Why Harry’s security battle risks deepening his rift with the King ...Middle East

It is a measure of the rift between the King and Prince Harry that they have seen each other only once in the Duke of Sussex’s last four trips to Britain.

That 45-minute meeting at Clarence House in February 2024 shortly after the monarch had announced he had been diagnosed with cancer was curtailed as Charles left to drive across the road to Buckingham Palace and catch a helicopter flight to Sandringham. He had asked for the flight to be delayed so he could meet Harry but his schedule did not afford him any more time apparently. It did not sound like the most relaxed of meetings, even though Harry had flown to London out of concern for his father’s health.

When Harry landed in the capital last Sunday, the two men did not meet again. There was no opportunity in the time available. Of course, if relations between them had been better, Harry might have flown in earlier and spent the weekend with his father at Highgrove before the King and Queen’s departure from RAF Brize Norton on Monday afternoon for Rome for a four-day state visit to Italy.

But relations are currently so strained that when the monarch was briefly hospitalised after suffering a reaction to his cancer treatment two weeks ago, Harry found out about it from news reports.

The key cause of these strains is also the reason Harry came to London this week: for a two-day case he is taking in the Court of Appeal against his father’s government over its refusal to give him and his family guaranteed police protection and access to national intelligence when they come to the UK.

Father and son did speak on the phone on Harry’s 40th birthday in September but they did not meet when the Duke of Sussex visited the UK for the WellChild Awards that month. It was the same story, as far as we know, in August when Harry attended the funeral of his uncle, Lord Fellowes, in Norfolk.

His brother Prince William was at the funeral but they did not speak. And in May Harry returned to London for a service at St Paul’s Cathedral celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Invictus Games, his greatest achievement, but the King did not attend or meet Harry, according to well-placed sources, and nor did William.

Such is the sensitivity over the father-son relationship that neither Buckingham Palace nor the office of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will discuss it, fearing they will be accused of inflaming an already tense situation.

The King had managed to maintain an uneasy relationship with the Sussexes when they left Britain five years ago, even amid the tensions over their desire to be part-time Royals and the widening rift between them and the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Charles was thrilled to meet his then one-year-old granddaughter, Princess Lilibet, who will be four in June, for the only time when she and her brother, Prince Archie, came over with their parents for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee in June 2022.

But since then it has all gone downhill. It began when Harry criticised his father’s parenting and, more seriously, condemned Queen Camilla in his memoir Spare, published in January 2023. He described how he and his brother had not wanted Charles to marry Camilla, exactly 20 years ago on Wednesday.

He branded her “dangerous” and complained he had been sacrificed on her own PR altar by aides who, he claimed, had briefed damaging stories about him to the media in return for more favourable coverage of Camilla as part of an effort to make her acceptable to the British public.

Shortly afterwards it emerged that the King had given an eviction notice to the Sussexes, kicking them out of their UK home, Frogmore Cottage, on the royal estate at Windsor.

The ensuing row also brought in to sharp focus the bitterness on both sides stemming from Harry’s challenge to a February 2020 decision that, following their decision to quit official Royal duties and move abroad, the Sussexes would no longer receive the same level of taxpayer-funded police protection when visiting the UK.

Ravec, the Royal and VIP Executive Committee, which comes under the legal responsibility of the Home Office, withdrew their right to full armed police protection, and instead ruled it should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

In practice, that means when the Sussexes come over for a national event, such as Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, they are given armed police protection, but when they are here for private visits their personal security team, which costs them millions annually, has no access to the police or intelligence about any threats.

Harry’s challenge to that ruling since September 2021, his offer to pay for the police himself – it is not possible to buy armed police protection – and determination to go through the courts has now become the biggest cause of the breakdown in relations between him and the King.

Charles is said to be angry and embarrassed that his younger son is taking legal action against His Majesty’s own government.

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If he welcomes his son to his home, he fears that will be seen as a sign of support for him in his battles with the Home Office, Ravec, and the 10 members of its committee, who include three senior Royal aides, civil servants, and senior police officers.

But for Harry, his lack of protection is a symbol of how he has been thrown to the wolves by his family and the senior aides in the institution he has come to despise.

He believes his father could have swung it for him to receive the same level of protection as before, not least because as an Army veteran of Afghanistan and the husband of a prominent mixed race woman he argues he and his family are at heightened risk of attack from Islamist and far-right extremists.

He points to former politicians and others who still receive full protection.

Whether it is ever resolved to Harry’s satisfaction remains to be seen but his relationship with his father may only start to be repaired when the court cases are over.

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