quinta-feira, 9 de julho de 2026
After losing to the Mail, Prince Harry seems doomed to a sad life in California. And he did it to himself
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After losing
to the Mail, Prince Harry seems doomed to a sad life in California. And he did
it to himself
That phrase
is the exact headline of an opinion piece written by former royal correspondent
Stephen Bates, published by The Guardian.
The article
was prompted by the High Court's dismissal of a major £50 million privacy
and phone-hacking lawsuit brought by the Duke of Sussex and several other
high-profile claimants against Associated Newspapers Limited, the publisher of
the Daily Mail.
The
Context of the Commentary
The author's
premise reflects a sharp shift in British public sentiment following the
ruling. The piece argues that Prince Harry's self-isolation from the Royal
Family and his relentless legal campaign against the British press have
ultimately backfired, leaving him increasingly isolated:
- A Crushing Legal Blow: The High Court definitively
ruled that the claimants failed to prove the publisher used unlawful
information-gathering methods. The judge emphasized that "suspicion
is not proof," delivering what commentators called an "epic
fail" for Harry's self-described life's mission to reform the media.
- Staggering Financial Risk: Because the lawsuit unraveled
so completely, Harry and his co-claimants are now facing an estimated £50
million ($67 million) legal bill as the publisher moves to recover its
defense costs.
- Deepening Family Estrangement: The timing of the loss
coincided with fresh friction during his UK visit. Reports emerged that he
missed a deadline to accept an accommodation offer from King Charles III,
meaning he could not stay at Buckingham Palace and was forced to secure
his own lodging amid ongoing disputes over his security detail.
The
Sussexes' Response
Prince Harry
strongly rejected the court's findings. In a joint statement with fellow
claimant Baroness Doreen Lawrence, he condemned the judgment as "a
complete and obvious whitewash" and called the court's exoneration of
the newspaper "shocking as it is totally unwarranted".
While
critics view the outcome as a self-inflicted exile to Montecito, Harry's
supporters maintain that his legal battles are a necessary, principled stand to
protect his family from the same aggressive tabloid scrutiny that targeted his
late mother, Princess Diana
After losing to the Mail, Prince Harry seems doomed to a sad life in California. And he did it to himself
After
losing to the Mail, Prince Harry seems doomed to a sad life in California. And
he did it to himself
Stephen
Bates
As the
family travails worsen, it’s a wretched time to lose face and maybe millions of
pounds to his tabloid tormentor. Epic battle, epic fail
Wed 8 Jul
2026 16.46 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/08/prince-harry-daily-mail-royal-family
It really
hasn’t been a very good week for Harry. The fifth in line to the throne will
retire to Montecito, his gated California fastness – not, as seemed at least
possible a week ago, having visited his mother country to public sympathy and
applause, mending a few broken fences and seeing his old dad again. Now instead
it will be a retreat in confusion, not having stayed in a palace, or seeing his
busy pater, and worst of all, bested at huge cost by the Daily Mail, the bete
noire of all bete noires.
The
prince might reflect that he has brought many of his troubles on himself. He
will leave with the rightwing press chortling that, for a crusader for personal
privacy, he has outed himself much more comprehensively than they ever managed
with his rancorous TV interviews about how horrible his family has been to him,
his glutinous Netflix series and, most of all, his memoir Spare, with its
revelation, among much else, about his frostbitten penis.
Worse
still, his obsessive campaign against the tabloid press has dragged other
people, most notably Doreen Lawrence, with him into a legal case he was
unlikely ever to win. As Mr Justice Nicklin pointed out in his 436-page ruling
at the end of the three-month phone-hacking trial, inference and hearsay are
not enough: hard evidence is needed. Perhaps his lawyers should have pointed
that out and perhaps they did, and he didn’t listen. It was unfortunate that
the chief witness, Gavin Burrows, retracted his evidence that he had been paid
to hack celebrity phones 20-odd years ago, but without him the case was fatally
undermined.
Harry, or
his lawyers, should known that newspapers don’t like to be challenged and
employ their own legal teams to check details painstakingly closely before
publication (the legal director was a former Labour shadow attorney general
when I worked there). The Mail simply could not afford to lose, especially
against the prince, and it was relentless in fighting the case. No wonder its
former editor, Paul Dacre, was crowing on Tuesday night as the paper lavished
the story across 11 pages with sententious moralising about the freedom of the
press.
The
ruling may well kick press regulation further into the weeds, so Harry’s hopes
of wielding the simple sword of truth – as Jonathan Aitken, a former,
spectacularly unsuccessful litigant against the Guardian, once had it – would
seem to be indefinitely delayed. Instead, on 29 July a hearing will begin to
give a ruling on the reported £50m legal costs of the action, much more than
Harry alone can afford and enough to blast a large hole in Elton John’s bank
balance – let alone those of Doreen Lawrence, so revered in the UK for her anti
racism campaigning, or the former MP Simon Hughes, both of whom were fellow
claimants. Dacre was particularly hurt by Lawrence after the Mail championed
the family when their son Stephen was killed by white south London thugs in
1993. There was talk yesterday of an appeal against Nicklin’s judgment, but
with the judge having dismissed all 97 allegations against the Mail, this would
seem to be wishful thinking.
It is
unlikely that King Charles will help to pay his estranged son’s debts as the
late Queen apparently did his uncle Andrew’s, after the Virginia Giuffre case.
At least, the king may reflect, Harry did not learn the news while staying at
Buckingham Palace.
Harry’s
rancour against all those he believes have persecuted him have long since cost
him most public sympathy, in the UK at least. The world does not see him on his
terms. His demands for special treatment, including police protection for his
family while he is in Britain, are unlikely to be met while he is not
performing royal duties, and his apparent spurning of the offer of a bed in one
of the 52 state bedrooms at Buckingham Palace on his current visit will not
elicit much understanding.
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