Changing your mind about something isn’t always a comfortable business – particularly as a columnist, when the whole point of you is to have a fixed mindset on the issues of the day – especially when the person you’ve changed your mind about is Prince Harry.
Don’t misunderstand me. I still think he’s a whiny and deluded national embarrassment, but when I read reports yesterday claiming that the 41-year-old had probably won the right to automatic armed police protection while visiting the UK, I shocked the hell out of myself by thinking: “That was the right thing to do.”
In my defence, we are supposed to be allowed to change our minds when presented with new information, and back in October new information presented itself in the shape of a stalker who came within feet of Prince Harry on two separate occasions during his visit to the UK the previous month.
Obviously, he was always going to attract unwanted attention wherever he was in the world, but the fact that this woman had made it into a “secure zone” in the central London hotel where Harry was attending the WellChild Awards really brought the reality home. Imagine – God forbid – if something had happened to him?
Prince Harry has brought so much upon himself in recent years. He deserves the anger he prompted by disrespecting his grandmother and his father. He deserves the ridicule he will forever get for demanding privacy and then becoming a royal Kardashian. As for publishing that parody of a frostbite-and-all autobiography, there is simply no way back in terms of credibility.
Being the King’s son, however, isn’t his fault. It’s not something he will ever be able to change, either. And as much as I resent any of our hard-earned cash going towards a man who has actively tried to damage the country’s reputation abroad, I’m afraid it is the right thing to do.
There is a limit, realistically, to how much time Harry is going to spend in this country. Meghan won’t be interested in coming back to this curious little backwater with its musty-smelling churches and “bullying” sisters-in-law, so while they’re still together, it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll spend more than a couple of weeks here a year. In 2025, he spent only six to seven days in the UK across two separate visits, the second of which was predominantly taken up with charitable engagements – and, of course, that long-awaited meeting with his father.
It was long awaited not just, presumably, by the two men but by much of the British public, and perhaps now that Harry seems set to have his police protection reinstated, he might occasionally bring his children back to be reunited with their grandfather. You’d have to be pretty hard-nosed not to want that for everyone involved.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
