BREAKING NEW : Humiliating setback that serves Prince Harry right – no wonder King said ‘no more’
He won’t forget this week in a hurry – and neither will we
Carole Malone, right, believes Prince Harry will regret the events of this week (Image: Getty / Express)
It’s been one hell of a week for Prince Harry – one he won’t forget in a hurry. First, he was told that, because of shenanigans over his UK visit, he was no longer welcome to stay at Buckingham Palace. Then came the multi-million-pound sucker punch – news that he had comprehensively and humiliatingly lost his phone hacking and privacy case against the publisher of the Daily Mail.
Every one of the 97 allegations made by Harry and six other high-profile people – including Elton John, Liz Hurley and Baroness Lawrence – was thrown out by Mr Justice Nicklin who said not one of them had proved a single allegation. These were all people – aided and encouraged by the execrable Hacked Off Campaign – who were determined to bring down a newspaper they said had been bugging and hacking their phones.
Now all of them look vindictive, humiliated and more than a little bit stupid. But still Harry refused to accept he’d lost – claiming it had all been a ‘whitewash’ and the whole Establishment was against him (change the record, Haz). Now the Daily Mail is seeking to claim back the £50million costs of the court case for which Harry is likely to have to stump up. And frankly it serves him right. For years he has waged a bitter war against the tabloid press blaming them for the death of his mother when the fact is she was killed by a drunk driver in a Paris tunnel – not the British media.
Harry and his Barrister, David Sherborne (Image: AFP via Getty)
But isn’t the whole premise of him suing the Mail for invasion of his privacy beyond farcical bearing in mind he’s the bloke who treacherously invaded the privacy of his own family by parading all its dirty secrets on the global stage in his book Spare? Doesn’t he see the irony of that? When he talks about newspaper companies evading justice, invading privacy and wrecking people’s lives, doesn’t he stop to think that’s exactly what he did to his own family – for money?
And let’s not forget that in Spare he boasted of killing 25 Taliban – and if there IS now a terror threat against him as he claims (and which I doubt) he might ask himself if that little boast might have had something to do with it. Doesn’t Harry see the hypocrisy of wailing about privacy when Team Sussex spends endless hours leaking stuff to pet media outlets to ensure we all know exactly what he and Meghan are doing – especially if it makes them look good.
This man has, and still is, handing out intimate secrets about his life and his family to the world, yet he has the gall to whine about his privacy being invaded.
As I said at the start – this is a week Harry won’t forget in a hurry because it was the week when not only the High Court publicly slapped him down but the King did too. And it’s about time. Only a bone fide saint could have endured all the to-ing, the fro-ing, the chaos, the psychodrama, the media circus, the frustration and the rudeness Prince Harry and Meghan bring with them everywhere they go. And which he brought to London this week. But finally, the King said: “No more.”
Because finally he sees his son has yet again embarrassed him by claiming his invitation to Buckingham Palace had been withdrawn for no reason. But it wasn’t for no reason. It was because Harry fecked about having been told weeks ago that the deadline for his acceptance to the Palace invite was last Friday.
He missed the deadline but he told the King on Saturday that he wouldn’t be staying at Buck House because it was nowhere near secure enough. Eh? Buckingham Palace is one of THE most secure buildings in the land with armed guards everywhere. And it’s a damn sight more secure than wherever the Sussexes were holidaying in Europe last week and wherever they might now be staying in the capital.
Anyway, after his formal rejection of the Palace invite, the staff getting their rooms ready for Megan and the kids, who Harry had said were coming, were dispatched elsewhere. Then hours later, the capricious Harry suddenly said he wanted to come on his own for one night at which point the Palace snapped and said: “No, you can’t.”
Knowing he wasn’t going to be staying there, Team Sussex still briefed that he was – presumably trying to bounce the King into changing his mind. But the ploy didn’t work and the Palace immediately said he wasn’t. But what the hell was Harry thinking? Was he purposefully trying to make his dad look like the bad guy? The truth is Charles was hacked off, not just at the disrespect his son had shown him but the disdain and disrespect he’d shown for the staff who’d been working like crazy to get rooms ready for him and his family.
And all this shows what entitled brats Harry and Meghan are. Do they really think they just have to click their fingers and our King will do whatever they demand? We were all told – mainly by Harry and Team Sussex – that this five-day visit was the start of a possible reconciliation with the royal family, that the King would finally get to meet the grandchildren he hasn’t seen for four years.
But you have to ask – did Harry ever really want a reconciliation? Did he really want his kids to get to know their grandad? Because if he did, he could have done it all quietly and privately behind closed doors. He didn’t need to create this circus over his security which hasn’t just robbed his dad of the chance of seeing his grandkids, it’s also snatched attention away from the Invictus Games which Harry was supposedly here to promote.
As usual he’s made the whole visit about HIM and what HE wants.
For months he’s talked about making up with his “Pa”. A new life, a new start were there for the taking. Maybe what Charles was offering was never going to be the life Harry had before Meghan. How could it be with everything that’s happened. But it could have been the start of a different one.
And Charles was prepared to offer him that despite the fact Harry had betrayed his family and the Monarchy in the most hideous way imaginable. Maybe it was also because the King is 77 and has cancer and because he didn’t want to leave this world estranged from the son he’d grown so close to in the years after Diana’s death.
Whatever it was, he generously created a pathway for Harry to come back into the royal fold which would have allowed Archie and Lilibet to get to know all their uncles, aunts and cousins. And it would have given HIM the chance to be their grandfather.
But Harry has thrown all that back in his face and still, after everything he’s done this week, he’s playing the victim, claiming nothing that’s happened is his fault – when we all know it is.
Prince Harry is never going to be at peace and he’s never going to be able to make peace with the family he claims to love because they’re no longer interested in the chaos he causes wherever he goes. In the past five years he hasn’t changed or grown up one jot. He’s still the man stupid enough to think that, along with his wife, he could topple the House of Windsor and topple the media they hate – not realising he’s a match for neither.
In the eyes of the world he’s reduced himself to a spiteful irrelevance to both his family and the British people. And he brought it all on himself.
