PIERS MORGAN: After these shocking Palace bullying allegations, please spare me anymore of halo-cracked hypocrites Meghan and Harry’s women-empowering victimhood garbage
On Monday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced a 20-point guide to how to empower women.
Timed to coincide with next week’s International Women’s Day, it dripped with all the usual insufferably patronising self-righteousness that’s become the hallmark of the couple’s endless hectoring homilies to the world.
‘Let’s unleash a groundswell of real acts of compassion for the women in your life!’ they beseeched on their foundation website.
The 20 points, which included such blatantly sexist guff as telling us all to ‘order from a woman-led restaurant’ – can you imagine the outrage if I suggested ordering from a man-led restaurant? – also contained this directive: ‘Support safe spaces for women.’
Fine words from a couple who never stop telling us how caring and compassionate they are, and how much they want to ’empower’ women.
Doubtless, we’ll hear a lot more of this narrative during their two-hour interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Just as we’ll hear more on how they were driven out of Britain and the Royal Family by a bunch of nasty bullies in the Press and Palace.
Oh, and how poor Meghan was silenced by restrictive royal protocol – and had her vitally important voice taken away from her.
The Oprah whine-athon will be brimming with anguished woe-is-me tears, indignant rage, wallowing self-pity and lots of claims about how kind, caring Meghan and Harry just want to save the world.
But then we woke up to a rather different narrative this morning.
On Monday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced a 20-point guide to how to empower women. ‘Let’s unleash a groundswell of real acts of compassion for the women in your life!’ they beseeched on their foundation website. Doubtless, we’ll hear a lot more of this narrative during their two-hour interview with Oprah Winfrey
The Oprah whine-athon will be brimming with anguished woe-is-me tears, indignant rage, wallowing self-pity and lots of claims about how kind, caring Meghan and Harry just want to save the world. But then we woke up to a rather different narrative this morning. In a series of bombshell revelations in the UK’s Times newspaper, Meghan stands accused of waging a systematic reign of bullying terror against her personal staff
In a series of bombshell revelations in the UK’s Times newspaper, Meghan stands accused of waging a systematic reign of bullying terror against her personal staff at Kensington Palace.
Two young female personal assistants were said to have been bullied out of their jobs, and a third more senior female member of staff was also allegedly mistreated. The claims were made in a formal complaint.
Naturally, Meghan came out fighting, instructing her legal team to say it was all ‘a calculated smear campaign based on misleading and harmful misinformation’, and insisting, of course, that SHE was the real victim.
The Duchess, her spokesman said, was ‘saddened by this latest attack on her character, particularly as someone who has been the target of bullying herself and is deeply committed to supporting those who have experienced pain and trauma. She is determined to continue her work building compassion around the world and will keep striving to set an example for doing what is right and doing what is good.’
The clear implication from this ferocious and laughably self-righteous riposte was that the allegations are untrue.
So, where did they come from?
Was it the nasty lying British press again?
Well, no.
The allegations were in an email written by the couple’s then communications secretary Jason Knauf.
The allegations were in an email written by the couple’s then communications secretary Jason Knauf (pictured). The Times reports that Prince Harry pleaded with him not to continue with his complaint, something Harry has denied. Knauf was right to be concerned about the claims being brushed under the royal carpet because indeed, nothing was done – and a month later Knauf quit his job and went to work for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as one of their top aides
In it, he said: ‘I am very concerned that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The treatment of X* was totally unacceptable. The Duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights. She is bullying Y and seeking to undermine her confidence. We have had report after report from people who have witnessed unacceptable behaviour towards Y.’
Knauf sent his email to Simon Case, then Prince William’s private secretary and now the UK Government’s cabinet secretary, after conversations with Samantha Carruthers, the head of Human Resources at the Palace.
In his email, Knauf also expressed concern about the stress allegedly being experienced by Samantha Cohen (pictured), Meghan and Harry’s private secretary
Case then forwarded it to Carruthers.
In his email, Knauf also expressed concern about the stress allegedly being experienced by Samantha Cohen, Meghan and Harry’s private secretary, and said: ‘I questioned if the Household policy on bullying and harassment applies to principals.’
Knauf said Carruthers ‘agreed with me on all counts that the situation was very serious’ and he added: ‘I remain concerned that nothing will be done.’
The Times reports that Prince Harry pleaded with him not to continue with his complaint, something Harry has denied.
Knauf was right to be concerned about the claims being brushed under the royal carpet because indeed, nothing was done – and a month later Knauf quit his job and went to work for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as one of their top aides.
The details of the Times story are jaw-dropping, outlining a litany of alleged bullying by Meghan towards her young female staff that reduced some to tears.
Aides spoke of being humiliated and feeling ‘sick’ and ‘terrified’ by the dreadful treatment they received.
After one row over an event, one reportedly told another: ‘I feel terrified. I can’t stop shaking.’
A Palace source told the Times: ‘There were a lot of broken people. Young women were broken by their behaviour.’ The source described one member of staff as ‘completely destroyed.’
And it wasn’t just Meghan.
Harry stands accused of bullying behavior, too.
The Times reports that even before the wedding, one aide told a colleague the couple were both ‘outrageous bullies’ and said they were considering resigning.
The two personal assistants said to have been bullied out of the Palace have been silenced by Non-Disclosure Agreements they apparently signed that prevent them from talking about their experiences.
The Sussexes deny knowing about the NDAs.
When Meghan was allegedly warned by a senior Palace aide to treat her staff better, she is reported to have retorted: ‘It’s not my job to coddle people.’
All of this makes shocking reading and if it’s all true, then it makes a complete mockery of Meghan and Harry’s endless victimhood tour.
It’s too late for Oprah to ask them about it because her interview is in the can.
Instead, we’ll just hear the Sussexes portray themselves as the bullied victims, not the bullies that it is now claimed they were themselves.
And we’ll hear Meghan cry that she was silenced, when in fact it’s the alleged victims of her own bullying who have been silenced and had THEIR voice taken away.
If Meghan and Harry truly believe what they wrote in their 20-point manifesto for empowering women, then they should today demand the non-disclosure agreements with their two former assistants be removed so the young women are free to tell their stories in their own words. Now THAT would be empowering.
Then we can all hear the truth about the astonishing claims from the Sussexes’ own communications secretary, directly from those he said were bullied out of their jobs.
And rather than dismiss Knauf’s sensational claims as one giant smear, perhaps they could explain why someone working so close to them made a formal complaint about their bullying, why the Palace HR department believed the allegations were ‘very serious’ and why nothing was done about it?
The Times also contained a second shocking, and undenied, story: that Meghan wore a massive set of diamond chandelier earrings to a dinner during the Sussexes’ tour of Fiji, which had been given to her as a wedding gift by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Times also contained a second shocking, and undenied, story: that Meghan wore a massive set of diamond chandelier earrings which had been given to her as a wedding gift by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (left) ordered a hit squad to murder Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (right) by sawing up his body into small pieces, because Khashoggi had dared to criticise the Crown Prince’s brutal regime
Three weeks before she wore them, Bin Salman ordered a hit squad to murder Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by sawing up his body into small pieces, because Khashoggi had dared to criticise the Crown Prince’s brutal regime.
The story made huge international news, and the finger of suspicion laid firmly and publicly at the murderous hand of Bin Salman.
But we’re supposed to believe, as claimed by her spokesman, that Meghan, who has regularly spouted off about her horror at human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, didn’t know anything about it because she doesn’t read the papers.
Yet somehow, she always knows what’s in the papers!
I wonder how empowered the horribly oppressed women of Saudi Arabia feel today knowing that Meghan Markle is happy to brazenly sport expensive jewels lavished on her by the murderous leader who oppresses them?
Amid all this unedifying royal mudslinging, the Duke of Edinburgh remains seriously ill in hospital. The poor Queen must be in utter turmoil
Meanwhile, amid all this unedifying royal mudslinging, the Duke of Edinburgh remains seriously ill in hospital.
The poor Queen must be in utter turmoil.
It’s bad enough that Meghan and Harry have done this interview at such an incredibly insensitive time for the family.
But to play the compassionate women-empowering victims of bullying on prime-time TV, when they’ve now been accused of their own shocking compassion-devoid bullying towards multiple women, is both beyond the pale, and beyond parody.
Take the hypocritical halos off, your royal highnesses – they’re cracked.
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