Meghan Markle is ‘risking Royal Family's reputation’ and ‘making same mistakes as Diana’
MEGHAN Markle is “risking the Royal Family’s reputation” and making the “same mistakes” as her husband Prince Harry’s late mother, according to Princess Diana’s former private secretary.
Meghan Markle: Duchess steps out to attend baby shower
Patrick Jephson made the explosive claim in a newspaper article following Meghan’s lavish New York baby shower this week. The event was attended by many of the Duchess of Sussex’s high-profile celebrity friends, with its star-studded guest list including tennis ace Serena Williams, who reportedly funded the soirée and Amal Clooney, Hollywood superstar George Clooney’s human rights lawyer wife.
The stateside visit came at no additional cost to the taxpayer because it was a privately-funded affair, with Meghan flying on a private jet to get there.
But former Royal aide Patrick Jephson has suggested the Duchess’s recent Big Apple excursion could “open a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences”.
Having spent eight years as private secretary to Prince Harry's mother, he claims to have “learned to recognise that the line between official and private travel is never just about the money”.
Issuing a word of warning to the Duchess, Mr Jephson said trips like Meghan's baby shower sojourn risk the “credibility and dignity” of the “Royal free-riders”.
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Writing for the Daily Mail, Mr Jephson said: “Rich people’s jets — in this case a Gulfstream reportedly paid for by George and Amal Clooney — always come with a bill attached, even if it’s not the kind you can pay with a Duchy of Cornwall credit card.”
He added: “From any angle, the look of Meghan’s Manhattan partying is pretty unedifying.
“Not just for its excess — though that’s impressively unsettling — but for its calculated recklessness.”
Mr Jephson went on to highlight the “juxtaposition” between the “baby shower excesses of New York” and the “sober mainstream” of the Royal duties facing the Duke and Duchess of Sussex ahead of their upcoming visit to Morocco.
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Former Royal butler Paul Burrell has also spoken out about Meghan’s baby shower, after which the Duchess reportedly stayed in a swanky Manhattan hotel’s £57,000-a-night penthouse.
Mr Burrell argued both William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, would be “bewildered” by what seems to him as an “over-indulgence” by the Duchess of Sussex.
Writing in The Sun, he said: “I think Prince William will be angered by all of Meghan's lavish extravagance this week and the fact her baby shower looked so 'celebrity' rather than 'royal’.
“You will not see antics like this from the Cambridge family, there is no way.”
Despite the former butler's claims, the Cambridges have reportedly been away on a luxury skiing holiday during the school half-term holidays with their three children George, five, Charlotte, three and Louis, aged just nine months.
Three years ago William and Kate took their two eldest to the glamorous Courchevel in the Trois Vallees in France, where they shared some snow-filled snaps together.
A family ski pass at the resort costs €244 (£212) per person for 6 days, according to its website.
This year's ski trip was reported in The Sun as coinciding with the school holidays so the Cambridges could spend some quality time with their little ones.
Prince George attends Thomas's Battersea in south-west London while Princess Charlotte goes to the Willcocks Nursery School near their home in Kensington.