Britain spurns the Harry and Meghan pity party — and strikes a blow for freedom
What a rotten week Prince Harry has had.
First he found out that British taxpayers wouldn’t be footing the security bill for his trip to the UK.
This meant Meghan and their two kids, Archie and Lilibet, had to stay home in Los Angeles as “H” jetted around Britain to promote his Invictus Games.
Sorry, Your Highnesses, but we Brits have better ways to spend our hard-earned money than on bouncers for two preening ex-royals.
If we can dine out without government-funded heavies watching our backs, so can you.
Then Harry was refused a room at Buckingham Palace because, palace officials said, he responded “too late” to their invitation.
Oof — things must be rough between King Charles and his prodigal son.
Buck Palace has 775 rooms and not one could be spared for the ginger whinger, as our tabloids call Harry.
Then came the prince’s most devastating blow: He lost his long-running legal battle with Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.
And he lost in spectacular fashion.
Harry and some celeb chums had accused the Mail newspapers of gathering information about them “unlawfully.”
But the judge threw out every one of their claims, ruling they had categorically failed to prove their “suspicions” that the Mail had hacked their phones and bugged their homes.
Harry and his pals have been left with an eye-watering $67 million legal bill.
And he won’t even be able to drown his sorrow at the drinks cabinet in his dad’s sprawling palace.
But don’t feel sorry for him.
His court humiliation is a momentous victory for freedom of the press — and a brutal defeat for the tyrannical self-pity of celebrity narcissists like Harry and Meghan.
The prince famously hates the British press, in part because of what he sees as its “hounding” of his late mother, Princess Diana.
He had been preparing his case against Associated Newspapers for years.
When it finally came to the High Court in London in January, the BBC hailed “Harry’s war” on the tabloids.
The woke leftists of the cancel-culture mob cheered him on, hoping this high and mighty prince would clip the wings of the “gutter press.”
But it’s Harry’s wings that were clipped.
In a 436-page judgment, Mr. Justice Matthew Nicklin dismissed all 97 claims of “unlawful” journalism made by Harry and his gang, which included Elton John and his husband David Furnish, actresses Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost and a couple of UK politicians.
All claimed to have been bugged, followed and pestered by the Mail newspapers.
Hurley dramatically wept in the dock as she claimed the Mail had surreptitiously gathered intel about her paternity fight with US businessman Steve Bing over their son.
Harry turned as red as his hair with anger as he insisted the papers had used “unlawfully gathered information” in 14 articles about him
But Justice Nicklin was skeptical — because the luminaries failed to offer any facts, only “suspicions” that they were spied on.
It was a “magnificent vindication” of its journalism, Associated Newspapers proclaimed.
Indeed: Though sneering social-justice warriors dream of muzzling newspapers that take them to task, it’s wonderful to see one of the highest courts in Britain take journalists’ side.
And the process beautifully exposed Prince Harry’s hypocrisy.
Paul Dacre, Associated Newspapers’ editor-in-chief, pointed out that Harry himself has poured every sordid detail of his life into the public realm.
He wrote a “sad book,” said Dacre — referring to Harry’s self-pitying memoir “Spare” — in which he “boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity.”
“There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family,” Dacre said.
It’s the Harry and Meghan way: They moan about the press invading their privacy, then invite Netflix into their home to film their every move.
It’s not us hounding them, it’s them hounding us. Leave us alone!
Everyone is sick of these rich, grifting royals playing the victim — as when Meghan moaned about the horrors of palace life to her billionaire chum Oprah Winfrey while wearing a dress that cost more than most people earn in a month.
We can only hope the verdict will finally curb this obnoxious pair’s aristocratic self-pity.
And with the court’s resounding endorsement of press freedom, Harry’s loss is liberty’s gain.
Brendan O’Neill is chief political writer for the British online magazine spiked.
