Spare, a thought

Why Prince Harry will never get a fair hearing – no matter how hard he tries

Like many people, I wish he hadn’t written it. I wish it didn’t contain the revelations it does. And I wish it had not caused such divisions. But unlike many people, I fully, wholeheartedly support Prince Harry’s right to write his memoir Spare and understand why he’s done it. In his mind, I believe, he had no choice.

Cards on the table, I’ve always felt sympathy for Harry and his position. I’ve always been saddened that people don’t cut him more slack, don’t empathise more with his inner demons, his mental health issues, his bereavement, his ‘lostness’, and don’t seem willing to at least try on his point of view.

Spare, and the round of TV interviews heralding its publication this week, is packed with stories, claims and rants. Of course nobody but Harry and his brother and father know the detailed veracity of these, and whether his account is more reliable than the Palace’s “recollections may differ” line or the Press’s gleeful anti-Sussex narrative. Maybe all the claims are true, perhaps none. Anyone who’s ever tried to arbitrate a playground “he said, she said” spat knows that when one biased, unfiltered version of events collides with another, the truth is often somewhere in between.

But I do believe Harry’s core truths: that he got woefully insufficient support following the death of his mother; that everyone welcomed in theory the idea Meghan would modernise an anachronistic royal family until they realised it might actually happen; that the tabloids are largely to blame for his current state of mind; and that his frustration is borne of never being allowed to complain or step out of line or have a personality, ever.

Palace's lack of response proves Harry's point

Whatever, he’s certainly speaking out now, and I say good luck to him. (He’ll need it, but we’ll get to that.) His frustrations about he and other royals having to preserve the stiff upper lip and maintain a lifelong stoic silence, whatever effluence is flung at them from whatever quarter, certainly do ring true. I’d imagine, for instance, that Camilla wants desperately to defend herself against Harry’s claims that she sacrificed his reputation to rebuild her own, but the Palace machine is preventing her from doing so, because the seemly and traditional thing to do is to soak up such brickbats in silence. The lack of Palace response to these claims alone neatly gives Harry enough rope to hang himself in the court of public opinion (“See? That shows you’re out of line Hazza, speaking out is NOT the way things are done”) while simultaneously and ironically proving everything he said about lack of support for females marrying into the family is absolutely correct.

But it annoys and irritates me that Harry isn’t getting a fair hearing, that his every move to tell his version of events is so negatively marked. And the reason for this is clear: it’s not because of his fractured relationship with his family, it’s down to his non-relationship with the British press.

The problem he will always have is that everything that goes on in his life is filtered through the lens of the media he hates, and which, let’s make no bones about this, absolutely delights in hating him. Therefore he has absolutely no chance of being heard objectively, now or ever. Everything he tries to do to put his side will be judged by a public whose understanding of events comes through the distorted lens of a wilfully antagonistic, amoral tabloid press.

(I’m not saying some of Spare’s revelations aren’t out of line – the Taliban death toll was particularly and dangerously crass – or that at least some of Harry’s publicly aired laundry shouldn’t have been dried in private. Of course it should. But even without all that, he’s always now going to be mocked and/or despised by the tabloids, and as a sad result, much of the public too.)

Why Harry will never forgive the tabloids...

The UK’s national newspapers hold a fantastically privileged and disproportionately powerful position. Every single day the handful of unelected people who control them shape public opinion with unchallenged biased narratives – and at the heart of Harry’s Fleet Street feud is, of course, that the tabloids never have and will never accept accountability for the role they played in the death of his mother.

A Gallup poll in late 1997 found 43% of the British public deemed press photographers “extremely” responsible for the fatal Paris crash – that’s 10% more than blamed Diana’s chauffeur. In the months following, Fleet Street tried to mitigate its reputational damage as the Press Complaints Commission drew up a new code of practice around privacy and some papers, including the Daily Mail, pledged they would never again buy paparazzi pictures (a vow that was remarkably quickly broken). But even these were just broadbrush responses. National newspapers and their editors still, in 2023, get very prickly towards specific individuals who suggest Diana’s death was their fault. It’s undeniable that Prince Harry’s mental health, and his whole outlook on life and the Press, were forever shaped by that tragic Paris night, and it is probably a large chunk of the reason behind his lifestyle choices of the last couple of years. His comments, and his lifestyle choices and justifications for them, are a constant visible reminder of the Press’s culpability for the death of Diana. This immediately and always puts Fleet Street on the defensive – and the tabloids’ best form of defence is always, always attack.

And, when the Press gets a bee in its bonnet – and I speak as a former native – integrity, honesty and any sense of fair reporting do tend to go out the window. About a year ago a friend of mine got some shifts on the online desk of a leading British red-top. He quit after the first one, in which he was asked to spend the entire day – the entire day – trawling through the internet to “find any stories you can that are negative or damaging about Meghan Markle”. Who knows, maybe if he’d stayed, the next shift would have seen him asked to spend seven hours digging out negative stories about Charles or William. But let’s assume probably not.

... And why the Press will never support him

So Harry can try to frame his arguments as lucidly and as reasonably as he likes, but he will always – likely until the day he dies – be represented in the Press, and presented to the public, as “the spoilt brat with that controlling wife who between them let down the Queen”. (And it will be “the Queen”, because you stoke up far more emotive public fury claiming someone’s upset an aged, frail, dying grandmother than a faceless institution.) The press loves William, because William, as heir to the throne, plays the game and has never publicly criticised it. But Harry, because of his non-heir status and lack of a real role or responsibility, can speak out, and in turn our Fourth Estate makes his life hell. He will never win this battle. The tabloids and their unmandated bosses always have too much power, and always sufficient levels of that power to drag public opinion along with them.

But say, just for once, we were allowed to view Harry without the filter of the biased media coverage and try to see his point of view. If you, like him, were given a completely meaningless lifelong role as soon as you were born, would you be happy with that? Suppose you were told you couldn’t ever complain or speak out about it, wouldn’t you have a problem with that? If you were suffering, really hurting after, say, your mother died suddenly when you were 12, but felt your cries for help were shut down at every turn and thought the only way to get anyone to listen was to scream and shout, wouldn’t you do that? Let’s say you thought certain people were responsible for killing your mother but even your own family insisted you still had to smile dance obediently to the killers’ tune, would you really be okay with that? If you felt the need to move away to protect your wife and child, wouldn’t you do that? And if you were cut off from an income but knew you could monetise your experience with stories of an organisation that you felt had so harmed you, wouldn’t you do that?

And to all those people who say Harry’s disingenuous in his demand for privacy while publishing such an indiscreet memoir: If, for all your claims about wanting a private life, you really felt no-one had listened, you’d exhausted all avenues and if you didn’t do something, tragic history was going to repeat itself for you and your wider family’s children and grandchildren, wouldn’t you want to tell people what was going on, in the hope of changing it? I believe I would. I believe that when put like that, most people would.

Even so, you might say, the above questions may be fair but Harry still shouldn’t behave like this. He has a responsibility to the Crown, to the people, to the country. But does he? Really? Especially if he no longer gets an income from the Royal family? If we want a modern monarchy, should we really expect our Royals to serve us, unquestioningly, and put duty above everything else – even if we’re not paying them to do so?

Because that is what we do expect, even of those who will never be monarch. Well, some of the time we do. As a public (led, as always, by the Press), we’re a bit inconsistent in our treatment of those with such dilemmas: When Edward VIII was forced to choose between love and royal duty and followed his heart, we as a nation vilified him for the rest of his life; yet when Princess Margaret was given the same ultimatum and chose duty, the Press led public outrage against an out-of-touch monarchy that denied a young woman her happiness and freedom; and now Harry has chosen that happiness and freedom over a dutiful and pointless life of personal torment, we lambast him for letting down his country and then won’t give him the time of day when he tries to explain his reasons. I reckon we need to make up our goddamn minds.

We're judging a life we haven't lived

So is it so unreasonable to cut Harry a break? We have not lived the unique life he has, yet we all presume to sit in judgment on him. And we all sit also in judgment of his wife (“Harry’s okay but I don’t like Meghan, she’s ruined him, he’s under her thumb” etc etc etzzzzzzzz), whom we know only through – you guessed it – how she is portrayed in the media.

That’s why I don’t blame Harry for writing a book. That seems to be the only way, after decades of stifled anguish, he can put his side of the story without it being massaged through by a Palace publicity machine determined to preserve a stuffy status quo. I don’t blame him, either, for engaging in the round of high-profile interviews around it – any publisher would take a dim view of an author who refused to do publicity for their book and anyway, why go to all the trouble of writing that memoir if you’re not going to promote it?

I will, though, also say this. I hope that is that, now. Harry has been desperate to put out his version of events, and has now forcibly made known his opinions. That was his stated aim, and that job is now done – he’s said his piece and we’ve heard him. And that being the case, it’s now surely time, Harry, to move on, to enjoy your life in California and make reparations with your family in private.

I will be delighted to see Prince Harry and Meghan again on my TV, and regularly, carving out a new life in the US, supporting and promoting good causes, using the Windsor name to add weight to philanthropic organisations that reflect their own beliefs around diversity, cementing their role outside the Royal family as people who can really make a positive difference. Harry has a brilliantly engaging personality and I’d love him to prove to those who dismiss him as a whinger that all he wanted to do was set the record straight, and now he's done that he will move onto a next, happier chapter, without the need to comment further on the events that brought him to this point.

It’s not just about Harry – I really hope, albeit without much confidence, that the Press allows him to move on from this. But whatever happens, I’d love Prince Harry to prove that was his plan all along: to say his piece, then draw a line and show himself as a man with so much positive action still to offer. As the man I believe him to be.

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