After THAT case - truth on Prince Charles

Self-pitying flawed and petulant

WHAT is going wrong with the Prince of Wales? Picking a fight with my former PA was hardly the way to kick-start his latest effort to rehabilitate his reputation.

But then nor was his launch of a new campaign to encourage us to eat the meat from old sheep (which he calls mutton).

Nothing he now does seems to interest anyone other than a strange alliance of mystical eccentrics, subsidy-loving farmers and anti-progress traditionalists.

Why has he become so cut off from reality — and is this the beginning of the end of the monarchy?

When left-wing newspapers say the Queen is more ‘in touch' than her heir, something very serious must be going wrong.

As I've said before, Charles is civilised, hard-working and does have a social conscience.

He's done a huge amount of good over the years through charities such as The Prince's Trust. And he deserves recognition for that.

But he can't trade on that forever. There are plenty of other rich people who help those who have less. So he's not unique.

Ricochet

His biggest flaw is his self-pitying approach to life which manifests itself every day. I remember all too well the daily phone calls of doom and gloom.

His heavy sigh as we relayed a piece of good news to him was always followed immediately by his complaint-of-the-day, which would then ricochet around the office all morning as he tried each of us in turn to find some sympathy.

Getting him to look on the bright side of life was an aim that only Camilla ever seemed to achieve.

Most people around him are either too cowed to contradict him or too pleased with themselves to bother.

In my day we were often just too exhausted by the constant effort to keep him upright—but we were a close team who cared (maybe too much sometimes).

I just don't think he has that support any more. The memo that emerged this week was-apparently—one that had been sent to me.

I didn't recall it because there were many such notes—sent in frustrated anger and received by us in despair. They all merged into one stream of bitter rage.

But it's principally his fault—something which he is (to use one of his over-used terms of abuse) genetically incapable of accepting.

Rather like his great-uncle, the Duke of Windsor, everything that goes wrong is someone else's fault.

And he's a man who has made many mistakes, which in combination have affected the way in which the people of Britain view him. He hates that and it's made him bitter as he's grown older.

His refuge is in the increasingly cranky causes he supports, because he believes that history will judge him to be right on all the issues he campaigns on.

And he's developed an extraordinarily arrogant and petulant view of his ‘vision' on almost any matter that is raised.

Tragically, just because he was right about ‘green' issues a few years ago does not mean he's right about anything else.

Indeed, his anti-science and anti-progress opinions are positively dangerous.

Doctors have long warned of the perils of alternative medical therapies, yet the prince continues to endorse them.

He is almost violent in his opposition to stem-cell research, which PM Tony Blair and Tory leader Michael Howard rightly promote as it stands to revolutionise medicine.

It's almost as though Charles embraces anything unconventional—and yet deep down, he is as conventional as it is possible to be.

Charles is a contradiction in many ways. The organic-loving gardener who lets his plants run wild is at odds with the man who insists on having a fleet of gas-guzzling limousines and sports cars.

His bath is run for him every morning and his toothpaste squeezed on to his brush.

Soapbox

Today we read that Charles has decided to hit back at his critics, which takes him one step closer to the trap that his opponents have set for him.

He's even used one of the tricks of political spin—briefing Sunday newspapers before delivering his speech tomorrow.

Where will this end? Charles on Question Time? Debating his views on a soapbox in town squares across England? Leading a public campaign against the foxhunting ban? Demonstrating outside hospitals using cutting-edge science to treat illness?

Or sitting at Highgrove on his own with Camilla, praying for salvation in the knowledge that the crowds are laughing at his stately gates, that he's lost even more popular support and his latest attempt at a relaunch hasflopped.