 2035, in line with NATO pledges, the Government’s current budget only raises spending to 2.7% by 2027-28, facing mounting pressure to explain how further targets will be met. Mrs Badenoch has pledged to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 by capping housing benefit to raise £4 billion – a proposal the Prime Minister claims would cause unprecedented levels of homelessness. The Tories rejected those claims, suggesting claimants would instead need to “move somewhere cheaper.”
A Foreign Office spokesperson defended the Government’s record, stating: “These threats from Russia are yet another attempt to distract from their barbaric invasion of Ukraine.
“We have been clear that Russia’s hybrid attacks are egregious and unacceptable. That’s why we have taken tough action to respond to Russia’s intensifying hostile activity against our continent – increasing defence spending, expelling intelligence officers, sanctioning the GRU, cracking down on illicit finance networks, and ensuring Russia’s criminal proxies are disrupted and brought to justice.
“The UK is united with our allies on the importance of defending ourselves, and Russia’s aggression will not deter us from supporting Ukraine.”