Prince Harry recently lost his legal argument, with a High Court judge ruling against his eligibility for publicly funded security protection as a non-working royal.....
He's in the middle of a legal battle with non other than the Home Office over its 2020 decision to strip him and his wife, Meghan Markle, of around-the-clock protection after they resigned official royal duties.
Harry's Argument...
Harry argues that he remains vulnerable to threats given the celebrity of his public life.
His current grievance mainly rests on what he sees as unequal treatment and broken promises—specifically a grievance that he was assured security would be maintained after the so-called "Sandringham Summit" in 2020.
Harry's defenders maintain that the current regulations are patchwork and perhaps unsafe.
There's also the fact that other former officials—such as former Prime Minister Liz Truss—are automatically given protection, although they arguably caused more political harm than Harry ever did. If anything were to happen to Harry on British turf, the outcry would be enormous. It would not be seen as the bad luck of the husband of a retired television actress but as an assault on the son of the sitting monarch.
Unrealistic Expectations...?
However Harry is no longer a working royal and not even resident in the UK—so why should British taxpayers have to foot the bill for his security?
And we also have to question how genuinely concerned he really is for his safety.... If he was that afraid for his life, why has he travelled 5,000 miles from California to stand in court in person...?
Bigger Issues....
This is not, however, simply a question of whether one man is deserving of personal protection.....
At the core of this case is the issue of how Britain decides who should receive state-funded protection—and why.
It also raises the question of whether protection is a matter of status, or risk? Prince Harry remains one of the most identifiable members of the Royal Family, and he is not new to threats, especially after inserting himself into the spotlight with inflammatory interviews and a salacious memoir.
Final thoughts...
Easy for me, I don't think the Royals should be publicly funded anyway, Harry and Meghan are multimillionaires NOT living in the UK, if they're feeling vulnerable they can damn well pay for their own security!