Queen Elizabeth II will not intervene in her grandson Prince Harry’s security request in the United Kingdom.
Last week, the Duke of Sussex released a statement explaining why he hasn’t returned to the U.K. with his wife Meghan Markle and their children, Archie, 2, and 7-month-old Lilibet. Prince Harry wanted full police protection if he were to come back, and he requested to personally pay for it. But the U.K.’s Home Office turned his suggestion down twice, leading him to ask for a judicial review.
The Queen, 95, found herself in a difficult position about the matter. However, she would not intervene.
“[It’s] hard for her, as a grandmother, to not really be able to intervene,” royal expert Kristin Contino, author of “A House Full of Windsor,” told Us Weekly Tuesday. “She’s [not] going to go up against the government and say, ‘Well, you know, you need to give him security.’ Because right now, the metropolitan police [are] saying they’ve conducted a review and [concluded that] the threat is considered low to him.”
Contino added that Queen Elizabeth II, who has served the monarchy for 70 years, was “always going to choose [the] monarch at the end of the day.”
Prince Harry asked for full protection due to an incident in July 2021 when the paparazzi chased his car after leaving a charity event. He wanted to ensure that it won’t happen again if he were to bring his family to his home country.
“Prince Harry inherited a security risk at birth, for life,” his representative said in a statement. “He remains sixth in line to the throne, served two tours of combat duty in Afghanistan, and in recent years his family has been subjected to well-documented neo-Nazi and extremist threats.”
Dai Davies, former head of Scotland Yard’s royal protection and divisional commander in the Metropolitan Police Service, argued about Prince Harry’s security concern. He said that if there was a “credible threat,” Met police would act accordingly.
“I would argue robustly against his case that he is not safe in the U.K. If ever the British intelligence services did discover a threat to him and his family they are hardly going to sit on it. It appears that Harry is creating scenarios that do not exist,” Davies told Mirror.
In an interview with “Good Morning Britain,” Davies explained that Prince Harry couldn’t just pay for police protection, and his request to do so was “unprecedented.”
“However, with regards to Harry, he can’t pick and choose when he wants to come,” Davies said. “There has never been a precedent where somebody pays for their security in this country. If it’s required, it will be provided.”
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