Zac Goldsmith ducks Boris Johnson rebuke for accusing Prince Harry of ‘blowing up his family’

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Government minister Zac Goldsmith has avoided a rebuke from Boris Johnson after accusing Prince Harry of ‘blowing up his family’.

The prime minister’s official spokesman refused repeated requests at a Westminster media briefing to comment on the Foreign Office minister’s outburst, in which he appeared to point the finger of blame at Meghan Markle for the rift between Harry and the rest of the royal family.

The spokesman confirmed that Mr Johnson had watched Harry and Meghan’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey when it was aired on ITV on Monday evening.

But he refused to discuss what the PM had made of the couple’s allegations of racism within the royal family and complaints that Meghan was discouraged from seeking help with her mental health when feeling suicidal.

Responding to inquiries with a brick wall of silence, the spokesman responded to every query by repeating the PM’s words before viewing the interview last night, when he said: “I’ve spent a long time now not commenting on royal family matters and I don’t intend to depart from that today.|

Asked whether it was appropriate for Lord Goldsmith as a minister to comment, when the PM did not feel it right for him to do so, and whether the Tory peer would face any sanction for doing so, the spokesman again declined to respond.

In an outspoken tweet on Monday, Lord Goldsmith responded to suggestions that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had “dropped bomb after heavy bomb on Buckingham Palace’ in their interview.

Lord Goldsmith wrote: “Not ‘Buckingham Palace’ - Harry’s family. Harry is blowing up his family.  ‘What Meghan wants, Meghan gets’.”