'The palace really messed up with Thomas Markle,' says PR expert Nick Ede
Watch the full interview with PR guru Nick Ede, on episode three of Yahoo UK’s brand new show ‘The Royal Box’ from Friday 6 July.
Kensington Palace’s senior communications team has made significant errors in handling Thomas Markle.
That’s according to PR expert Nick Ede, who spoke to Yahoo UK about the 73-year-old’s viral ‘Good Morning Britain’ interview last month.
Mr Markle’s appearance on the programme is widely thought to have come as a shock to Kensington Palace.
In the interview, Markle spoke about missing his daughter’s wedding, conversations with Prince Harry about Trump and Brexit, and his staged paparazzi photos controversy.
It’s the latest in a series of embarrassing interviews in recent months in which family members of Meghan – including her father, half-brother and half-sister – have given out of the palace’s control.
“The royal family are thinking ‘How are we going to manage all of this?'” Ede tells Kate Thornton, during episode three of ‘The Royal Box’.
Ede suspects the royal family are caught up in crisis talks.
Click below to watch the full third episode of The Royal Box:
“‘What are we going to be saying to the outside world? How are we going to spin this is a positive way?'” Ede suspects they’ll be asking themselves.
“And, ‘How do we make sure there’s an infrastructure within the royal family which doesn’t allow for this kind of thing to happen again?'”
Since the news of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement broke, it’s widely believed the royal family has failed to bring Texas-based Thomas Markle into the fold sufficiently.
Ahead of the royal wedding, the Duchess of Sussex’s father controversially made a deal with the paparazzi to fake photos – a decision that is believed could have been avoided if the palace had provided Mr Markle with proper duty of care.
“Even with the royal wedding, were they media briefed? No one was media briefed,” Nick says.
“There’s a duty of care when you enter the royal family and for me it felt like they really messed up there.”
The Daily Mail reports that royal director of communications, Sally Osman, has left her post in what is the start of a series of reshuffles over at Kensington Palace initiated by the Thomas Markle debacle.
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“Gap will not be bridged between Meghan and Thomas Markle,” says royal biographer Andrew Morton
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