Royals 'were facing both ways on the Nationalists'

Published on Monday 17 January 2011 13:31

Alastair Campbell believed that the Royal Family was "facing both ways" on the SNP and should have been more active in opposing Scottish nationalism, according to his new diaries.

The former Downing Street director of communications reveals how a story emerged in August 1998 that Prince Charles wanted to meet SNP leader Alex Salmond for talks.

The prince's press office insisted any meeting would be low key, but Campbell believes the subsequent coverage gave a boost to the Nationalist cause.

More importantly, he felt the Royal Family could have done more to quash Mr Salmond's hopes of a royal meeting at Balmoral.

In his entry for 29 August, 1998 Campbell writes: "I had to deal with a story that Prince Charles wanted to meet Alex Salmond, which was a piece of SNP spin to try to embarrass Tony Blair at Balmoral. I spoke to Fellowes (Prince Charles's press secretary] who put out a line that this was routine and low key but needless to say the Scottish press were really going for it."

The next day, with the story receiving heavy coverage in Scotland, a clearly irked Campbell writes: "The royals seemed to be facing both ways on the SNP, telling us they were killing it, but actually not really doing it."

He then goes on to explain how Mr Blair felt Charles "had people spreading stuff against us a fair bit of the time".

Mr Salmond later met Prince Charles, where he raised his party's attitude to the monarchy and to land reform in Scotland at the first private face-to-face meeting between the heir to the throne and an SNP leader.

According to reports, the pair got on well.