Tom Bower
Treachery and dishonesty should not be rewarded. For a British judge asked to decide whether Prince Harry, fifth in line to the throne, had told the truth under oath, the burden was unusually grave. The judgment was a hard blow to Harry, but a necessary one.
By losing his case against Associated Newspapers, Harry has inflicted further damage on the monarchy, extending the harm he and Meghan have caused since leaving Britain in 2021, ostensibly in pursuit of privacy.
Trust, as Harry has now learned at great cost, is difficult to earn and easily lost. The days when he was Britain’s cherished prince are gone. Few will feel much sympathy for a man who made more than £100 million by turning against his family, the monarchy and his country. All of it, in Bower’s telling, for a wife whose appetite for fame and wealth outweighed any sense of duty or gratitude toward the family that welcomed her and the country that indulged them. Since the Netflix money dried up, Harry and Meghan have looked increasingly desperate for relevance, celebrity and income. They have become the authors of their own decline.
Harry’s original grievance was understandable. Phone hacking damaged his relationship with his longtime girlfriend Chelsy Davy, deepened his fragile mental health and fed his paranoia. His mistake was to transform righteous anger into a campaign against his family and his country. He should have seen that Hacked Off and his lawyers were using his vulnerability for their own purposes.
That misjudgment might have been contained had Harry and Meghan not tried to build Meghan’s brand through self-promotional messages and carefully staged photographs of themselves and their children. Worse still were Harry’s frantic media signals about their proposed visit to Britain this week. The Sussexes appeared to expect a police-protected return. Presenting themselves as a royal couple, they hoped to tour the country and receive the cheers of loyal Britons.
Buckingham Palace, rightly, concluded that Harry could not be trusted. By withdrawing the invitation for him to stay at Buckingham Palace after the offer had initially been declined, the King delivered a sharp rebuke to his self-destructive son and to a duchess the Palace no longer trusts. It was overdue.
Harry has now had his day of judgment. The damage he has done to Britain’s monarchy is considerable. The royal family will need time to rebuild public trust and recover its standing. Harry should return to Montecito and accept one truth: the Sussexes are no longer welcome in Britain.