by Penny Junor
“The convening power of Harry and the Invictus Games is quite extraordinary,” says Sir David, “when you look at the sums of money, the numbers involved, and the venues that are going to be used. We are talking millions of pounds, the MoD coming in behind, certainly a dozen teams worldwide and we’re going to use the Olympic facility. This is a huge thing and, of course, Harry hasn’t done this single-handed, but he decided we were going to do it when we were in America last year and here we are. It’s a pretty extraordinary example, I think, of the capacity these two have to ask people to come together behind a cause and get it done. Certainly when we came back [from America], we were all very skeptical about whether we could do it in the time—just over a year to put this thing together.”
Ed Parker, who has co-chaired one of the Operations subcommittees, is very excited. “It’s a brilliant thing and it’s something Harry’s passionate about, and he’s really driven it. But it’s a very ambitious project, and there are an awful lot of people running around at great speed at the moment. I think it illustrates how he’s beginning to grab the nettle a bit more. It will be a fantastic celebration of our wounded; it will be a wonderful time for the families to be able to engage with their husband/daughter/son/wife, whoever it is that’s competing. It won’t all be about who comes first, it’ll be who competes, who’s actually there taking part. I can smell the politicians jockeying now; they think it’s a good idea too so no doubt they will want to get their faces on the front of it all. I know that Harry is hoping we’ll be able to progress a few people on to the Paralympics. That’s not the reason for doing it but it would be a nice by-product if some of the wounded were able to compete in Rio.
“It’s an important thing because it’s not WWTW, it’s not charity specific, and I very much hope no charity tries to hijack it. It shows the broader brief for Harry is inclusive, it’s all the wounded, all countries, it’s the way he’s thinking.”
The next WWTW expedition will be announced just after the Games. “It will be hot, it will be Africa, we’ll cross something,” says Ed, “and Harry has been involved in it from the start. I think he wants to start having a bit more ownership in what he does, and that’s a definite change I’ve seen in the last four years. Four years ago he was keen to hear people’s ideas, and if that idea was a good one he would support it. Now I think he wants to have much more influence on that idea and he’s got his own. He’ll say ‘No,’ which I think is really healthy. I love what we’ve just done [the South Pole] but this one won’t take two weeks to get there and two weeks to get back and Africa would be significantly cheaper and it could tie in with other interests that Prince Harry and Prince William have. You can get on a scheduled flight and you’re there, so we won’t need so much of everyone’s time. In the South Pole we collaborated with international military charities; next time we might look to collaborate with conservation.”
WHAT NEXT?
William is the Duke of Cambridge; one day he will be Prince of Wales and one day, no matter how many years he has to wait, he will be King. Harry’s future is not so clear-cut. He is now fourth in line to the throne and, if and when William and Kate have another child, he will be demoted further still.
When they were younger it seemed inconceivable that Harry would not be standing shoulder to shoulder with his brother, supporting him in the job. Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton used the analogy of John of Gaunt and the Black Prince, the fourteenth-century heir and spare. But Harry is no longer the spare—and William has a very loving, supportive and capable wife.
As a friend says, “He’s a rich young man; he could decide to kiss goodbye to the whole thing. He could say, ‘I waive my rights to the throne, I waive my rights to any money, I’m not going to live in palaces, I’m going to look after myself and do my own thing.’ He would be relatively within his rights to do so, so long as he paid for his own protection and all the rest of it… Yes, they could work side by side, but William’s not going to be King for a really long time. It could be twenty years at least. Meanwhile, there’s two of them on the same territory. So if Harry decided for five years to disappear off to Africa to concentrate on Sentebale and being a helicopter pilot, if that’s what he wants to do and flying anti-poaching patrols or whatever, he could still come back x times a year and do his royal duties.
“I think it’s difficult to do that if you’ve got an apartment in Kensington Palace, but you could easily say, ‘In return for having personal protection, which I don’t particularly want but will have anyway, I will do my fair share of royal duties, but the rest of the time I’m going to look after myself financially and go and do this.’ Would the public really care about that? Probably not. If what he’s doing is stuff that’s connected to his charitable interests and getting lost in Africa a little bit while he’s there. He’s not going to be living in Happy Valley in Kenya and having a high old time. His commitment to Sentebale seems pretty serious; I think he really means that to be his future, or a very large part of it; so if he combines a charity he cares a lot about and a continent he cares a lot about, maybe he never formally moves there but spends more and more time there…
“But I think there’s a real danger that if they both settle down in five years’ time, working side by side as young royals, cutting lots of ribbons, they will die of boredom shortly afterwards and I don’t think that’s in the public’s interest either. Of course one can take a slightly pious view and say they have so many privileges they ought to pay them back. Sure, but I wouldn’t want their life and neither would anyone else I know.”
“Prince William’s obviously got a very clear destiny,” says Sir David Manning. “Prince Harry’s destiny is much more open to discussion and much more open for him to decide and so I think although very close and in many ways passionate about the same things, like the military and wildlife and so on, Harry’s got a field for maneuver that is much broader. William has always known he has to take on the lead role; he’s got to be prepared or preparing—even if not consciously all the time—for a very clear end state. Harry’s got freedom to choose; he can do all kinds of things. He can be very much a central part of the Royal Family, a great inspiration to his generation and others, or he could just ride off into the sunset and do whatever he wants, whereas that isn’t really an option for William.
“They both have this extraordinary empathy with people. You see them with people who have been involved in earthquakes or floods or whatever and it’s extraordinary, and maybe that’s partly because if you lose your mother when you’re very young you understand what it means to sit down with somebody and say, ‘I know what it feels like.’
“I think it’s unlikely that Harry will fade away. In theory he could be a royal who does a few royal engagements, but who basically is not involved in the day-to-day business of the Firm, but I think you’ll find he’s very passionate and engaged. But I may be wrong. He has options. He doesn’t have to give the kind of leadership in the future that his brother absolutely has got to give, but my guess is that he will.”
Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton is much less worried that Harry will disappear to Africa. “No, not anymore. Seven years ago my center of gravity was to dissolve that thought, but I think it’s gone now. He’s grown up a lot, he is grown in his thinking, he recognizes that that is not an option. What is an option is spending a fair amount of time on worthwhile proper causes, not just notional ones to get him to Africa. The great thing about Prince Harry is he’s got an idea for every minute of the day. He’s never, ever going to lack motivation—getting out there and doing stuff—and really the challenge for Ed [Lane Fox] is going to be to channel it, to focus it, to bring it to a tight point where we can go, ‘That’s what he’s about and that’s what he’s doing.’ It doesn’t have to be forever, but that’s what he’s on at the moment. Clear message, really in the national interest or in the realm’s interest. It doesn’t have to be something totally beneficial, it has to be something the nation is proud of him doing, as well as just being of u
se.
“So if it’s to do with children all over the world, that’s great. It’s a passion of his—his ability to communicate with kids is just phenomenal and he knows that too. It’s an absolutely virtuous circle: because he’s passionate about helping, particularly kids who have a real disadvantage in life. He gets a massive reward from it because he knows he can communicate with them, and they love him. So there’s this wonderful self-generating thing. You need to swim with the current and if, hypothetically, that’s what Harry is going to be game-changing at, then for the next ten years, that’s what he focuses on. He becomes a world statesman, a globally recognized figure to do with lost children.”
In March 2014, standing on stage at the Wembley Arena, in front of 12,000 young people, each of whom had done something to help others, Harry demonstrated all of that in spades. It was the first We Day—a youth empowerment event—to be held in the UK and he was the star speaker. Dressed in jeans and a casual shirt, he spoke articulately and passionately without a note for ten minutes, pausing like a pro for laughter to die down when he made a joke, and for the cheering to stop when he said something they liked.
“For those of you who were expecting Harry Styles here, I apologize and, no, I am not going to sing!
“Our society faces some very significant challenges. Each year approximately 100 million children are affected by disasters such as the Syrian crisis: one million children there have had to flee the country. Luckily, for most of us, it is unimaginable to picture leaving your home in the middle of the night, not knowing if you will ever return.
“But closer to home there are many communities in this country facing huge challenges, which will rarely, if ever, hit the news. Many young people in the UK live in households where domestic abuse, violence and addiction are part of everyday life. Others provide long-term care for a family member. These issues, and many others, can rob a child of their childhood. For these children, a little help could go so far.
“If young people at risk can be identified early; then supported and mentored by someone who has grown up in the same community, or had similar life experiences, then it is possible to avoid them going on a downward spiral. The mentors I am talking about are not super-human: they are people like you and I who are willing to spend a little time helping someone else.
“Some people don’t think it’s cool to help others; personally I think it’s the coolest thing in the world!”
He had none of the awkwardness of the past, none of the hesitation, and despite confessing he was “incredibly nervous,” he showed no trace of it. All he gave off was warmth and sincerity. It was an extraordinary performance and the audience loved him. The applause was thunderous, and Cressida, keeping a seat for him in the VIP box, gave him a congratulatory kiss on the cheek.
A month later, William, Kate and George were being similarly feted in New Zealand and Australia—retracing Charles and Diana’s footsteps from 1983, when William was a baby. But whereas William had been kept out of sight for most of the trip, baby George was seen again and again, to the delight of the crowds. Both brothers are riding high and doing immeasurable good for Queen and country, but Jamie is not complacent about the future of either Prince. “One of the things it’s important to look at right now is, if we believe in the monarchy and believe it is a good thing, and I think a lot of people agree with that, the threat to it can change very quickly in the modern age with modern communications. It doesn’t take a reign or two to change things; it takes a couple of instants.
“Therefore, what are the threats to it? To a degree you’ve got to be very objective about this because if the threats to it are legitimate and it’s not doing its job, then let’s go back to 1648, let’s do something else. It’s got to be aligned with requirement, but the threats to it are not the republicans making a great play of how horrible the Royal Family are and how much money they spend. The threat to it is that it finds itself, almost by happenstance and bad luck, aligned with privilege and wealth and with this huge disparity which is now emerging and will continue to emerge; there are hard-working middle-class people who are now entering the bracket of just not being able to keep up.
“Now it’s a fairly natural thing, particularly for our two, to occupy ground which will offset a lot of the threat. Their inclination is always to be with the little guy, which is what is so lovely about them. They want to be in Nottingham and thinking about knife crime and how to get young people in a position where they have some hope and this sort of stuff. Well that’s what we’ve got to motor on. And a few less polo matches in California—even though the funds go to good causes—and a bit more time, which they both really relish, spent with the project in Nottingham. It’s a shift in a way. Of course they’ve been full-time soldiers and there’s been a requirement for the hard hit of fundraising. We’re not going to be quite so pressured on the soldiering side in the future, so we can afford to be clever and look at how we avoid the pitfall of being brought down by association with privilege and wealth, which is going to become acute.”
“Harry will do his duty, he’s quite clear about that; he’s going to support his father and his brother to the full, but he’s going to do it in his own way. His view would be international. That’s what he wants to do and, if the polls are to be believed, what the British public want of their Royal Family is to project Britain overseas as much as everything else, and I think that’s where he’ll find his metier. I have this vision of him being a global statesman—with a small ‘s’—in ten or twenty years’ time, accepted in most places and really able to project soft power for our country but also doing a huge amount of good around the place. I think he’s got the character and the talents for it.
“I’m not saying he’s going to be winging around the world like some kind of superhero, trying to maintain the monarchy all over the place, but if you use that ability to influence some of the causes he feels really strongly about—and I would say foremost among those would be his passion to bring the spotlight onto the forgotten children around the world, the ones who really, really are up against it: Lesotho writ large, the favelas, the kids here, child sex slaves, all of those sorts of areas. He’s got this thing about children and wanting to look after them and I think that will be something that features hugely in his life after he leaves the military and I think that will project him into all corners of the world. He’s brilliant at not bringing neocolonial baggage. He leaves all that behind. White prince turning up in a black African country trying to tell them how to look after their children is a recipe for disaster with some. They expect him to turn up in white ermine and Harry arrives in his fleece and has them all bouncing off his knee. He’s right in the eye of the storm and in twenty years’ time will be a hugely important figure in the monarchy and the projection of what’s good about this place and what needs to happen.”
“As they get older, the monarchy is about Prince William,” says Sir David. “But Prince Harry has a very big ability to affect how we think about monarchy, but that’s a different thing from saying he can bring it down. If he is successful in leading all sorts of causes and motivating people and mobilizing people—if he has this trick of staying in touch with his own generation—that is very powerful and is a huge asset to the monarchy, and I certainly think he can do them a power of good, there is no doubt about that, and probably worldwide.
“The monarchy’s a global brand and Prince Harry’s part of that. It’s extraordinarily powerful because it isn’t political and because anybody who wants to can associate with it without having necessarily to put their hands in their pockets and say ‘I’m Labor, I’m Conservative, I’m Lib Dem.’ The monarchy is a focus; we can project what we want onto it. If somebody like Harry is very successful and very courageous in doing various things, a lot of people can identify with that and it doesn’t then start to seem like some remote, privileged organization; it starts to seem like a convener, an enabler, a champion of various things, and I think he can give the monarchy that. I think
he can help. William can do this too, I really don’t believe it’s either/or, even though they do have different destinies.”
What is less certain is how Harry’s activities will be financed in the future. At the moment he has his military salary; and his staff, and his, royal and charitable work, like his brother’s, are paid for by his father, with the income that comes from the Duchy of Cornwall. The only aspects of their lives that are paid for by the State are the cost of travel, when on official duties in support of the Queen as Head of State, and property services. These are paid for by the Sovereign Grant, which also pays for the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh’s expenditure. This is a fixed sum that is reviewed every five years. It replaced the old system of a Civil List and Grants-in-Aid in 2012 and is the most transparent accounting that the monarchy has ever had but, just two years into it, in January 2014, a Commons committee warned that the Household’s cash reserves were dangerously low. The problem is that the monarchy has never previously had three working generations. “They’ve never had this before,” says an aide, “and my personal view is that they are not adjusted to that. So suddenly you have the Queen, who is still extremely active and very good; you have the Prince of Wales, and now you have the Prince of Wales’s sons and one of the things they have to work out over the next two to five years is how are they going to manage the royal finances, particularly when the Princes are no longer in government service, or State service. This is a real issue and I don’t know how it will be resolved. It seems to me they have not adjusted the finances and the administration to this. They have started to sort out the administration with the amalgamation of the press centers—but the powers-that-be at Buckingham Palace need to work it out.”
