Omid Scobie’s scathing book expected to blame embattled civil servant Simon Case for deepening the rift between William and Harry

Omid Scobie’s book is expected to blame controversial Cabinet Secretary Simon Case for deepening the rift between William and Harry.

Mr Case, who is on medical leave from his job as the country’s most senior civil servant, is understood to have been warned that the book will accuse him of spreading negative stories about Harry when Mr Case was Prince William’s private secretary.

It is the latest drama to engulf Case, 44, who has been criticized for his role in Partygate and for sending controversial WhatsApp messages to Matt Hancock, the then health secretary, during the pandemic.

It is believed that Mr Scobie’s book, Endgame, alleges that Mr Case planted stories in the press such as Harry and Meghan’s use of private jets – in contrast to William and Kate’s patronage of budget airlines – as part of a campaign to portray William as the responsible heir compared to Harry the dissolute ‘spare’.

A Whitehall source said: ‘Simon comes across as a shrewd careerist. It’s the last thing he needs after the year he’s had.”

In his memoir, Spare, Prince Harry named the three most senior palace advisers the Bee, the Wasp and the Fly – believed to be Sir Edward Young, private secretary to the Queen, Clive Alderton, who worked for Prince Charles, and Mr Case.

Harry wrote: ‘I have dealt with courtiers all my life, dozens of them.

“But now I was mainly dealing with just three, all white, middle-aged men who had managed to consolidate power through a series of daring Machiavellian maneuvers. . . The Fly had spent much of his career alongside, and even attracted to, s***.

“The offal of the government and the media and the wormy innards, he loved it, it made him fat and he rubbed his hands over it with glee.”

It was reported yesterday that Mr Case’s absence on sick leave has left the civil service ‘leaderless’ as senior civil servants ‘seek positions’; Case took four weeks of medical leave last month, but doctors have now said he won’t be able to return until 2024.

He was due to testify this month at the Covid inquiry, in which he would have been asked about WhatsApp messages in which he said he had ‘never seen a group of people less equipped to run a country’.

Mr Case was also criticized in Nadine Dorries’ book The Plot: The Political Assassination Of Boris Johnson, which the former culture secretary refused to show to Cabinet in advance because Case would have had the power to veto its contents.

The Cabinet Office last night declined to comment on behalf of Mr Case.