It is hurricane season again in the Atlantic. Although it is exceedingly rare, hurricanes — or at least their extratropical remnants resulting in strong winds — have battered the United Kingdom in the past.
One hurricane of a royal familial sort already struck hard earlier this year in the form of Prince Harry, the duke of Sussex. The ensuing gale force torrents of air produced by Harry were fueled, in part, by the clash of hot Montecito air he exhaled when, in a written statement, the self-exiled son of King Charles III brashly condemned his father’s government in the polar arctic air of a British courtroom in London.
The destructive force of Harry’s words was of a Category 5 nature, at least in terms of the damage they immediately caused — and are causing — to the United Kingdom.
It is one thing for him to pursue his legal claims, as is his right, against alleged illegal media activity. It is quite another for him to attack His Majesty’s government, declaring it to be “at rock bottom.”
Harry has, in fact, just breached an inviolate British convention whereby the royal family remains above and apart from the fray of domestic politics. The 38-year-old prince who grew up as the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and served his country in Afghanistan as an Army helicopter pilot apparently missed that block of instruction.
He clearly has no grasp of the gravity and responsibility of the affairs of state. Or, perchance, if he does, then he clearly does not care how his words and actions, in pursuit of personal goals or vendettas, actively undermine the national well-being and security of the country of his birth.
This naïveté, if that’s what it is, began with his Oprah Winfrey interview in March 2021. He and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, implied that someone in the royal family was racist — an implication not disowned until 21 months later, when Harry denied it in an interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby in December 2022.
Notwithstanding the damage Harry and Meghan Markle did to the Commonwealth of Nations and the UK’s standing within it by allowing that implied accusation to hang in the air, the troubled duo greatly compounded the harm they had caused by subsequently permitting Afua Hirsch’s derisive description of the 56-member alliance as “Empire 2.0” to be associated with them during the “Harry & Meghan” Netflix series.
As such, perceived royal familial grievances were blindly allowed to turn into an insinuation of a UK malevolently intent on exploiting its Commonwealth partners.
It is bad enough to play into the hands of Russian and Chinese disinformation in this fashion. But now Harry’s crusade against his family has created a constitutional crisis in the UK. Fortunately, for now, at least from King Charles’s perspective, calmer heads are prevailing.
Despite being the target of Harry’s courtroom ire and blindsided by it while traveling in the U.S. to meet with President Joe Biden to discuss the war in Ukraine and other vital bilateral matters, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak temporarily defused the situation by saying, “As you know, we have a long-standing convention that prime ministers don’t comment on members of the royal family.”
This respite aside, “Hurricane Harry” is still a tropical depression bearing down on King Charles and not going away any time soon. Charles is a monarch, but he is also a father. No doubt he was moved by his youngest son coming close to tears on the witness stand, making his case to the court why his phone and voicemail-hacking claims for monetary damages should be allowed to proceed against Mirror Group Newspapers.
But by breaking royal protocol and attacking his own father’s elected government, Harry is undermining the sacrosanct equivalent of a U.S. separation of powers, wherein the royal family does not involve itself in the workings of His Majesty’s government. This understood separation of powers is the bedrock of the relationship not only between king and parliament, but between king and country as well.
Harry’s hurricane-force shenanigans risk badly destabilizing the constitutional monarchy if not jeopardizing its very survival. As it is, public support for the British monarchy is at an all-time low, according to a poll by the National Center for Social Research. The survey found “45% of respondents said either it should be abolished, was not at all important, or not very important.” Alarmingly for British royalists, only “12% of 18-to-34-year-olds view the monarchy as “very important.
While it is ultimately up to the British to decide their form of government — and as Americans, we should take no position — it is clear that the added damage Hurricane Harry is creating could not come at a worse time. Europe — indeed, all of the West, including the U.S. — is in an existential fight in Ukraine and potentially soon in Taiwan, wherein either liberal democracy or the Russian and Chinese form of autocracy will conquer all. Harry, accordingly, must rise above being the man and the son he has been thus far on the world stage.
Now is not the time for a recalcitrant prince crassly conflating fleeting Hollywood celebrity with statesmanship. This critical moment in global history calls for some level of gravity. It is not the moment for exaggerated paparazzi taxi chase stunts, high school-like social drama over Harry’s attendance at his father’s coronation and the “worldwide privacy tour” by Harry and Meghan, memorably lampooned by South Park.
Rather, it is high time Harry recognizes that he can no longer keep placing his father, and by extension the United Kingdom and the U.S., in the eye of his storm. The hurricane-like damage to national security is becoming too great and potentially irreparable.
Hurricanes eventually run their course. Harry’s has gone on long enough.
Mark Toth is an economist, entrepreneur, and former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis. Jonathan Sweet, a retired Army colonel and 30-year military intelligence officer, led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.