This week, the Telegraph had an interesting exclusive about the Sussexes’ lack of police security in the UK. As we well know, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex decided to suddenly move themselves and their two children to the UK in August, and they did so with zero security guarantees and nothing locked-in besides their own private security. When they moved back, it was said that Prince Harry tried to force the moment to its crisis and he basically challenged the Home Office to give his family some kind of police protection for their indefinite stay. The Home Office and RAVEC have done little more than push papers and slow-walk their assessments. Now the UK’s Home Secretary has ordered a full review of all VIP protection. The Telegraph’s sources made it sound like Harry is both hopeful and concerned. Meanwhile, Team Sussex’s PR is very over-the-top positive, like everything about their move to the UK has been a basket of kittens. Still, sources keep tripping over the security issue as the one big hang-up. Now Charlotte Griffiths’ sources are saying that Harry and Meghan actually “don’t have high hopes for their security, and they’re a bit worried about how they’re being received here in the UK, and it’s getting them down a bit.” From Tom Sykes’ coverage at the Royalist:

For most of this year, the line from Prince Harry’s camp on his security has been one of breezy confidence. At the start of the year, unidentified sources who seemed to be pro-Sussex said a Home Office review of his security provision was a formality and that restoration was “nailed on”. Last month, as I reported, his team were still sounding optimistic.

Around the same time, the Daily Mail’s Alison Boshoff reported that Harry believed his case for taxpayer-funded security was strong on both need and entitlement, and that a Ravec decision in his favor, amounting to a U-turn, was expected within days. She also reported that a friend of the duke had said that if the security was NOT forthcoming, Harry would “go back to Montecito for good”, possibly as soon as the October half-term.

That was then. Now, Charlotte Griffiths reports in the Mail that the Sussexes no longer hold out much hope on the security front, that they are anxious about the reception they have had in Britain, and that it is all starting to get them down. She also reports that they could head home if the security decision goes against them (the Sussexes dismiss all this).

The Telegraph reports that Harry and his team are weighing their next steps, worried that a sweeping new government review of the whole system of security could hold up any decision on his security or leave his arrangements “the same”. His allies fear the root-and-branch review, announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in a statement to the House of Commons on Monday, following the killing in July of Ann Widdecombe, the former Conservative MP who was a Reform UK spokeswoman at the time of her death, could “delay any decision” on whether H&M receive state-funded protection.

After six years of litigation, leaked threat assessments of terror attacks and letters to the Home Secretary, this is a striking thing to see briefed from Harry’s side. It is not the language of a camp gearing up for victory. It is the language of a camp very obviously managing expectations.

Whatever this exercise is, it is not the fast-track appeal for the Duke of Sussex his side so craves. Nor is the direction of travel encouraging for him. The Home Secretary has said she will consider recommendations to “reform and rebalance” the system so that it meets the current threat while giving the taxpayer value for money. She told MPs the state’s resources will be “rebalanced to protect those people and places that need it most.”

…Meanwhile, the actual process grinds on. Harry had a Risk Management Board review in July, the outcome of which has never been made public, and which was completed before his plans to move the family back to Britain were known. The Telegraph reports that he has yet to receive the result. After the move, ITV News reported that Ravec had commissioned fresh assessments for Harry and, separately, for Meghan (her first since the couple left the monarchy in 2020). But the couple were also told, according to ITV, that the new assessments “does not mean that the level of their protective security will be increased”, only that their situation was being looked at again.

A month on, there is still no decision. Home Office sources, according to the Mirror, describe Harry’s correspondence with the department as “incessant.”

Harry has, rather inconveniently, undermined his own case. After losing his Court of Appeal challenge, he said in a TV interview that he “can’t see a world” in which he would bring his wife and children back to the UK. In August, he did exactly that, landing at Birmingham Airport on August 26 with private security rather than police officers.

[From The Royalist Substack]

I think Sykes is a lunatic deranger, obviously, but his last point is (in my opinion) valid. Regardless of what the Sussexes’ current security situation is and whether the risk assessment will ever be completed, Harry’s volte-face is shocking. Either he was exaggerating last year when he spoke about the dangers facing his family, or he was telling the truth in his BBC interview and he still chose this reckless path a year later. It can’t be both, you know? I also think Sykes is correctly reading the tea leaves about Team Sussex’s attempts to manage expectations around risk assessments and police protection. This predates the move as well – back in July, everything from Harry’s office ahead of his UK trip was that he believed that he would have police protection by the time he landed in England. He did not. Instead, he walked into a massive trap. His family, RAVEC and the Home Office f–ked him over in July, and I feel very strongly that they’re about to do the exact same thing months later.

Photos courtesy of Meghan’s Instagram, Kelly Zajfen’s Instagram, Backgrid.