William’s fake news critics can’t accept they were wrong

Sir Winston Churchill is often erroneously said to have remarked: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

Yet with the Prince William race scandal that never was, we witnessed the truth getting halfway around the world and catching a number of commentators, who should have known better, with their pants down.

If you are lucky enough not to inhabit the Twittersphere then you may have missed the second-in-line to the throne being falsely accused of racism after visiting a Ukrainian community centre with the Duchess of Cambridge on Wednesday.

A royal reporter mistakenly reported that he had referred to “Africa and Asia” while discussing the “horrifying” invasion of Ukraine, only for video footage to later emerge showing that he had said nothing of the sort. What the Duke actually said was: “For our generation, it’s very alien to see this happening in Europe. But we’re all right behind you. We’re thinking about you. We feel so useless.”

But it was too late for the virtuesignallers of this world who had already made their minds up that Prince William was guilty of some sort of prejudice, presumably in part on account of him being white and royal.

Martin Luther King Jr’s daughter led the way in saying the Duke’s comments were “horrific”; a CNN anchor told his 3.3 million Twitter followers Prince William ought to “read a book about your own family, dude”.

Activist Dr Shola Mos-shogbamimu was among those who doubled down even after the comments were revealed to be fake news.

Omid Scobie, Harry and Meghan’s hagiographer, later whined about being criticised. But if you are going to fan the flames, expect to get burned, dude.