Prince Harry is in Danger of Becoming an Embittered Middle-Aged Man Consumed by Toxic Nostalgia

It was my pleasure to speak to Kinsey Schofield about the brief and chaotic return last week of Prince Harry and Meghan. As we discussed, one thing that Harry has in common with his mother is that they both showed a willingness to take on the so-called ‘men in grey suits’.

However, while Diana chose to scrap official protection and pay for her own security, seeing this as a crucial step in regaining her independence, her son has decided he wants independence but for someone else to foot the bill when he is in the country.

I discussed why one of the greatest tragedies of Diana’s death is that she had defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. My book and the Panorama interview three years later caused a firestorm, but by 1997 she was resolutely looking forward and carving out a powerful niche as a campaigner independent of the Royal system but still capable of huge global influence.

Harry’s biggest problem is that, as he has grown older, he has been increasingly living in the past. Nostalgia comes for all of us at some point or another, and it can present as a kind of lovesick homesickness for a time when we felt happy and safe or as a rather toxic anchor that prevents us from moving on to pastures new.

Key also is the apparent belief in Harry and Meghan’s minds that popularity should have translated into a higher status within the Royal Family. In the heady days of excitement leading up to their wedding, and amid the huge global interest in the pair after they walked down the steps of St George’s Chapel, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex clearly felt that they were not being given their due as the new superstars of the Royal Family.

Prince Andrew, Princess Margaret and Edward VIII, when he was Prince of Wales, were all more popular than their siblings for a time. However, what King George VI, Queen Elizabeth II and now King Charles III have shown is that popularity is never a substitute for the daily and unglamorous grind of royal duty. Best to play the long game rather than the fame game.

As Harry expressed again and again in his vituperative book Spare, he was more popular than his brother, and the Royal Family were threatened by the arrival of the strong-headed and independent Meghan. In actual fact, the Royal Household bent over backwards to try and accommodate the new Duchess, and the Queen offered her the sage advice of some of her closest and most senior advisors.

The bigger problem was money – as Meghan herself was reported to have said on their first official trip to Australia – ‘Why aren’t I being paid for this?’ When your baby shower costs £500k, even the famously generous civil list isn’t going to touch the sides.

As the Sussexes have seen since their angry and long goodbye, the British public value duty above the whims of popularity and have little truck with self-pity and a business model that seems to rest entirely on trashing their family and the country.

Varying recollections are another common theme in this story, and Harry and Meghan’s outlandish claims have, time and again, been shown to be inaccurate and to have failed to live up to scrutiny. Even the timing of the supposed racism regarding the colour of Archie’s skin didn’t add up, and Harry dishonestly said later on that there had never been a suggestion of racism.

Harry’s failed court case last week showed in technicolour the difference between his conception of the truth and the actual truth, and friends of mine such as Katie Nicholl went through a torrid time as serious accusations threatened to ruin their careers. His response afterwards that it was a whitewash demonstrates his callous disregard for those caught up in the crossfire of his war against his enemies. As Harry has discovered to his £50m cost, nostalgia ain’t what used to be.

Harry himself has used racist and homophobic language, dressed up as a Nazi and fallen out of more nightclubs than Katie Price. Yet all of this was forgiven by a country that had enormous sympathy for what he had to go through. Yet, seemingly, forgiveness is a one-way street for a man who could start an argument in an empty lift. It is a case of accountability for thee but not for me.

One also has to suspect whether Meghan is as tired as the rest of us of the self-defeating and multi-directional fury of her husband. She didn’t support him in court during any of his appearances and declined, too, to join him, as planned, at the Invictus launch last week. The couple will now have to sell a lot more jam and flower sprinkles to cover Harry’s share of the gargantuan legal bill. Time to join his wife in embracing the future rather than dwelling in the past. It is a lesson too he could learn from his mother.