It’s truly insane to watch, in real time, how Prince William shuts down critical reporting around himself, his family, his personal life and his activities. In March, William announced his big plans for the Duchy of Cornwall, the vast, feudal real estate empire he inherited as Prince of Wales. His plan? To sell off a significant chunk of the duchy’s real estate assets and use the profits to invest in… something vague about homelessness and mental health. The sell-off and the reinvestment will have no oversight. So, there was already a huge amount of criticism, criticism which was systematically shut down by Kensington Palace. Something slipped through – the duchy is selling off the Bradninch estate, home to dozens of tenant farmers. Two weekends ago, the Observer published a massively critical look at the sale, a sale which will leave dozens of former duchy farmers homeless. Bradninch tenants called William “craven” and spoke openly about his heartlessness and how he should go to hell. What’s crazy is that… no other outlet followed up on the Observer’s reporting. It was hushed up in real time. And now the Observer is following up on their own reporting:

The Duchy of Cornwall has apologised to tenants for its handling of the sale of the Bradninch estate in Devon and promised new valuations of their farms and homes. Last week, The Observer revealed growing concerns about the Prince of Wales’s decision to sell off the 1,215-hectare (3,000 acres) holding to raise money for other priorities, including tackling homelessness and the climate crisis.

Tenants have been offered the chance to buy their properties but some cannot afford to do so. Others claim their farms have been overvalued and the duchy has failed to take into account the amount they have invested in them.

Prince William was “not happy” to read the report, sources say. Last Sunday, he spoke to Matthew Morris, the duchy’s rural director, to discuss how to respond. On Thursday, Morris visited Bradninch and met with the tenants. One said the royal representative was “all apologetic”, and admitted he had underestimated the amount of time involved in disposing of such a large estate. Morris agreed to new independent valuations, with joint instruction by the tenants and the duchy. He also said he would look again at how the money spent on improvements should be recognised. One tenant said the conciliatory message was reassuring but “talk is cheap” and the “proof will be in the pudding”.

William is selling off a fifth of the land he inherited from his father in 2022 to focus on five geographic “heartlands” in the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, Dartmoor, Bath and Kennington, south London. The decision to sell the Devon estate, part of the Duchy of Cornwall since the 14th century, has provoked a furious backlash.

Mary Ryan, a former GP who has lived in Bradninch for 36 years and is supporting the tenants, has accused William of “hypocrisy” for promising to focus on homelessness and mental health causes in urban areas while causing distress and potentially making families homeless in rural Devon.

The King is said to be particularly dismayed by the sale of the Bradninch estate, which he visited regularly when he was Prince of Wales, and sees as the embodiment of the kind of rural community that is the “backbone of Britain”.

Questions are also being raised about whether the Duke of Cornwall should pay capital gains tax. A duchy spokesman said he was exempt because “all proceeds from the disposal of capital assets are required, by law, to be reinvested and are not available for his personal use”. But the tax expert Dan Neidle said there was “no legal basis” for the exemption, and if HM Revenue and Customs wrote to the Duke of Cornwall, saying he was liable for capital gains tax, he would have to pay it.

“What benefit he thinks he has is irrelevant. If it’s not a company or a separate entity, then, when it makes a sale, it’s a capital gain,” Neidle said. “It’s essential to the tax and the legal system that everyone is treated the same. The King is different but everyone else is the same. The prime minister pays tax. The duke should pay tax.”

[From The Observer]

While the tax issue is fascinating, I’m more focused on the actual tenant farmers and what will happen with them. Notice that William’s displeasure was with the Observer’s reporting, not with the actual state of his harebrained scheme to sell off duchy assets. Also notice that William is too lazy and too much of a coward to go to the Bradninch estate himself to speak to these farmers and their families. William sent some duchy manager because he (William) was literally on vacation. Imagine how much would have changed for the farmers if other British outlets had piggybacked on the Observer’s reporting with their own. Imagine an actual mainstream, front-page conversation about William liquidating duchy assets and leaving people homeless.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images and Kensington Palace’s Instagram.