This whole Priti Patel-Prince Andrew-King Charles story is very confusing to me. From what I gather, at some point in recent weeks, Priti Patel wrote to King Charles’s private secretary and suggested that Prince Andrew’s security situation needed to be reviewed. Andrew no longer has “taxpayer-funded” royal protection, although reportedly, he does have some private security which was paid for by his mother and now by Charles. The way this story has been framed, though, it’s as if Andrew hasn’t had any kind of security for a few years, so I don’t know what’s really happening. In any case, Patel is no longer Home Secretary, but that didn’t stop someone (in the palace?) from leaking her letter to the tabloids, after which everyone started freaking out. Patel issued a formal apology, but it doesn’t sound like she had anything to do with her own letter being leaked? And it also sounds like she’s quite angry that the palace leaked her letter as some kind of warning. The message seems to be “we’ll do what we want without anyone looking over our shoulder.” Which is chilling.
Dame Priti Patel was “thrown under the bus” for suggesting that decisions about the Royal family’s security should receive proper scrutiny, it has been claimed.A letter sent by Dame Priti to Sir Clive Alderton, the King’s private secretary, in which she mooted a potential review of the decision to strip the Duke of York of his taxpayer-funded police protection was leaked to a tabloid newspaper. The leak forced the former home secretary to apologise to the King for the “embarrassment and difficulties” it had caused.
But a source familiar with the situation said she had done nothing but point out the “blindingly obvious” when it came to the activities of the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures – known as Ravec – which is responsible for such decisions.
The source said: “It is outrageous that an email sent in confidence about sensitive security matters should be leaked less than a week after it was written. All she did was suggest that decisions made by Ravec about the security arrangements for high-profile individuals should have proper political accountability and be kept under review. Dame Priti has been thrown under a bus for simply raising a matter of process. Is she not entitled to express her view?”
The source suggested that the email was leaked as a warning to anyone who dared try to question the decision-making process. The source added: “This leak could only have come from an official inside the palace, the Home Office or Ravec to warn off anyone – including the former home secretary – from asking serious questions about security policy. And this from the people employed to keep us and the Royal family safe? They should be ashamed.”
The Duke lost his Metropolitan Police protection when he was forced to step back from official royal duties in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. It is thought likely that he is keen to have his bodyguards – said to cost up to £3 million a year – reinstated. The concerns raised by Dame Priti echo those outlined by the Duke of Sussex in his legal challenge of the decision to deny him and his family automatic police protection when in the UK.
[From The Telegraph]
LOL “And this from the people employed to keep us and the Royal family safe? They should be ashamed” – guess what? The leak came from within the palace, I absolutely guarantee. Someone wanted to send a message to the government or Priti Patel or whomever. Just FYI – from what little I know of Patel, she sounds like a complete a–hole, but in this very narrow situation, I feel sorry for her and it sounds like she did have every right to question the Ravec policies. It says something when even someone like Patel is alarmed by the mafia-style tactics of the Windsors and their people. It also appears that the palace probably owes Patel an apology for leaking her letter.
PS… It also appears that Patel attended that British Asian Trust event in February 2022, the one where Charles looked like death warmed over and then it turned out that he was Covid-positive that night.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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