PRINCE CHARLES was compared to the average pub bore yesterday after the release of letters he sent to government ministers revealed a catalogue of “barmy” views.

Twenty seven “black spider” letters — so-called because of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s scrawled handwriting — sent by him to Labour ministers between 2004 and 2005 were published after a 10-year legal fight. They show that he lobbied former Labour PM Tony Blair to cull badgers to tackle bovine TB and to bring back herbal medicine and acupuncture on the NHS.

Labour MP Paul Flynn said these “highly unscientific” arguments were the most alarming among the letters, which he dubbed a mixture of good, eccentric and barmy ideas.

“These are the views of the average millionaire farmer who reads the Daily Mail,” Mr Flynn told the Star.

“They hold little more merit than what a man in the pub would say to you.”

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor called for the badger cull in a letter sent to Mr Blair typed on Clarence House headed note paper in February 2005.

“I do urge you to look again at introducing a proper cull of badgers where it is necessary,” he wrote.

 The prince went on to brand wildlife campaigners “intellectually dishonest” for opposing a cull while ignoring the “slaughter of thousands of expensive cattle.”
In his letter to former health secretary John Reid, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor complained that regulation to restrict practitioners of herbal medicine was like “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

Some of the letters followed up on issues discussed with Mr Blair in person and now show that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s lobbying extended far beyond letter writing campaigns to private meetings with the then prime minister.

Mr Flynn said that the prince’s lobbying reflected “his own prejudices and those of the people who beat a path to his door.

“If he’d been influenced more by people on benefits, people depending on foodbanks or trade unionists he might have had a different set of prejudices.

“They’re not representative of society as a whole. This clearly puts the monarchy at risk.”

Mr Flynn also advised the heir to the throne to “get himself elected as an MP if he wants to express a view on Iraq.”

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor wrote to Mr Blair about the Iraq war in 2004.

In a letter complaining about defence budget cuts, he said that the military was “being asked to do an extremely challenging job without the necessary resources.”

The prince was not so keen to speak yesterday when asked about the letters by a journalist as he arrived on an official visit to an Oxford Street store.

His aides barged Channel 4’s Michael Crick out of his path and ripped the cover from Mr Crick’s microphone.

A Clarence House statement said that the letters showed the “range of the Prince of Wales’s concerns and interests for this country and the wider world.”

It also said that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor believed that he “should have a right to communicate privately.”

It is unlikely that any further correspondence will be revealed because the Mountbatten-Windsors, including the Queen, have been given “absolute exemption” from the Freedom of Information Act since the request for these letters was made by Guardian journalist Rob Evans.

Former Labour special adviser Paul Richards told Sky News that the letters published yesterday were a “tiny, tiny proportion of the vast industry of lobbying” undertaken by the prince.

Campaign group Republic called for the law to be changed to allow full disclosure of royal lobbying.

“Any risk to the monarchy from disclosure must pale against a risk to democracy from having an activist prince acting in secret,” said Republic chief executive Graham Smith.

But Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday that he backed Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s calls for “privacy.”

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