Omid Scobie: ‘Harry wants a truce – he reached out to William – but the wall was completely up’

If there was ever any chance of the royal family being reunited around the Christmas tree at Sandringham this year, it’s been blown out of the water by Omid Scobie, the journalist frequently accused of being the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s “mouthpiece”.

His latest book, Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival, has reportedly caused fresh havoc in royal ranks with claims Prince William “prioritised his loyalty to the monarchy over his brother”, actively leaking information about Meghan and Harry in order to undermine them. William’s “friends” have decried the claim as “outrageous”, but Scobie is sticking to his guns, insisting the Prince of Wales is “increasingly comfortable with the Palace’s dirty tricks and the courtiers who dream them up”.

Harry would like a truce, he adds, but William wants none of it. It is claimed that: “Even as recently as this year, Harry had a mutual friend reach out to his brother and see if there was space for a conversation, but the wall is completely up. It’s sad because Harry said they’d always promised each other they’d never let the petty squabbles and media briefings that tore their parents apart come in between the two of them, but ultimately that’s exactly what’s happened.”

According to Scobie, the institution of the monarchy is in danger because it’s out of touch, riddled by institutional racism and riven by infighting that’s now moved on from the two princes, to William versus his father with “a growing divide” between the King, who is fusty, out-of-touch and “hot-headed”, controlling William who’s intent on undermining his father.

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Does Scobie feel guilty about inflaming family difficulties with his book? “Anyone who rakes over the coals is going to bring up pain from the past,” he retorts. “That argument could be put to all 1,000 of us in the UK who write about the royal family. These stories haven’t been told in full, these are publicly-funded officials and we need to scrutinise them in exactly the same way we do our politicians.”

Well, he would say that wouldn’t he? A former jobbing royal reporter who made a small fortune from his first book, Finding Freedom, widely seen as having been dictated by the Sussexes (Meghan initially claimed to have had no involvement, but later in court admitted she had “forgotten” she’d authorised her PR team to brief him). Scobie has long been derided by many as: at best, “Meg’s pal”; at worst, a variety of racist names (“terrorist” being one of the more printable examples), who unquestioningly parrots the exiled couple’s “truth”.

But Scobie, 42, London-based but speaking over the phone from Los Angeles (“I am not in Montecito with Meghan,” he says laughing),  where he’s been renting a house while promoting Endgame, is adamant his relationship with the Sussexes is only second-hand.

“I’m not Meghan’s pal or mouthpiece or cheerleader,” he says. “I wish that was true because it would have made my access much easier. I’ve always been transparent. I’ve had a great relationship with their team over the years and we have friends in common.”

In fact, he stresses, the Sussexes have made it clear via the usual “insiders” that they had no input into Endgame. “When I reached out to some of my previous contacts [for the book] their response was, ‘Oh God, we don’t want to go near this again!’ It wouldn’t surprise me if Megan hates the sight of my name attached to hers. But I don’t know because I’m not her friend, so I can’t ask her.”

Endgame is definitely not Finding Freedom 2.0, but instead a damning overview of the entire royal family. “Maybe I’m naive but I hope when the book is out people will realise what it is,” says Scobie.

Endgame’s dramatic title suggests the monarchy is in its dying days. Scobie agrees, laughing, that the title’s a tad hyperbolic. “We live in a time where people have incredibly short attention spans. So I wanted this to send a very clear message. I don’t think that this is the end of the monarchy, but I do think we’ve reached a pivotal moment where it’s perhaps the end of the monarchy as we know it.”

What of the point William is an heir who thinks he could do better than his father, who he feels is incompetent?

“Charles is a much less popular monarch than his mother and receiving support in a much more visible way from other senior members of the family would do him a huge service,” says Scobie. “But we haven’t seen William and Charles together on anything. William’s already talking about how he’ll do things his way. Three days after Charles’s coronation we had briefings about how William’s coronation would be more cost-effective and more modern. But I think that modernisation needs to be happening in the here and now.”

William gets away with this, Scobie asserts, precisely because of the outrage from the (mainly) sycophantic media when someone like him suggests the Windsors are less than perfect. “People don’t like how I cover the story because I challenge things. It wasn’t intentional, but I’ve ended up a disruptor because it feels you’re doing the public a disservice rolling out puff pieces. We wouldn’t do this if this was Westminster or the White House."

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He sympathises with the royals’ frustration at the Sussexes’ tell-all tendencies. “I understand trust has been broken and Harry can be criticised for some of the things he put out in the public domain. But it’s equally important to understand everything that led to that point.”

There’s been much hilarity at the Sussexes’ lucrative – but largely unproductive – deals with Netflix and Spotify, with an executive from the latter (which has now ended the deal) dismissing them as “grifters”.

Scobie says the couple “might have thought twice [about signing] if they were not under so much financial pressure.” Scobie claims this pressure came about because Harry was bent on exposing how William’s communications aide was leaking Sussex stories to a tabloid in a deal to dissuade it from printing allegations surrounding William.

“Senior aides said, ‘If you don’t stop poking into this, you’re going to face the consequences.’ Not long later he was cut off from all financial support, including security, which Prince Charles was funding privately. That sends someone into a spin of having to sign a whole bunch of deals.”

“Obviously they had money,” Scobie continues. “But they needed serious money for a proper roof over their heads and security. It was the middle of a pandemic... Of course you’re going to sign the deals. But ultimately Spotify were looking for headline-grabbing content and that’s not the direction that the couple wanted to go in, so it fell apart.

“I’d imagine the couple knew at the start that’s what Spotify wanted from them but the money was on the table and they were in a desperate place.”

What about the long-discussed “racism” allegations made by Meghan to Oprah Winfrey and repeated by Scobie that two senior royals (rather than one as had previously been reported) had speculated on the skin colour of her then-unborn son, Archie? Subsequently, the King and Meghan exchanged letters on the subject, in “a respectful back and forth ... but serious.”

“For legal reasons, I’m not going to say the [royals in question] names,” he says. “It’s about the way the situation was handled, no accountability was taken for what happened. There’s a dismissive attitude towards Harry and Meghan in the institution and the press – either they’re considered annoying or we don’t like Meghan or there are things about them that get on our nerves. But this is about the treatment of human beings and family members. There was never any evidence to me that things the couple were doing as working royals were really rocking the boat, like ‘Oh my god, Meghan put an air freshener in St George’s Chapel!” It was all really ridiculous, I think they were actually quite willing to adhere to the system.”

He’s scathing about Kate – who apparently – “shudders and giggles’’ when Meghan’s name is mentioned, describing her as timid, malleable, but also much colder than the public might guess, something William’s friends say will also “really wind William up”. “In the coverage of Kate we infantilise her massively so the bar is always lower,” he adds.

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To talk to, Scobie is calm, measured, with an upbeat air of defiance about the fury he knows his words will ignite. Brought up in Oxford, he’s the son of a Scottish father, who ran a marketing agency, and an Iranian mother who was a child-welfare professional. His first job after studying journalism at the London College of Communication was at Heat magazine.

“I hate when people still talk about Heat. I did that job for 11 months 20 years ago. I was very excited to get it, it was selling 650,000 copies a week, but did I love the job? Not really.”

He moved on to entertainment magazine Us Weekly, where he stayed for a decade, today he reports for US network ABC and is royal editor-at-large for Harper’s Bazaar.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, while Buckingham Palace appears a hive of backstabbing, across the Atlantic all is perfect in Sussex-land. The couples’ “friends” (plenty still do talk to Scobie then) tell him after the “scary, stressful … incredibly draining” first two years in California, the couple are now “calm ... closer than ever … genuinely happy”.

Harry enjoys “sessions with a personal trainer, hikes, bike rides, acupuncture and ice baths have all become essentials”. There will be no Spare 2. Instead, he’s concentrating on his charities, particularly those with military slants. Meanwhile, Meghan will not – as rumoured – revive her blog The Tig, instead building “something more accessible, something rooted in her love of details, curating, hosting, life’s simple pleasures, and family”.

What does that actually mean? “I’m not being deliberately mysterious,” says Scobie. “My mind always goes to [Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle business] Goop, but when I suggested that to someone with some knowledge they said, ‘Oh, no, this isn’t going to be about selling products.’ So who knows? The next Martha Stewart?”

If Meghan’s been slow to launch a business it’s because she wants to distance herself from her royal past. “In the past year, she’s laid really low. They insisted the reason she didn’t come to the coronation was because of Archie’s birthday, but I know from other people in their orbit, being dragged into all the media coverage and hysteria that comes with her being within 10ft of the royal family was enough to deter her and is clearly something she wants to steer away from.”

So there will be no Meghan memoir? “I’d be surprised because the main interest in that would obviously be her time with the royal family. If I was her publicist I’d tell her to wait a while.”

Meanwhile, relations were thawing between the King and his younger son, who called his father on his birthday earlier this month.“ Charles has met his grandchildren [Archie and Lillibet], although contact between the families has been “quite small”, says Scobie. “But there have been conversations between Charles and Harry at different points. There’s a warmth growing there.

“I was surprised to hear even Meghan is now at a place where she’s sharing pictures of the children with someone on Charles’s team and whoever that is shares them with Charles. So there’s obviously willingness on both sides. But at the same time, there’s absolutely zero communication between Harry and William.”

Princess Diana wanted an endgame for “the Firm”. Does Scobie think her youngest son wants to fulfil her aim? “That’s a fun thing to say but no, Harry’s fifth in line to the throne and still proud to be a member of the family. I think the Sussexes went through a very unpleasant experience, were very hurt by it and we saw that pain play out.”

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The book seems to mark Scobie’s own endgame: he’s planning to quit the daily royal beat, settling for occasional commentary at “landmark occasions”. “I want to do other things as well,” he says. He’s learned to shrug off abuse and being “endlessly” told by angry royalists to kill himself, merely decrying on X the book’s “twisting of facts and misquoting”. “When I cut away from noise on certain quarters of Twitter, I see many people who want to have conversations about the relevancy of the monarchy. That’s only grown since the death of the Queen and that’s healthy, we live in a democratic country. I look in the mirror and know I’m doing an honest job.”

‘Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival’ by Omid Scobie is published by HQ, HarperCollins, on 28 November in hardback, eBook and audiobook