Omid Scobie dismisses need to say sorry to Royal Family after book ‘error’ named King and Kate in ‘skin colour’ row

Published

2 years ago

December 1, 2023

admin

Omid Scobie has refused to apologise to the Royal Family after the King and Princess of Wales were named in his new book as the senior royals alleged to have questioned the skin colour of Prince Harry and Meghan’s son before he was born.

The royal biographer has been at the centre of a media storm after copies of Endgame were temporarily pulled from shelves in the Netherlands over what the publisher, Xander Uitgevers, called an “error”.

When asked on Thursday if he wanted to apologise to the Royal Family, the 42-year-old said: “It is not for me to apologise, as I still want to know what has happened.

“[The buck] does not stop with me, there are irresponsible people in this country that have broken the law and repeated names that should never have been broken.”

Having previously insisted that he never submitted a book that included the names, Mr Scobie swore on Thursday that the incident was not part of a publicity stunt.

“On my and my family’s life,” he said, when quizzed by Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire.

He added: “It is serious, I feel hurt by some of the conspiracy theories that this is a publicity stunt and that I am in cahoots with my ‘pal’ – all of this is frustrating.”

The writer said he has received 20 death threats in the past week due to the scandal.

“Having done this job full-time for six years, I am used to it,” he said. “The skin is thick, but it is sad that has become the norm.”

The unsubstantiated allegation against the Royal Family was first made by the Duchess of Sussex in her March 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey in which she said a senior member raised “concerns” about her son Archie’s skin colour before he was born.

Mr Scobie’s book claims that, in the aftermath of the Oprah interview, Meghan wrote a letter to the King expressing concern about unconscious bias in the Royal Family.

In the UK version of Endgame, Mr Scobie wrote that in her letter to the King, Meghan revealed “two identities” of those “involved in the exchange”.

“Laws in the United Kingdom prevent me from reporting who they were,” he wrote in the book.

There has been no evidence that has been published since to suggest the allegations are true.

Sky News presenter and anti-racism campaigner Sir Trevor Phillips called the story “nonsense”, adding that there is not a family of colour in the “entire world” who has not had a similar conversation.

“I have a grandson who is absolutely gorgeous and of course, we as a family talked about if he was going to look more like his mother, who looks like me, or his father who is of Puerto Rican heritage,” the broadcaster told Sky News Breakfast on Friday.

“In the same way that your family would talk about hair colour or eye colour. We all have the same hair, the thing that is different about us is skin colour. It is a mark of excitement.”

Speculating about how and if the conversation actually took place within the Royal Family, Sir Trevor said: “What I expect someone might have been saying is ‘I really hope this baby looks more like her than him’.”

On Thursday, Mr Scobie reiterated that an investigation has been launched into how the names were included in the translated version of his book and that he “looks forward to finding out more about it”.

Meanwhile, Buckingham Palace said it is considering whether it should take action.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

3 hours ago

July 5, 2025

admin

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

4 hours ago

July 5, 2025

admin

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Miguell Rocha played with Jota for around ten years with Gondomar Sport Clube in Portugal.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

The former captain was seen wiping away tears as he read messages and laid his tribute down.

UK

How Britain’s most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective’s talk

Published

9 hours ago

July 5, 2025

admin

How Britain's most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective's talk

Britain’s most notorious gangster and the detective who pursued him have been involved in a bizarre confrontation…at a charity lunch.

Former Detective Superintendent Ian Brown was at a Kent golf club and about to give a talk on the infamous £26m Brink’s-Mat gold robbery when he was summoned from the stage by officials.

Mr Brown, who appeared on the award-winning Sky News StoryCast podcast The Hunt For The Brink’s-Mat Gold in 2019, said: “I go outside and they say ‘he’s here’ and I say ‘who’s here’ and they say that table over there in the corner, that’s Kenny Noye with a baseball cap pulled down over his head.”

Noye stabbed to death an undercover policeman during the Brink’s-Mat investigation, but was acquitted of murder, though he was jailed for handling the stolen gold.

After his release, he used a knife again in the M25 road-rage murder of motorist Stephen Cameron.

“They said what are we going to do?” said Mr Brown.

“I said are you serving food? Well, just use plastic knives.”

Although Mr Brown had not personally arrested Noye over Brink’s-Mat he had identified him as a suspect months after the robbery.

Years later he met him during an ill-fated TV interview in which he quizzed him about his role in the robbery.

He said: “He told me everything I wanted to know except the truth. He still insists he had nothing to do with it.”

The interview was never broadcast after the prison authorities threatened to send Noye back to jail for a breach of his parole.

Mr Brown, 86, said: “I went over to him and said ‘thanks for coming, nice of you to pop in’, but I don’t believe you’ve turned up with your sons and grandkids to listen to me telling how you killed a police officer.

“And he said ‘I want to make sure you don’t say I’ve been dealing drugs’ and I said ‘I’ve never said that Kenny’.”

The retired detective told Noye he wasn’t going to change his presentation just because he was there.

“He said ‘mate, I wouldn’t expect you to and I’ll come up [on stage] if you want me to’.

“Can you think how he’s turned up with his family to listen to somebody talking about you killing the police? Now, you put logic on that.”

The bizarre story emerged when I rang Mr Brown after I’d been told about the meeting.

I also wanted to ask him about the recent BBC hit drama series The Gold which retold the story of the Brink’s-Mat heist at Heathrow Airport in 1983.

“It was an absolute shambles, far too much dramatic licence and the real story was so much better,” said the ex-detective, whose job had been to follow the trail of the 6,800 gold bars to the US and the Caribbean.

He said he chatted to one of the show’s writers for a long time in a phone call but then heard no more.

“They invented people, changed a bit here and there and made it politically correct in so many ways. I’m just very sad that that is what people will believe.

“And I couldn’t work out who my character was supposed to be. I could have been one of the female cops.”

He also criticised the portrayal of Noye, now 78, as a likeable jack-the-lad character when the truth about the double killer with a volatile temper was quite different.