The remarkable thing about the whole Prince Harry mess is that at any moment (yes, even now, even after the disastrous verdict handed down this week, in which he lost his £50 million case against the publisher of the Daily Mail in the most comprehensive fashion imaginable, even after his insulting suggestion that Justice Nicklin is part of some huge establishment conspiracy against him) Prince Harry could pluck vicory from the jaws of defeat.
It would be astonishingly simple. It would take about five minutes. And it would be, by some distance, the smartest thing he has done in six years.
All Harry would have to do is stand in front of a microphone (with Meghan at his side, naturally, in the time-honoured manner of these things) and say something like this:
“I have reflected carefully on the judgment handed down by Mr Justice Nicklin, and I want to begin by thanking him for the extraordinary diligence he has brought to this litigation over several years. I spoke hastily in the immediate aftermath of the judgment, for which I apologize. I accept the verdict in full, and I will not be appealing it.
“I had hoped for a different outcome, but it was not to be, and I respect the decision of the court.
“I also want to say that I now accept the decision of the Home Office that, as I am no longer a full-time working member of the royal family, I am not entitled to automatic armed police protection. Again, I had hoped for a different outcome, but I am grateful to everyone at the Home Office and on my team for the enormously hard work they have done over the years, and for hearing me out when I made my case. I have complete confidence in the unrivalled British police to keep me and my family safe when we are in the U.K.
“There is one person to whom I owe a particular word. My heart goes out to Baroness Lawrence. It was I who first contacted her about this case, and I accept that my position as a member of the royal family may have encouraged her to believe that it was stronger than it turned out to be. If my involvement led her into this, I am sorry.
“Finally, my wife and I have decided that we will no longer use our titles, and that our children will not use the titles of prince and princess. We do this freely and without bitterness, following the example set by my uncle Prince Edward and my aunt Princess Anne.
“I love my country. I love my father and my family. I apologise for any distress I may have caused them. I want to spend more time here, and I hope that today draws a line under the events of the past few years.”
A magnanimous, dignified, self-aware, and humble statement like this is what is called for now, which might go some way to undoing the damage caused by the disgusting comments he made yesterday, calling the verdict, “a complete and obvious whitewash.”
The model here is George Michael’s statement in 2008, after he was arrested in a public toilet on Hampstead Heath in possession of crack cocaine, a set of circumstances, let the record show, considerably more compromising than losing a privacy claim. Did he cry stitch-up? Did he blame the toilet attendant, the Metropolitan Police, the judiciary, the dark forces of the establishment? He did not. He issued a statement saying: “I want to apologise to my fans for screwing up again, and to promise them I’ll sort myself out. And to say sorry to everybody else, just for boring them.” It remains, for my money, the greatest celebrity mea culpa ever issued: funny, honest, self-aware, and utterly disarming. Nobody loved George Michael less for it; most of us loved him rather more.
By contrast, Harry’s dismissal of Mr Justice Nicklin’s 436-page judgment, which threw out every single one of the 97 allegations of unlawful information gathering made by Harry and his six co-claimants, including Sir Elton John, David Furnish, Sadie Frost, Liz Hurley, Sir Simon Hughes and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, as yet another establishment stitch up, was breathtaking in its arrogance.