When asked if the couple decided to leave Britain because of racism in a clip aired on US breakfast show CBS This Morning, Harry said: ‘It was a large part of it’
Racism was a “large part” of why the Sussexes left the UK, Prince Harry has claimed in unseen footage from the couple’s interview with Oprah Winfrey.
When asked if the couple decided to leave Britain because of racism in a clip aired on US breakfast show CBS This Morning, Harry said: “It was a large part of it.”
Recalling a conversation he had at a Sentebale fundraiser, he said he was urged by someone who is “friends with a lot of the editors”: “Please don’t do this with the media, they will destroy your life.”
Harry said he was told: “You need to understand that the UK is very bigoted,” to which he claims to have replied: “The UK is not bigoted, the UK press is bigoted, specifically the tabloids.”
He added: “But unfortunately if the source of info is inherently corrupt or racist or biased then that filters out to the rest of society.”
Speaking in another clip Prince Harry reveals he was told he was no longer invited to spend time with the Queen at Sandringham in January 2020.
He said: “My grandmother had said ‘the moment you land, come up to Sandringham, we’d love to have a chat, come for tea, why don’t you stay for dinner because it’s going to be a long drive and you’re going to be exhausted?”‘
However, the moment the couple landed in the UK, Harry said he got a message from his private secretary, passing on a message from the Queen’s private secretary saying “please pass on to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that he cannot come to Norfolk. The Queen is busy, she’s busy all week'”.
Oprah said: “After she’d just invited to you?”
Harry replied: “She’d just invited me.’The Queen is busy, she’s busy all week, do not come up here’.”
Harry then rang the Queen from Frogmore cottage and she said: “Yes, there’s something in my diary that I didn’t know that I had.”
He said he asked about the rest of the week, and his grandmother had replied that she was busy then too.
He told Winfrey: “I didn’t want to push because I kind of knew what was going on.”
The chat show host asked: “Doesn’t the Queen get to do what the Queen wants to do?”
Harry replied: “When you’re head of the firm there is people around you that give you advice. And what has also made me really sad is some of that advice has been really bad.”
Oprah Winfrey said the full interview was three hours and 20 minutes long and was edited down to one hour and 25 minutes for the US broadcast, and the most important question she wanted to answer was “why did they leave?”
She added: “The stories about blindsiding the Queen were very damaging to them and hurtful to them, there had clearly been months and months of preparation before they moved to Canada.”
She also referred to a statement released by the Queen on January 18 which said their decision to leave followed “many months of conversation and more recent discussion”.
Winfrey added: “The Queen on January 18 actually said that there had been months of conversation but in spite of that there were still all those stories about blindsiding
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