It’s fascinating to watch, in real time, as the Middleton family clings to what little power and clout they have, all while the monarchy and the British media has their knives out. Carole and Michael Middleton’s Party Pieces collapsed in May and June of this year. Carole and others badly mismanaged the company and then defrauded banks, vendors and local businesses out of £2.6 million, money which will apparently never be paid back. There have been two separate poster campaigns in Bucklebury, calling out the Middletons’ fraud and pointing out that they should just sell their big manor house to pay off their debts. The problem is, as James Sinclair (the new PP owner) pointed out, the Middletons “haven’t got the kind of money people think they have.” And what’s worse is that there’s seemingly no way for them to start another company and begin to pay off these debts. From a Daily Express exclusive:

The Middleton family registered a company called First Birthdays with Companies House in the UK some years ago which they planned to launch once they had sold off their Party Pieces empire. However, we can reveal that following the collapse of their party planning business with debts of more than £2.6million, Carole and her husband Michael have finally decided to hang up their “entrepreneurial” dream and focus on family instead.

“The Windsor name took a minor dent when Party Pieces collapsed because of all the money it owed to hard-working people,” the source said. “There’s no way that the Palace will want that kind of thing to happen again. The royals are meant to be inspirational for hard-working people, not those that are seen to profit from the loss of others.”

Companies House records show that Carole and Michael set up the ‘First Birthdays’ business in 2006 to secure the name but it has remained idle since then. However, the couple signed on to keep it running as a dormant company in May of this year and changed the address of the company on August 31 from Party Pieces Childs Court Farm to The Manor Bucklebury in Reading, where the family now lives in a plush £4.7million mansion.

“The couple were busy planning their next move but have now scrapped any future business plans to protect their daughter’s reputation,” the source said. “Anything the Middletons do will inevitably swing back on Kate, so it’s best that her mum and dad keep a low profile moving forward.”

It was revealed last week how the Middletons have been the subject of a malicious hate campaign in their hometown of Bucklebury ever since their Party Pieces firm went bust owing millions to creditors.

“Everyone was surprised by how much money paper hats and cups were making, so nobody was surprised when Party Pieces collapsed,” the source said. “We just hope that the people affected will get their money back.”

[From The Daily Express]

One of the most shocking things to me is that I always considered James Middleton to the be the family’s black sheep, the one with zero business sense, the one who kept crashing company after company. As it turns out, James is a chip off the old block – the Middletons were well known grifters and everyone knew they were lying about their wealth for years. How embarrassing! Seriously, there’s a reason why Carole has disappeared from public view – she’s humiliated, her house of cards collapsed and the palace has made it clear that her lying grifter days are over. No more “businesses” being propped up God knows how. No more defrauding local businesses and small vendors. As someone who has always believed that the Middletons were never what they appeared, the past six months have been amazing to watch.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.