The Duke of Sussex appeared to be quietly seething in his latest interview. Speaking to the BBC journalist Nada Tawfik on Friday evening after losing a court battle in which he had sought to overturn a downgrading of his security, he took aim — without raising his voice — at his family, the royal household and the government.
At the heart of Harry’s fury is a bureaucratic issue: how a Whitehall committee known as Ravec (the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures) operates. Ravec, which takes decisions on behalf of the government, decided the prince would not automatically receive comprehensive security when in the UK after he and Meghan stepped down as working royals in 2020, although he still receives state-funded protection on a case-by-case basis.
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The interview caught nearly everyone by surprise, including the royal household, who only found out about it from the BBC about half an hour before it aired. Traditionally, some hours are given for a response.
Here are Harry’s claims and how they stack up.
Charles, then the Prince of Wales, with his son in 2014
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“Whatever noise is being created, whatever stories are being written, this [Harry and his family’s security] has always been the sticking point.”
In Harry’s account, the cause of the rift between him and much of the rest of the royal family is this question of whether he, his wife and their children are being kept safe. This is a case of Harry — in the Californian vernacular he has adopted since marrying Meghan and moving to Montecito — having his own “truth”, while his kin have a “different truth”. A major barrier to a rapprochement in the eyes of the King and the Prince of Wales is Harry’s repeated airing of private family matters in public, from his memoir Spare to his Netflix documentary series with Meghan. This latest outpouring, then, will not aid the re-establishment of harmonious relations.
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“A whole list of risks and threats that were known about in 2020 … including the al-Qaeda threat that was published and talked about recently, [have been] completely disregarded, thrown away, ignored.”
Prince Harry has previously said that he faces a greater risk than his late mother, Princess Diana, with “additional layers of racism and extremism”. His security concerns have merit. The terrorist group al-Qaeda called for him to be murdered after he revealed in Spare that he had killed 25 Taliban fighters during his military service in Afghanistan. Harry has returned only rarely to the UK, and Meghan has not been here since 2022. In a statement Harry posted on the couple’s website on Saturday, he added that he had received threats from neo-Nazis and extremists, and that there are individuals in prison over such threats.
Members of the royal family have been targeted in the past. In August 1979, the Queen’s cousin, Lord Mountbatten, was one of four people killed by an IRA bomb planted on his boat while he was on holiday in Mullaghmore, near Sligo. The social media age has brought new threats: Harry, Meghan and even their children are subjected to savage abuse online.
Harry with Meghan. She hasn’t visited Britain since 2022
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The opposing view here is that Harry no longer warrants the level of protection he is asking for. “He is fifth in line to the throne now, so the attention on him and the threat is just not what it was. When he comes to the UK, he is most likely to be either in places that already have substantial security or — if he is staying with friends, say — where people don’t know where he is,” said a senior security source.
“What I find strange is that some former prime ministers hate having security around them all the time — they find it claustrophobic — yet Harry wants to return to that.” Another government source noted that Harry had travelled to Ukraine last month.
“What I’m struggling to forgive, and what I will probably always struggle to forgive, is that a decision that was made in 2020 that affects my every single day, and that is knowingly putting me and my family in harm’s way.”
Harry claims that he has forgiven Charles, William and Camilla for a lot of things, but he draws the line at forgiving those responsible for this decision. He feels that in 2020, the hope was that reducing protection for him and Meghan would prevent him leaving the royal family so his security was used “as leverage” and to try to trap them in the royal family, a claim disputed by those on the other side of this decision.
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“There was a question anyway of: ‘Did Harry need protection at all times, and what the right level of protection was to give minimal hassle but keep him safe?” said a security source. “The PM and monarch have very high levels of protection, but actually most others have relatively little. It’s a question: do you need armed police, or just alarms in your house, or a police priority when you call 999? Very few people get that high priority.”
“One of the first things my lawyer said to me was: ‘Did you know that the royal household sat on Ravec?’ and my jaw hit the floor.”
This is the knottiest part of the issue. Harry implies that the royal household had put pressure on Ravec to reduce his security, and accuses Ravec of breaching its own rules. He is writing to the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, to ask her to review the process. Harry points out that to this day, his representative on Ravec is the royal household, who should be there to promote his interests, something he would not choose.
There are no signs of reconciliation between Harry and William
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However, while Ravec does have members of the royal household on it — since the coronation in 2022, Sir Clive Alderton, the private secretary to the King and Queen, has sat on it — royal, Whitehall and government sources all dispute that the Palace influences its decisions. “The Palace does not tell Ravec what to do — Ravec does an independent assessment in which they look at the threats and the risks,” said a senior government source. “Ravec reaches decisions independent of the Palace. This is not the palace ringing up and demanding it of the committee.”
“I’ve been treated very, very, very differently to everybody else … People who leave public office receive lifetime protection, regardless of whether there are threats or risks to them.”
Harry feels he has been singled out by having full-time protection removed from him. He emphasises his contribution to the UK that make him deserving, including two tours of Afghanistan. He also said that he has given “35 years service to his country”, which, given that he left life as a working royal at the age of 35, means he is counting his infant years.
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He also contrasts his treatment with prime ministers who no matter how short their tenure, receive lifetime protection. However, there is a specific reason for this. “What you don’t want is a prime minister having in the back of their mind — while they are deciding whether to take retaliatory action against a terror group or even to go to war with another country — that one day, they won’t be protected from that same group,” said a senior government source.
“Some of the British tabloid press did a very good job in campaigning to have our security removed by quoting figures such as £20 million … Those figures are obviously grossly exaggerated by about 18, 19, times.”
It is difficult to estimate how much it would cost to provide around-the-clock security for Harry and his family when they are in the UK, not least because it is unclear how much time they would wish to spend here if he considered it safe to do so. However, a government security expert said that to provide the family with 24-hour armed police protection could require about six officers, given entitlement to rest and time off. “It is very expensive to the public purse,” he said.
“My status hasn’t changed. It can’t change. I am who I am. I am part of what I’m part of, and I can never escape that.”
Harry repeatedly returns to the idea that even if he has stopped being a working royal, he cannot escape the risks that come with being a member of the family. He also says that he is not treated as a private citizen, either by the media or the public and certainly not by people who “want to harm me or my wife or our kids”.
His critics will point out that despite moving to Montecito in California, theoretically to escape life in the goldfish bowl of the royal family, he and his wife have continued to court attention, with their Netflix series and podcasts. “They are repeatedly putting themselves in the public eye,” a security source said.
“I can only come to the UK safely if I’m invited and there is a lot of control and ability in my father’s hands. Ultimately, this whole thing could be resolved through him, not necessarily by intervening, but by stepping aside, allowing the experts to do what is necessary.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Harry is clear that his father should not intervene, and yet he briefly seems to say here that his father should have got involved. For the monarch to step in would appear to contravene the constitution. More broadly, Harry’s fight has put his father in a very difficult position, with his son suing the King’s government in the King’s court over a decision taken by a committee that also determines the King’s security. A Palace spokesperson said: “All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”
“Look at the risks, look at the threat, look at the impact that if anything was to happen to me, my wife or my father’s grandchildren, if anything was to happen to them, look where the responsibility lies. So there is a duty of care that has been completely thrown out of the window.”
This is where Harry puts the most emotional case to his family over his security, including seeming to hint at the guilt that would be felt if something happened to one of them. Notably, he describes his own offspring, Archie and Lilibet, as “my father’s grandchildren”.
Charles and Diana in 1981. Harry appeared to refer to his mother’s fate in the interview
ANWAR HUSSEIN/GETTY IMAGES
“I don’t want history to repeat itself. I think … the majority [of people] also don’t want history to repeat itself. Through the disclosure process, I’ve discovered that some people want history to repeat itself, which is pretty dark.”
This is perhaps Harry’s most shocking statement: in an apparent reference to the death of his mother, Princess Diana, he said that he believes that not only are there people indifferent to his security, but also there are those who wish him ill. He did not elaborate on this point and did not name these people.
“I don’t know how much longer my father has. He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff, but it would be nice to reconcile … Reconciliation can’t come without truth … If they don’t want that [reconciliation]that’s entirely up to them.”
Harry’s commentary on the King’s health will not have gone down well among his family. Royal sources told ITV News on Saturday that Harry’s surprise interview had “further alienated the royal family and pushed back the chances of a reconciliation”, adding that the comments about his father’s cancer were “in particularly poor taste”, and that his grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth, would have been “horrified”.
