Using one’s children as a weapon in any intra-family conflict is unseemly
and cruel. To do so when the victim is your 95-year-old grandmother who has
spent her entire life devoted to public service is a despicable new low.
And, make no mistake, that is exactly what the prissy and petulant Duke
of Woke is doing, with his massive strop and ill-advised legal challenge over
the UK government’s decision to refuse him police protection when in Britain
because he’s no longer a working royal – by choice, remember.
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| If Harry doesn’t get the security he wants, he is likely to attend her Platinum Jubilee celebrations alone, leaving Archie and Lilibet back in California with Meghan |
Harry is the polar opposite of his exceptional grandmother, who,
throughout her reign, has kept her public pronouncements to a minimum and
allowed herself to be judged by her actions. I believe the couple’s latest
legal outburst amounts to nothing short of emotional blackmail.
Because Harry is making it clear that if he doesn’t get his way, he will
not bring his family to the UK, including seven-month daughter Lilibet Diana
Mountbatten-Windsor, who they named after Her Majesty (another woke gesture,
for which they didn’t bother to ask her permission) but has never met the
Queen.
In her twilight years, Harry knows all too well his grandmother cannot
travel, so there is zero chance of her making a trip to their £11 million
Montecito mansion, of which the Sussexes are reportedly already growing tired
(of course they are).
If Harry doesn’t get the security he wants, he is likely to attend her
Platinum Jubilee celebrations alone, leaving Archie and Lilibet (sorry, the
name still makes me cringe) back in California with Meghan.
It makes me angry when I think of how much the Queen has had put up with
from this pair over the course of 12 months where she has so bravely grappled
with the loss of her rock Prince Philip and had to deal with the ignominy
brought on the monarchy by her shamed son Prince Andrew.
And by God she has tried to remain cordial, managing to maintain her
cool when Harry used her private Christmas present for Archie (a waffle maker)
as a publicity stunt in an interview with James Corden and when Meghan made a
host of unfounded and untrue claims about her family to Oprah Winfrey on
international television. ‘Recollections may vary, the Queen responded
diplomatically to keep the peace.
But Harry has not repaid his grandmother in kind, with his almost
obsessive bid to challenge the Royal Family at every turn.
That said, nothing comes close to threatening to withdraw access to his
family altogether unless he gets his way. The problem for Harry is that, as
ever, he has picked the wrong target.
The Queen simply cannot and will not interfere in security decisions
made by the British government, no matter how much she might personally want to
see Harry. She knows that would not be appropriate or politically palatable.
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| The Queen simply cannot and will not interfere in security decisions made by the British government, no matter how much she might personally want to see Harry |
And, as has been widely discussed over the past 24 hours, the precedent
that would be set by offering Harry Met police officers every time he visited
is unfathomable.
The Duke of Sussex is seeking a judicial review against the refusal by
the Home Office, but a government spokesman has said: ‘The UK protective
security system is rigorous and proportionate.’
The Home Office position is right; the rich and privileged cannot simply
buy access to the British police. The Met has had severe resourcing issues over
the last decade which means they often can’t even investigate crimes committed
against members of the public. The government would be turning the Met into
literal guns for hire.
There would be nothing to stop other high-profile British celebrities
from all walks of life – be it Richard Branson, Harry Styles, or Nigel Farage – from demanding similar protection.
It’s not as if the police are going to ignore any genuine security
threats made against the Sussexes, but they will be treated just as all threats
are.
Harry faces far more bother from the truly wild paps working for
websites like TMZ in his new home of California, which is exactly why he
probably pays privately for security thanks to the tens of millions he is now
raking in from Netflix, Spotify, BetterUp, Ethic and whatever other company is
prepared to pay them shedloads for, it seems, doing hardly anything.
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| For me, Harry’s embarrassingly entitled strop over his loss of police protection proves he is now regretting his decision to cut all royal ties, even if he’s far too stubborn to ever admit it |
Over the period of two miserable years following their marriage, Meghan
convinced Harry they could go it alone and there was another life for him, a
life that involved great opportunities in Tinseltown and even greater wealth.
Predictably, even with those riches, Harry cannot accept that the
trappings of royalty, which he always claimed to hate, have now slipped through
his fingers.
When I first revealed Megxit, Harry was smarting over small fry issues,
like the fact, his family hadn’t been included as a picture on the Queen’s table
during her Christmas address.
He was convinced the mere threat of him skulking off was going to see
royal courtiers – and his father and grandmother– give in to their ludicrous
half in/half out proposal, so Harry could have his royal cake and eat it too:
Access to official events, a state-funded mansion on the grounds of Windsor Castle,
an office with staff at Buckingham Palace, and, of course, state security all
around the globe as an internationally protected person.
These were the sorts of issues senior courtiers and his relatives tried
to warn the petulant Sussexes about on a constant basis as they plotted their
plans in Canada over Christmas in 2019 with a bunch of Hollywood yes people who
didn’t know a thing about the workings of the monarchy. But the royal staff
were batted away branded as being men in grey suits trying to make their life
difficult.
Harry has created a fantasy world in his head of what the UK is like, no
doubt egged on by Meghan, who appears to want to make her husband as embittered
towards his own family and own country as possible.
But the more his outlandish behaviour continues and the more pain he
puts the poor Queen through, the more the British public feels like saying: Stay
in California and don’t bother coming back.
