Harry to fly solo to UK after family protection request is denied

Prince Harry will travel to London without his wife Meghan or children Archie and Lilibet, after a request for police protection was denied.

After 10 days of uncertainty since the refusal, the Duke of Sussex has decided that it would not be safe to bring his family to Britain’s capital.

It remains unknown whether Harry - due to return to London on Monday - will accept the invitation to stay at a royal residence, as had been anticipated.

He is understood to be liaising directly with his father, King Charles III, with any plans to see each other made privately between them.

While Meghan and the children will not come to London, they have not ruled out the prospect of travelling to Britain.

Meghan is due in Birmingham at the end of the week to join her husband at an Invictus Games event on Friday – an appearance that could still go ahead.

Royal engagements are meticulously planned, with every minute scheduled weeks, if not months, in advance.

The five-day visit had been carefully programmed but was thrown into disarray with the late revelation that the Duke and Duchess would receive no taxpayer-funded police protection.

Harry and Meghan, no longer working members of the royal family, are not beholden to the wider Palace machinery and call their own shots. That also means that they are not under the royal umbrella when it comes to police protection.

Harry was bringing Prince Archie, 7, and 5-year-old Princess Lilibet in the hope that he might orchestrate a long-awaited reunion with the King. It would have been Meghan’s first return to the United Kingdom since 2022.

The family had hoped to travel together for around two weeks, the public engagements bookended with private time with friends and family.

Plans included a visit to Althorp, the Spencer family estate and resting place of Harry’s mother - Diana, Princess of Wales.

He had planned to accept the invitation to stay at a royal residence, but the lack of security provision prompted last-minute jitters on that too.

One source said he had been promised safe passage in and out of the residence, which never materialised. The Palace denied this was ever on the table. Regardless, alternative private accommodation was frantically being researched at the 11th hour.

Harry received multiple briefings last week from his private security team, outlining his various travel options and the cost implications of each.

One was to stick to the original plan to fly to London with his wife and children from Europe, where they are on holiday.

They could have accepted the offer to stay at a royal residence, and Meghan and Harry could have proceeded with their engagements as planned. Alternatively, Harry could have flown in alone, followed by his wife and children a few days later.

A third option was for Harry to plough on with his work while the rest of his family remained in Europe. Given his ardent wish for his children to meet their grandfather, whom they have not seen for four years, this remains the least-favoured option.

While Harry is likely to return to the UK in September to attend the annual WellChild Award ceremony, his children will be back at school and there is no saying whether the King will be available.

Next week, therefore, was his best chance.

On top of this, it had been announced that the long-awaited High Court ruling on Harry’s privacy claim against the publisher of the Daily Mail would be handed down on Tuesday, just as he took to the stage for his first public engagement in the UK in 10 months.

If he wins on just one of the 14 articles comprising his claim against Associated Newspapers Limited, he will deliver a victory speech from an as-yet-undisclosed location.

The timing is less than ideal. Despite all the noise surrounding security and his relationship with his father, Harry and his team had remained hopeful that in the moment, the attention would be on his charities – Invictus, WellChild and Scotty’s Little Soldiers.

Now his arrival will be overshadowed by a significant court judgment that may or may not go his way.

In the event, the family decided to avoid London altogether, believing it to be unsafe.

As Harry weighed up his options, both his own team and Buckingham Palace were in the dark. He remained undecided as late as Saturday.

Meanwhile, Palace aides, already exasperated by Team Sussex’s decision to jump the gun and announce travel plans before anything was confirmed, were braced for a further week of drama.

Some believed Harry had tried to use his children as a form of “emotional blackmail” to bounce the Home Office into giving him police protection. It was even alleged that he had never intended to bring the children.

The soap opera prompted plenty of frustration that the real work was being overshadowed. It was even claimed that the King was not desperate to build bridges with his son, although he would do so if that was what Harry wanted.

Other sources painted a different picture, insisting that the pair – who have met only twice in two years – would love to see each other and that the King would love to see his grandchildren.

The deep anger and hurt felt by Prince William has certainly played a part, as have his fears about the further damage Harry could do to the family.

But Charles and Harry are on good terms, speaking frequently. Their private secretaries are also in more regular contact than some might imagine.

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