Kemi Badenoch Backs King Charles in Earl Spencer’s Diana Memoir Row

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has thrown her support behind the King as a dispute escalates between Charles III and Earl Charles Spencer, the brother of Princess Diana.

The Earl’s memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which is being serialised exclusively by the Daily Mail, has caused fury in royal circles. In the book, Spencer alleges that King Charles told him shortly after Diana’s death: “We will forget her soon enough.”

Buckingham Palace responded with an extraordinary public statement, with aides challenging the reliability of Spencer’s version of events. They suggested that bereavement can “cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory”.

Ms Badenoch has now made her position clear. In an interview with BBC Newsnight, due to air tonight, the Tory leader said: “I have a side and it’s always on the side of His Majesty.”

In his memoir, the 62-year-old Earl also claims that the late Queen Elizabeth II offered to restore Diana’s HRH title following her death.

However, it is Spencer’s account of an alleged telephone conversation with Charles that has prompted the fiercest reaction. The Earl says the then-Prince of Wales became angry and “hissed” the remark about Diana eventually being forgotten, an allegation that has sharply divided opinion.

Asked about the Palace’s 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.”

Royal observers have expressed surprise at the Palace’s unusually direct intervention over the contents of Earl Spencer’s book.

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 statement is reminiscent of the late Queen’s famous ‘recollections may vary’ retort to Harry and Meghan’s accusations of racism.

It was issued in response to claims of an argument between Charles and his brother-in-law after a decision, opposed by Diana’s brother, that Prince William and Prince Harry, then aged 15 and 12, would walk in their mother’s funeral procession.

The Earl says he insisted to the then-Prince of Wales that Diana would not have wanted her young sons to endure such a public ordeal.

It is claimed Charles then questioned the Spencer family’s sense of duty before saying his former wife, whose death sparked a global outpouring of grief, would soon be forgotten.

Royal aides are said to be horrified by the allegations, and have said they are the opposite to the temperament of the man who now sits on the throne. 

Asked about the revelations by Newsnight’s 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.’

Ms Badenoch added: ‘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 the Daily Mail, including excerpts published at 5pm on Friday.