There are arrivals that go smoothly, and there are arrivals in which the accommodation situation is publicly disputed before you have cleared customs, and Harry’s Tuesday arrival in the United Kingdom is the second kind, which is not atypical for a man whose every visit to his home country has generated more legal and logistical paperwork than most people produce in a lifetime.
Harry arrived in the UK today without Meghan, Archie, or Lilibet. GB News had exclusively reported Monday that Harry had accepted King Charles’s offer to stay at Buckingham Palace during the visit, which is the building described by royal sources as “the safest building in Britain,” and which Harry has spent four years arguing his family needs to be inside to be safe. Buckingham Palace’s aides then publicly denied, per GB News, that Harry would be staying there. Harry’s spokesman told GB News in a furious statement that the Palace denial was inaccurate, and that the exclusive GB News had reported was correct. Both the denial and the statement denying the denial are now in the public record, which is a tidy summary of how communication between Harry and the Palace tends to work.
The complications around Buckingham Palace as the accommodation, per GB News, partly involve the fact that Harry is due to discover today, while on UK soil, whether he has won his landmark privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail. The King must remain constitutionally neutral in all legal matters, which means housing a son who is simultaneously in active litigation with a major British publisher while a verdict is pending is the kind of constitutional nuance that produces palace aides briefing against their own accommodation offers.
A royal source told The Telegraph, per GB News, that the drama surrounding the Sussexes has become “tiresome,” while another described Harry as having “painted himself into a corner” over the security issue and said he “needs an off-ramp.” Several critics have described his approach to Archie and Lilibet’s potential visit as “emotional blackmail,” which Harry’s side describes as a father trying to see a grandfather who has cancer, and which are both accurate descriptions of the same situation depending on which side of the palace gates you are standing on.
Harry’s programme commences with an Invictus Games Foundation event at Chatham House in central London, followed by a public appearance at Royal Hospital Chelsea. The children remain in Europe.
When a man arrives in his home country to find his accommodation publicly disputed by his father’s household on the day a court is due to tell him whether he won his lawsuit against a newspaper, what exactly is the visit for?
Sources
GB News: Prince Harry arrives in UK amid bitter spat with Buckingham Palace aides
GB News: Buckingham Palace left frustrated as Harry’s meeting with King hangs in balance
