Prince Harry accuses ‘certain’ Royal Family members of ‘getting in bed with the devil’ as TV interview airs
Prince Harry has accused members of the Royal Family of getting in “bed with the devil” over their links with the tabloid press – and admitted Meghan did not get on with William and Kate “from the get-go”.
In an interview with ITV, the Duke of Sussex insisted he did not have “any intention to harm” or “hurt” his brother or King Charles with his memoir Spare, which includes a series of explosive allegations.
He also denied that accusations of racism were made towards the royals when he and Meghan were interviewed by US TV host Oprah Winfrey.
In the wide-ranging interview with presenter Tom Bradby, Harry said it was “important to acknowledge” his past drug use after he admitted in his book taking cocaine, cannabis and magic mushrooms.
He also claimed there was a “horrible reaction” from his family members on the day that Queen Elizabeth died, with “briefings”, “leaking” and “planting”.
Addressing the “relationship between certain members of the family and the tabloid press”, Harry said: “Those certain members have decided to get in the bed with the devil, right? – to rehabilitate their image.
“If you need to do that, or you want to do that, you choose to do that – well, that is a choice. That’s up to you.
“But the moment that that rehabilitation comes at the detriment of others – me, other members of my family – then that’s where I draw the line.”
Harry accused of being ‘scathing’ about Camilla
Bradby suggested to Harry that he was “pretty consistently scathing” in his memoir about his “stepmother and the press”.
An excerpt read by Harry from his book said he and William “endorse Camilla” but they asked their father Charles not to marry her.
“Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to play the long game,” Harry writes.
“A campaign aimed at marriage, and eventually the Crown, with Pa’s blessing we presumed.
“Stories began to appear everywhere in all the papers about her private conversation with Willie, stories that contained pinpoint accurate details, none of which had come from Willie, of course. They could only have been leaked by the other one other person present.”
Read more:
Harry cuts a sad, self-indulgent and naive figure in his memoir
In his ITV interview, Harry denied being “scathing towards any member of my family, especially not my stepmother”.
The duke said he wanted “reconciliation” with his family but “there needs to be some accountability”.
He told Bradby: “I think there’s probably a lot of people who, after watching the documentary and reading the book, will go: ‘How could you ever forgive your family for what they’ve done?’ People have already said that to me.
“I said, forgiveness is 100% a possibility because I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back.
“At the moment, I don’t recognise them, as much as they probably don’t recognise me.”
William and Kate didn’t get on with Meghan ‘from the get-go’
Discussing Kate and William’s relationship with Meghan, Harry said the couple were “Suits fans” but there had been “a lot of stereotyping” over her being an “American actress, divorced, biracial”.
Bradby said the impression was that the Prince and Princess of Wales “almost from the get-go” did not “get on” with Meghan.
“Fair?” the presenter asked.
“Yeah, fair,” Harry replied.
The prince said his brother “never tried to dissuade” him from marrying Meghan but he “aired some concerns very early” and claimed William told him: “This is going to be really hard for you”.
“Maybe he predicted what the British press’s reaction was going to be,” Harry added.
Harry addresses alleged physical attack by William
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Prince Harry: ‘I saw red mist in William’
In his book, Harry claims he was physically attacked by William during a row over his marriage to Meghan.
He told ITV that he and his brother “used to fight all the time” as younger siblings but there was a different “level of frustration” in the alleged incident.
“I saw this red mist in him,” Harry said.
“I can pretty much guarantee today that if I wasn’t doing therapy sessions like I was, and being able to process that anger and frustration, that I would’ve fought back – 100%.”
Harry said he did not think his brother and father would read his book but added: “I really hope they do.”
Bradby suggested that Harry had “not so much burnt your bridges” with the Royal Family but “taken a flame-thrower to them”.
“Well they’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile up until this point”, Harry replied.
“And I’m not sure how honesty is burning bridges. You know, silence only allows the abuser to abuse, right? So I don’t know how staying silent is ever going to make things better.”
Pic: AP
Charles warned Harry he faced ‘suicide mission’ over press
On his bid to take on the tabloids, Harry said his father warned him it was “probably a suicide mission to try and change” the press.
The duke claimed there was a “distorted narrative” that he and Meghan “wanted to leave to go and make money” when they departed as working royals.
He said the couple decided to put their “mental health first” and asked for “help and support”.
“At that time, I didn’t fully understand how much – or how complicit the family were in that pain and suffering that was happening to my wife,” Harry added.
“The one group of people that could’ve helped or stopped this from happening were the very people that were – that were encouraging it to happen.”
Harry criticises ‘horrific’ Jeremy Clarkson article about Meghan
Pic: AP
Harry branded Jeremy Clarkson’s recent article about Meghan as “horrific”, “hurtful” and “cruel”.
Clarkson was widely criticised for his column, published in The Sun newspaper, which said he was “dreaming of the day when (Meghan) is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”.
Harry told ITV: “What he said was horrific and is hurtful and cruel towards my wife, but it also encourages other people around the UK and around the world, men particularly, to go and think that it’s acceptable to treat women that way.”
Harry said “the world” was asking for “some form of comment from the monarchy” but “the silence is deafening, to put it mildly”.
“Everything to do with my wife, after six years, they haven’t said a single thing,” he added. “But they’re willing to defend themselves regularly.”
Harry denies Royal Family were accused of racism in Oprah interview
Pic: CBS
Asked about his interview with Winfrey in June 2021, Harry said his wife’s claims that a family member made “troubling” comments about the skin colour of his son, Archie, related to “unconscious bias” not racism.
The duke also said the recent incident at Buckingham Palace involving black campaigner Ngozi Fulani and Lady Susan Hussey, the late Queen’s lady in waiting, “is a very good example of the environment within the institution”.
After Bradby suggested to Harry that “in the Oprah interview you accused members of your family of racism”, the duke responded by saying “no I didn’t” and added “the British press said that”.
“Did Meghan ever mention that they’re racist?,” Harry asked.
After Bradby said the duchess claimed troubling comments were made about Archie’s skin colour, Harry said: “There was – there was concern about his skin colour.”
Asked if he would describe that as racist, the duke said: “I wouldn’t, not having lived within that family.”
He continued: “The difference between racism and unconscious bias, the two things are different.”
Harry’s happiness ‘infuriates’ some people
Now living in California, Harry said he was “very happy” and “in a better place than I’ve ever been”.
“I think that probably angers some people, infuriates others, because just by the nature of me leaving,”he added.
“I’m sure… some people always thought that Meghan would leave right, but I don’t think they ever thought that I would leave as well.”
Harry’s book is due to be released on Tuesday but Sky News obtained a copy after it was accidentally put out for sale early in Spain.
UK
Police investigating historical sex offence allegations against Russell Brand understood to have handed file to CPS
Many leading politicians are fond of talking about having been on a journey. But Kemi Badenoch’s journey has been longer and more eventful than most.
From the leafy London suburb of Wimbledon to Nigeria in West Africa and back to south London, and from the socialist hotbed of Sussex University to the rural idyll of Saffron Walden in Essex, she will hope her journey will ultimately take her to 10 Downing Street.
Along the way, this battling Boudica of the Conservative Party has earned a reputation for a combative and at times abrasive style of politics, aggressive even: someone who’d cross the road to have a fight.
Politics live: Reaction after new leader of opposition elected
“I am somebody who is very blunt,” she admitted when challenged about this reputation by Sophy Ridge on Sky News this week.
“I’m very forthright and I’m very confident as well. I’m not a wallflower.”
Now the Conservative Party members have voted to elect her as leader after strong performances in hustings and a TV debate which saw her recover from a gaffe-prone party conference.
In the three stages of the leadership contest, she gained momentum at the right time. Robert Jenrick was the candidate with momentum in the early rounds of voting by MPs in September.
James Cleverly then had it after he stole the show at the conference “beauty contest”. But as party members cast their votes, the momentum appeared to be with Ms Badenoch.
It did not look that way at the conference in Birmingham, when she clumsily declared maternity pay was “excessive” and said some civil servants were so bad 10% of them should be in prison.
Ironically, given her maternity pay gaffe, the mother-of-three has benefited from a row over veteran Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope, a Jenrick backer, declaring: “You can’t spend all your time with your family at the same time being leader of the opposition.”
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Badenoch elected Conservative leader
Wimbledon to Nigeria – and back again
Ms Badenoch’s background, however, is literally miles away – more than 3,000, in fact – from those of typical Conservative politicians. Her early years were spent in Nigeria, controversially described by David Cameron in 2016 as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Her Nigerian parents were comfortably middle class, “with a car and a driver”, she says. Father Femi was a GP with his own clinic, and her mother Feyi was an academic at the University of Lagos college of medicine.
But Ms Badenoch – full name Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke – was born in the private St Teresa’s Hospital in Wimbledon in January 1980 after her parents travelled to Britain and paid for private healthcare. It meant she had a British passport.
She then lived in Lagos until she was 16, when she returned to Wimbledon to take her A levels, in maths, biology and chemistry, living with her mother’s best friend “for a better future”, after arriving in the UK with just £100.
So she worked part-time in Wimbledon’s McDonald’s, cleaning toilets and “flipping burgers”, she says. Yet last month she was ridiculed by Labour MPs after saying: “I became working class when I was 16 working at McDonald’s.”
Next on her journey was Sussex University and a computer course. Here she had no time for the left-wing students she called “stupid lefty white kids” and later denounced Bob Geldof’s 2005 Live 8 charity concerts as patronising to Africans.
Working in banking, she joined the Conservative Party in that year, and though she was a massive Margaret Thatcher fan she became an early Cameroon.
She was on her way, becoming a member of the London Assembly and fighting Dulwich and West Norwood against Labour’s Tessa Jowell in the 2010 general election, coming third behind the Liberal Democrats.
Kemi Badenoch has spoken of her admiration for Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Just like Mrs Thatcher nearly 60 years earlier, it was when she was a parliamentary candidate that Kemi met her husband, Cambridge-educated banker and party activist Hamish Badenoch.
He had been head boy at Ampleforth College, the catholic public school, a councillor in Merton, south London, and Conservative candidate in Foyle, in Northern Ireland, in the 2015 general election.
They were both born at the same hospital in Wimbledon, St Teresa’s, a year apart. After university Hamish worked in Malawi, Nigeria and Kenya before returning to London and Barclays, before his current job at Deutsche Bank.
Read more on Kemi Badenoch:
Pragmatist wins Tory leadership TV showdown
Badenoch will need to go beyond ‘diehard Tories’
Badenoch rejects bullying accusations as ‘utterly false
Entry into politics
But the noughties saw two potentially embarrassing blemishes on Ms Badenoch’s upwardly mobile CV. One was her widely reported hacking of Harriet Harman’s website, revealed shortly after she became MP for Saffron Walden in 2017.
These days, she regards the incident as relatively trivial. “It was a summary offence at the time, the same as a speeding ticket,” she told Sophy Ridge this week. “It was actually something quite different from what the law is now.
“And this was something that happened ten years before I was a member of parliament. It was very amusing at the time. Now that I’m an MP, it’s a lot less amusing.”
The other, described in Lord Ashcroft’s biography, Blue Ambition, was a near-fight with a member of the public at Oxford Town Hall in 2006 during a Conservative party event.
After an argument between the pair, the woman slapped Ms Badenoch and then ran off. Ms Badenoch then chased her up some stairs and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back, before letting go and the woman ran out of the town hall.
“I never saw her again, thank goodness,” she said, recalling the incident years later.
Once in parliament with a safe seat, now called North West Essex, Brexiteer Badenoch’s ascent up the ministerial ladder was swift: party vice-chair, children and families, international trade, Treasury, equalities and local government, before joining Liz Truss’s cabinet and continuing under Rishi Sunak.
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‘I will swing back’
In the 2019 Tory leadership contest, she backed Michael Gove, widely viewed by MPs as her long-term mentor. Then in 2022, after quitting along with umpteen other ministers triggering Boris Johnson’s downfall, she stood herself, coming fourth. But she had put down a marker.
As a cabinet minister, covering business and equalities at the same time, she has lived up to her reputation as a blunt-speaking – critics would say rude – political scrapper, with some fiery clashes with opponents, some Tories and even Dr Who.
Her handling of the Post Office Horizon scandal was fiercely criticised after she controversially sacked Post Office chairman Henry Staunton when he claimed he was told to “stall” compensation payments – and then had a public row with him.
Courting controversy
One of her most high-profile spats was with former Doctor Who star David Tennant, after he said at the British LGBT awards: “Until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist any more – I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up.”
She hit back on X: “I will not shut up. A rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can’t see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end.”
She has also been reprimanded by Caroline Nokes, then chair of the equalities committee and now – ominously for Ms Badenoch – a Commons deputy speaker.
Pic: Reuters
During a bad-tempered and shouty row at a hearing of Ms Nokes’ committee, Ms Badenoch accused the left-wing Labour MP Kate Osborne of lying in a row about trans issues.
Last year she infuriated Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle by issuing a written statement on scrapping EU laws after Brexit rather than making a full Commons statement to MPs.
After she told the speaker she was sorry the timing of the announcement was “not to your satisfaction”, Sir Lindsay bellowed at her: “Who do you think you’re speaking to?”
It’s clashes like these on her long political journey that have led to claims that Ms Badenoch could start a fight in an empty room.
She is, after all, an aggressive, confrontational anti-woke crusader who takes no prisoners. And that’s just what her supporters say!
Sir Keir Starmer, beware.
UK
Four girls suffer ‘potentially life-changing injuries’ in bathroom of Brighton fast-food restaurant
Four girls have suffered serious burns in the bathroom of a Brighton fast-food restaurant.
Emergency services were called at 8.28pm on Thursday, which was also Halloween, to reports of a fire at a Wendy’s restaurant on Western Road, Brighton.
The four 12-year-old girls suffered “potentially life-changing” injuries, according to Sussex police, and were taken to hospital.
They remain in serious but stable conditions.
Sussex Police and the fire service are still looking into the cause of the incident, but said no fireworks were involved.
The incident was accidental, according to the fire and rescue service, and members of the public were not at risk.
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Three fire engines, an aerial appliance and specialist officers attended.
The police force said they would not release more information at this time as they are “being sensitive towards the injuries of the people involved”.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
“Our thoughts are with those recovering from this incident in our Brighton restaurant,” a spokesperson for Wendy’s said.
“The safety of our customers and employees is our highest priority. We are continuing to work with the local police authorities on their investigation.”
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