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Richard Eden of the Daily Mail was much ridiculed when he first unveiled his “Project Thaw” narrative—the idea that King Charles III is secretly engaged with a group of civil servants trying to ease Harry back into public life in the United Kingdom.
But the coordinated messages now coming out of Harry’s office and the King’s office have taken this idea out of the realm of fact-free conspiracy theory.
At the state opening of Parliament this week, King Charles read out a speech which included a very specific pledge: “My government will take urgent action to tackle antisemitism and ensure all communities are safe.”
Also this week, Prince Harry published a lengthy opinion piece in the New Statesman—a famously left-leaning British magazine—warning of the deeply troubling rise in antisemitism in the United Kingdom.
I would point out that Harry has not spoken out about antisemitism in the past, and for very good reason: A man who wore a Nazi uniform to a party is not a good person to lecture the rest of us about the issue, even though, according to his autobiography Spare, the whole outfit thing was all Prince William and Catherine’s fault anyway.
I looked at the article and thought: typical Harry, stealing the thunder from Catherine while she’s off in Italy doing her event. Harry can’t let anyone breathe for 48 hours without getting stuck in.
But there was more.
King Charles appeared in the London neighborhood of Golders Green to meet two Jewish men who were stabbed in an antisemitic terror attack there on April 29. He met the Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis. He met the Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer patrol who helped detain the attacker. He met the Hatzolah ambulance crew. He told a member of the public: “It’s a dangerous world, isn’t it?”
The Royalist went directly to the Sussex offices for comment, and asked them a simple question: was Harry’s New Statesman piece coordinated with the king’s office?
Team Sussex denied it. They said they never received an operational note about the king’s visit, that it was “coincidence.”
A pretty big coincidence, and one that prompted the Royalist to look again at Harry’s intervention on Ukraine— you know, the one that came just days before King Charles went to America, in which Harry made some very similar comments to what his father said in his joint address to Congress.
Sources told the Royalist after that speech that Harry and Charles were aligned on the issue, and that Harry was very gratified by what his father said in America.
There wasn’t a suggestion of a secret alliance at the time. But that is what I now think is happening.
If you look at the Ukraine episode more cynically, you have to ask: Was this a case of the government wanting to see how a member of the British royal family criticizing America’s actions in Ukraine would go down with the Trump administration? Was it a testing of the waters? Was Harry, in fact, being used as a very useful way for the government to put across a quasi-official position, with plausible deniability—because if it all blows up, Harry’s nothing to do with them!
I now think that, if the Trump administration had reacted really badly to what Harry said, or if there had been an explosion of outrage in the American media, the king’s speech in America might have looked and felt a little bit different.
And of course this all feeds into the bigger point that Harry’s real ambition is to come back to the U.K., to reintegrate, to get his father’s blessing to be some kind of quasi-royal, half-in, half-out. This is what he always wanted.
Everything Harry talks about or does now is about the United Kingdom. Why is a man who claims to be very happy living in California, who hasn’t lived in the U.K. for six years, suddenly weighing in on antisemitism in Britain? I’m not saying it’s not a serious issue. But it seems like a curious cause for someone who doesn’t live here.
Based on a lot of conversations over the past year, I can tell you that Harry does intend, in some shape or form, to move back to the U.K.
I think it’s pretty obvious that it hasn’t worked out in America for him.
Even if Meghan has sold a million pots of jam, Harry looks lost. He is unhappy and he wants to come home.
And if he wants to do that, it’s going to be incredibly difficult unless he has significant political support from the establishment and the King.
It’s very hard for Harry to move back in any significant sense without political and institutional support. We know Harry believes his father holds the keys that unlock the whole security issue.
But is his father encouraging him? Is he tacitly endorsing him? Have they, indeed, actually had closer contact than we have been led to believe?
Charles does not want his final years to be defined by estrangement from his son. I have said, repeatedly, that his dearest wish is to be reconciled with Harry, and his second dearest wish is for his sons to be reconciled with each other.
It’s easy to understand the human impulse. Charles has always been at great pains to remind us that he is a person, that he is compassionate, that he has a soul. Any parent would want to reconcile with a child.
Charles and Harry are temperamentally very alike; both impetuous, impatient with the institution.
But I think as King, you have to draw a distinction between what’s good for you as a human and what is good for the nation and good for the institution.
Bringing Harry back into the fold—excusing everything he said in Spare, everything he said in the Netflix documentary, everything he continues to stand by about how awful the British royal family are—is going to be incredibly unpopular.
Charles platforming him in this way, tacitly endorsing him, in this way is incredibly dangerous. I think it makes Charles look weak. I think it’s unpopular.
Charles’s approval is at about 60%. It’s not brilliant. It’s not a disaster. It’s holding up. But a lot of that is down to his position and respect for the institution. If you look at what British people actually think about the best way to deal with Harry (or Prince Andrew), I think the consensus is much closer with Prince William’s view: this guy tried to wreck the monarchy and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it.
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