What was claimed
Videos show King Charles reporting that a leaked ‘royal insult’ from Prime Minister Keir Starmer is leading to political instability.
Our verdict
False. There is no evidence King Charles said this and we could not find any reports of a ‘leaked’ royal insult from the Prime Minister. The audio is fake and almost certainly AI-generated.
We have spotted several social media videos featuring audio that sounds like King Charles claiming that a leaked “royal insult” from Prime Minister Keir Starmer has caused political instability.
The Facebook and TikTok videos allege that this insult to King Charles leaked from a Cabinet meeting and led to a meeting between the monarch and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at Windsor Castle triggering “the fastest political collapse in modern British history”.
But there is no evidence this occurred or that the audio of King Charles is genuine.
A Google News search for reporting of any leaked “insult” made by Mr Starmer about King Charles since July 2024, when Labour took office, does not produce any credible news reports.
Similarly, there are no credible news reports of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage meeting King Charles at Windsor Castle since Labour took office, although Mr Farage was present at a reception for MPs hosted by King Charles at Buckingham Palace in January 2025.
One video also claims that education secretary Bridget Phillipson said of Mr Starmer that “she had never seen a leader so reckless with Britain’s institutions”. Again, there is no credible evidence of Ms Phillipson saying this.
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We strongly suspect that the audio in the clips is AI-generated—although as we note in our guide, it can be difficult to know for certain whether audio is AI-generated or made in another way, for example using an impersonator.
The audio in one of these clips pronounces “Number 10” as “No Ten”, a mistake unlikely to be made by an impersonator, indicating the abbreviation “No. 10” was put into a text-to-speech generator. It also features stiff and unnatural intonation and extremely even cadence, another indicator it has been made with AI.
There are also other clues that the audio is not genuine. In the clips, ‘King Charles’ refers to himself in the third person, instead of using personal pronouns like “I”, or “me”. Any discussion of ‘leaks’ from Cabinet meetings direct from the King would also breach the monarchy’s convention to remain politically neutral.
A reverse image search also reveals that footage used in one of the clips, in which he is clearly saying different words to those in the audio, actually comes from his December 2024 Christmas address, which did not refer to either Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage.
As AI technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, it is harder to differentiate between real and generated content online. Our recent blog delved into what clues to look out for if you suspect something may have been created with AI.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because there is no evidence King Charles said this and we could not find any reports of a ‘leaked’ royal insult from Sir Keir Starmer.
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