Stephen Glover

Someone has it in for the Prince of Wales

issue 28 September 2002

Prince Charles’s leaked letter to Tony Blair has not done him any good. The Mail on Sunday, whose first edition broke the story on Sunday, seemed to think that the letter did him great credit. One can certainly see what he was getting at. But to compare farmers with gays or immigrant communities, and to suggest that they are less well treated, was not spot-on. As has been pointed out, farmers, impoverished though many of them may now be, receive much bigger government handouts than either of the other groups. More damaging still than the letter was his reported remark that if fox-hunting were banned he might as well spend the rest of his life skiing abroad. Again, one sees what he means. But it seems a rather petulant threat coming from the heir to the throne, who should surely remain loyal to his future subjects whatever idiocies a particular government may inflict on us.

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