London, July 2 (ANI): Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair believed the Prince of Wales publicly interfered in government policies in such a manner that sometimes over stepped constitutional boundaries historically respected by the royal family, according to Blair's former director of communications Alastair Campbell.
According to The Guardian, in the latest volume of his diary, Campbell had written that Blair became so exasperated that he once privately accused Prince Charles of "screwing us".
Campbell indicated that at one point Blair raised his concerns with the Queen.
"While publicly we stayed supportive, TB said Charles had to understand there were limits to the extent to which they could play politics with him," Campbell wrote on 31 October 1999.
Campbell writes that Blair became angry when Charles made "deeply unhelpful" interventions during the foot and mouth crisis in 2001, and challenged Blair on plans to outlaw foxhunting. He also boycotted a banquet in 1999 for former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, a decision criticised by Blair as "silly," the paper said.
Campbell said the anger in the Blair team was mainly caused by the prince's media operation under Mark Bolland, his deputy private secretary between 1997 and 2002. Matters improved when Paddy Harverson, the prince's head of communications, joined his team in 2004.
"Tony Blair valued their regular private conversations and respects Prince Charles's right to speak up on important issues," the paper quoted Campbell, as saying.
"But this was a period when it seemed Charles's media team was proactively and publicly setting them at odds on some of the government's most difficult issues, not just hunting, where the differences were well known, but GM food, China, and agriculture," said Campbell.
"When Paddy Harverson came in, things improved greatly," he added (ANI)
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