Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has declared her support for the King amid an escalating dispute between Charles III and Princess Diana’s brother, Earl Charles Spencer.
The Earl’s candid memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister—being serialised exclusively by Our News Outlet—has caused unease in royal circles. In it, he claims that King Charles III told him shortly after Diana’s death: “We will forget her soon enough.”
The allegation prompted Buckingham Palace to release an unusually direct statement. Royal aides questioned the reliability of the account, suggesting that grief can “cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory”.
The Tory leader has now offered firm backing for the King. In an interview with BBC Newsnight due to air tonight, Ms Badenoch said: “I have a side and it’s always on the side of His Majesty.”
In the memoir, Earl Spencer, 62, also writes that the late Queen Elizabeth II offered to restore Princess Diana’s HRH title after her death.
However, it is the alleged phone conversation between Earl Spencer and Charles that has triggered the fiercest reaction. Spencer claims the then Prince of Wales lost his temper and “hissed” that Diana would soon be forgotten.
Discussing the Palace statement issued on Wednesday in response to the claims, Ms Badenoch told the BBC: “I would reiterate exactly what it was that the King himself had said or certainly Buckingham Palace said on his behalf.”
The Palace’s highly unusual response to Earl Spencer’s book has left royal observers stunned.
Charles and Diana pictured visiting Venice during their trip to Italy in May 1985
The Earl, Diana and Charles at Earl Spencer’s 21st birthday party at London’s Mirabelle restaurant in 1985
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “I have a side and it’s always on the side of His Majesty”
The Palace said: “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.”
The wording echoed the late Queen’s famous response to accusations of racism made by Harry and Meghan, when she said that “recollections may vary”.
The statement followed claims of a confrontation between Charles and his brother-in-law over the decision—opposed by Diana’s brother—to have Prince William and Prince Harry, then aged 15 and 12, walk behind their mother’s coffin during her funeral procession.
Earl Spencer says he argued that Diana would not have wanted her young sons to face such an intensely public ordeal.
According to the Earl, the then Prince of Wales questioned the Spencer family’s commitment to duty before remarking that his former wife, whose death prompted a worldwide outpouring of grief, would soon be forgotten.
Royal aides are reportedly horrified by the allegation and insist it is entirely at odds with the character of the man who now occupies the throne.
Asked about the revelations by Newsnight presenter Matt Chorley on Friday, Ms Badenoch said: “It’s always very difficult for me to talk about the royal family. The King is my boss; now I’m the leader of His Majesty’s loyal opposition.”
She added: “I have a side and it’s always on the side of His Majesty. I would reiterate exactly what it was that the King himself had said or certainly Buckingham Palace said on his behalf.”
Earl Spencer, Prince William, Prince Harry and then Prince Charles pictured outside Westminster Abbey on the day of Princess Diana’s funeral
The front cover of Charles Spencer’s book ‘Swan Song, Diana: My Sister’
‘I think it’s, you know, it’s coming up to 30 years. It’s very painful to lose a close member of the family but a lot of people also experienced that loss including His Majesty and the Prince of Wales and Prince Harry as well.’
The book includes a string of further extraordinary claims about Diana’s failed marriage to Charles and the tumultuous aftermath of her tragic death in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
The revelations are set to plunge Buckingham Palace into a fresh storm just weeks after the return of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children to the UK from California.
On September 6, 1997, six days after Diana’s death, Earl Spencer delivered a defiant eulogy at her funeral that was later named one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.
His raw oration in Westminster Abbey was delivered after he walked alongside William and Harry, as well as Prince Charles and Prince Philip, behind Diana’s coffin in a funeral procession through central London.
He wrote in the memoir how he had originally told Charles of the decision for his children to walk in the procession: ‘That’s not going to happen’.
The now-King is said to have responded by pointing out he had walked behind the coffin of Lord Mountbatten at his funeral in 1979.
But Earl Spencer said Charles ‘went nuts’ after the earl pointed out that the prince had been 30 at the time, and Lord Mountbatten was not his father.
In one of the book’s most extraordinary passages, Earl Spencer writes: ‘Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped.
‘I assumed the pause signalled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death. “Rest assured,” he hissed, “we’ll forget her soon enough!’.'”
Earl Spencer said that he was ‘so stunned’ by the alleged remarks that he took a few seconds to reply.
‘”I can’t believe you just said that,” I said flatly, before hanging up,’ he writes.
Elsewhere, the book claims the late Queen offered to restore Princess Diana’s HRH title, which had been stripped from her following her divorce from Charles, after her death.
The Earl was told of the offer by Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s Private Secretary and his brother-in-law, as they travelled to Diana’s private burial at Althorp, the Spencer family’s 13,000-acre estate in Northamptonshire.
He said Diana had been left ‘dreadfully heart’ by its removal, and that despite the Queen’s ‘well-meaning’ gesture, he decided to reject the ‘consolation prize’.
‘I felt that I knew in my bones how she would view this posthumous award,’ he writes. ‘That’s very kind of the Queen, of course. But what’s the point, Robert? Now? I mean – Diana’s dead.’
Earl Spencer’s memoir of his sister is due to be published worldwide next Tuesday. Further exclusive serialisation will continued in Our News Outlet, including excerpts published at 5pm on Friday.
