Prince Harry wants ‘reconciliation’ with Royal Family but says King ‘won’t speak to me’
Prince Harry has said he wants “reconciliation” with the Royal Family – but claims the King “won’t speak to me”.
In an interview with BBC News after losing a legal challenge over his security in the UK, the Duke of Sussex said “there have been so many disagreements between myself and some of my family”.
He said he had now “forgiven” the Royal Family, but added that the security row, “that has now been ongoing for five years with regards to my human life and safety”, is “the sticking point” and “the only thing that’s left”.
“Of course, some members of my family will never forgive me for writing a book,” he said, referencing his 2023 memoir Spare, where he made a series of claims about the Royal Family.
He added: “Of course, they will never forgive me for lots of things but… I would love reconciliation with my family, there’s no point in continuing to fight anymore.
“Life is precious. I don’t know how much longer my father has, he won’t speak to me because of this security stuff. It would be nice to reconcile.”
In a statement, Buckingham Palace said: “All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”
It’s understood that the King felt it would have been constitutionally improper to intervene while the case was being considered by the government and reviewed by the courts.
It comes after Harry earlier today lost his legal challenge against the UK government over the level of security he receives when he is in the country.
After he and Meghan stepped down from full-time royal duties and moved to the US in 2020, the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (Ravec) decided to downgrade his high-level police protection for when he was back in the country.
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Harry loses security appeal
Since then, the duke has argued that his private protection team in the US no longer had access to the UK intelligence information needed to keep his wife and children safe.
At the Royal Courts of Justice on Friday, Judge Sir Geoffrey Vos said that while the duke’s safety concerns were both “powerful and moving”, his “sense of grievance” did not “translate into a legal argument”.
Harry ‘let down’ by ruling
In the interview, he said he cannot “see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point” because of the security decision.
Harry added he was “let down” and felt the decision was “a good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up,” before adding he worries the decision sets “a new precedent that security can be used to control members of the family”.
He said he believes “what it does is imprison other members of the family from being able to choose a different life,” and added: “If, for me, security is conditional on having an official role – one that both myself and my wife wish to carry on, but then was rejected… by the Royal Household – and the result to that is you lose your security.
“That basically says you can’t live outside of their control if you want to be safe.”
Duke: PM should ‘step in’
The duke also said “this all was initiated under a previous government” and said he would ask Sir Keir Starmer and the home secretary to “step in”.
He said he would ask Yvette Cooper to review Ravec and its members, “because if it is an expert body, then what is the Royal Household’s role there, if it is not to influence and decide what they want for the members of their household?”
Ravec includes people from the Home Office, Cabinet Office, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Metropolitan Police, and the Royal Household.
It previously decided Harry should have a “bespoke” arrangement for publicly-funded security when in the UK, as he was no longer entitled to the same protection as working royals after stepping down from full-time duties.
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The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
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Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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