All around Prince Harry’s Mail/ANL lawsuit judgment, the Telegraph went full-on, mask-off deranger. It’s not a surprise, of course, but it’s worth pointing out that the British press operates as a cartel, and they view a lawsuit against one paper as an existential threat to their entire industry. The Telegraph’s reporters went to Chatham House for Harry’s Invictus event, and they pored over his every move, glance and smile to claim that he was “defeated” and “anxious.”

In the wake of the judgment, the Telegraph then published several columns which were just… ridiculous, vile and unsettlingly dangerous. There was one which was so bad, I think it’s grossly irresponsible to even excerpt some of it for our own records – Alison Pearson ranted for three full pages in “It’s time to remove Harry from the line of succession.” My god. Then they got Camilla Tominey to write this one, “Harry’s courtroom humiliation is a victory for accountability over entitlement.”

The timing could not be more ironic. As Prince Harry limps away from a catastrophic £50m legal defeat, the world watches the man who has spent years torching his own privacy now claim victimhood once again.

For years, royal watchers have pointed out the obvious: that no one has invaded Harry’s privacy more enthusiastically than Harry himself. The bombshell Oprah interview, the Netflix docuseries, the multi-million-pound tell-all memoir Spare, in which he boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he applied cream to his frostbitten penis.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have commercialised “Megxit” with ruthless efficiency, yet somehow the blame always lands elsewhere – on the “men in grey suits”, as Princess Diana once described them, on the tabloids, or the very institution that once gave him everything.

The past week has only reinforced the pattern. A very public briefing war with Buckingham Palace painted Harry as the eternal victim. First, taxpayer-funded security for Meghan, Archie and Lilibet was denied. Then came the furore over the use of a royal residence. It was the Sussexes doing what they do best: playing the system while positioning themselves as its helpless targets.

But this court case against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, was never just about Harry. It was a high-stakes assault on press freedom itself. Harry, Sir Elton John, Liz Hurley and other high-profile figures brought 97 claims of unlawful information-gathering. They pursued the action aggressively, with deep pockets and well-paid lawyers. They did it because they wanted the Daily Mail – an irreverent Right-wing newspaper they despise – dead and buried. But they lost on every single count.

Mr Justice Nicklin delivered a withering verdict. The claimants, he noted, had relied heavily on “inference”. Put bluntly: feelings are not facts. With no illegality having been proved, the claimants now face eye-watering legal costs on top of already extravagant expenditure on this case.

This was never a noble David-versus-Goliath crusade. It was vengeance dressed up as virtue. Many celebrities happily weaponise the media when it suits them, demanding copy approval, cultivating puff pieces, and monetising favourable coverage. But when the press reports uncomfortable truths, like Hugh Grant’s dalliance with the prostitute Divine Brown, suddenly the Fourth Estate becomes public enemy number one.

[From The Telegraph]

Uncomfortable truths like… celebrities’ medical records and voicemail messages? Uncomfortable truths like racist character assassinations? Tominey also pulls back the curtain in the same way the Mail’s EIC Paul Dacre did – the judgment in this case was 100% about stopping Leveson 2. The first Leveson Inquiry exposed the widespread criminality of the British press, and post-Leveson, that same press has spent fifteen years systematically destroying anyone and everyone who tries to hold them to account or alter the corrupt system they facilitate and nurture.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.