Someone has it in for the Prince of Wales

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. Even fox-hunting monarchists may think that Prince Charles went a bit too far.

The letter, of course, was private, as were his reported remarks. That may not entirely get the Prince off the hook, since he should perhaps have suspected that such contentious views might be leaked by his opponents. But it does raise the question as to who should have wished to damage him by making his letter and comments public. Like many others, I immediately detected the hand of Downing Street, and of our old friend Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s director of communications. Some authorities have asserted that it was indeed No. 10 which dished the Prince. The motive is there – he was daring to oppose Tony Blair, whom he has irritated with a torrent of letters on all manner of subjects – and Mr Campbell is certainly capable of mounting an operation of this sort.