Would you let Prince Philip drive you home?

The story about Prince Philip and his unfortunate car accident in which the female passenger of the other car involved broke her wrist took over the headlines last week, relieving us all of the endless Brexit drama. The Philip story is continuing if only because Buckingham Palace, despite learning the biggest lesson of its life when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash on August 31 1997, has still not got its public relations skills worked out properly. The Prince Philip crash is still being investigated by the police but the basic details are known. The Queen's 97-year-old husband emerged in his fancy Land Rover 4x4 from a side road onto the busy A149 not far from the Queen's Sandringham Estate and collided with a Kia travelling at an as yet undisclosed speed. But the result was dramatic. Prince Philip's car was flipped over and ended up on its side. All the fuss since then has been on how the Palace reacted to the accident. The woman with the broken wrist said she had received no apology, no flowers and no personal visit or telephone call from either Her Majesty the Queen or from Prince Philip. All she got was a message from the Palace via the police liaison officer saying that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh "would like to be remembered to you". Now you have to say that's a pretty odd message. "To be remembered to you". What exactly does that mean? Shouldn't there have been a little more caring and sympathy? Obviously their lawyers would have advised against a full apology because that would indicate acceptance of responsibility for being the cause of the crash. But even so, the wording could and should have been different. Who advised the Queen and her husband to use the "remember" word? Surely not a switched-on public relations official with even the most limited experience of how tabloid journalism works in this country. But the Palace is all about protocol. All words intended for public consumption have to be worked out with infinite care. Some senior flunkey in the Palace will have advised that "remembered" was better than, say, "condolence" or "hope you're ok" or "sorry about your injury" or "any time you're passing the Palace come in for tea". So the injured wrist woman felt hard done by and spoke to the Sunday Mirror which meant headlines in every other newspaper as well. Another lesson in PR for the Palace. In the case of Diana of course, the Queen stayed up at Balmoral while the whole country grieved and had to be persuaded by Tony Blair, then prime minister, to return to Buckingham Palace to see for herself the extraordinary outpouring of emotion of her subjects. The Philip crash is a tiny incident by comparison, but the lesson is the same.