Why is Prince Charles accepting bags stuffed with cash?

After the excitement of the Platinum Jubilee, complete with emotional tributes to ‘mummy’, Prince Charles might have been forgiven for wishing to avoid the limelight for the summer. But the heir to the throne is once again in the news. Following the recent revelation that he is said to find the government’s policy of flying refugees to Rwanda ‘appalling’, the prince is in the headlines with a story that is less likely to appeal to the progressives who briefly kept company with him. Once again, Charles has been embroiled in an incident (‘scandal’ is not quite the word being used at the moment). Once more, his basic judgement has been called into question.

The details, as reported in the Sunday Times, are almost comical, as well as questionable. In 2015, Prince Charles met Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar – aka ‘the man who bought London’ – at Clarence House, and was given a bag containing €1 million (£860 million) in cash.