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Marie Claire
Marie Claire
Lifestyle
Kristin Contino

King Charles Was Accused of Being Too "Woke" By Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson wearing a navy suit and tie standing next to King Charles and looking at him quizzically .

Boris Johnson was known for his contentious stances on a range of issues during his stint as Britain's Prime Minister, but now a new book revealed what the politician really thought about "woke" King Charles's viewpoints on the U.K.'s colonial past.

In his forthcoming book Out: How Brexit Got Done And The Tories Were Undone, political writer Tim Shipman detailed how Johnson disagreed with The King on addressing slavery.

Johnson was in office before Queen Elizabeth died and Charles had taken the throne, but the then-Prince of Wales made his thoughts about one government stance quite clear. Per the book (via GB News), "Charles had described the conservative government's plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda as 'appalling.'"

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) was being held in Kigali, Rwanda in 2022, and according to Shipman, Charles was concerned that Johnson's deportation policy would create unnecessary "tension" at the event.

Johnson reportedly didn't agree with The King's "woke ideology." (Image credit: Getty Images)

At the time, Prince Charles "revealed that he wanted to respond to the widespread fury about colonialism unleashed by the Black Lives Matter campaign, by acknowledging the evils of slavery." However, this didn't go down well with Johnson.

"Johnson, despairing that even the monarchy had been captured by woke ideology, was blunt," per Shipman, who wrote that the former Prime Minister admitted he "went in pretty hard" on Charles for putting his nose into governmental policies.

As for the royal, Shipman claims that he told Johnson, "Well maybe, inadvertently, without intention I may have said something."

During CHOGM 2022, Charles said, "I cannot describe the depth of my personal sorrow at the suffering of so many as I continue to deepen my own understanding of slavery's enduring impact."

This isn't the first revelation about Boris Johnson in recent weeks; according to the politician's memoir, Unleashed (via the Daily Mail), he was asked to give Prince Harry a "manly pep talk" to convince him to stay as a senior member of the Royal Family.

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