Piers Morgan Uncensored - 'No way back' for Prince Harry

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Amid claims Prince Harry wants to 'serve' the Royal Family once again, Piers Morgan has his say... Royal Editor Sarah Hewson and columnist Maureen Callaghan join from New York. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The royal family is besieged right now. Our king has cancer. Princess Catherine's recovering from serious abdominal surgery. We'll keep her away from public duties until at least Easter. The monarchy is unquestionably still finding his footing after the death of the late queen. But through every crisis, one man has stood firm against the barrage, resolutely maintaining a pretty special gift for making everything all about him. Yes, Prince Harry is back on our screens.

I suspect that all of people shared my excitement when they heard this. In moments, the Duke of Sussex will be hurtling headfirst 60 miles an hour down a winding track of ice in the mountains of Canada. Well, fortunately, Harry emerged unscathed and made it back up the slopes to deliver a heartwarming message, peace and reconciliation. At least that was the plan. You see it on a day-to-day basis. You know, again, the strength of the family unit coming together. You know, if you process the fact that there's so much happening back with your family? I have my own family.

Right. So as we all do, I've got other trips planned that would take me through the UK or back to the UK. So, you know, I'll stop in and see my family as much as I can. Really? Even in a smaltzy softball interview with American Breakfast Television, Harry is prickly and defensive and with good reason. Illness will bring us back together, he says, before immediately clarifying that he's staying on the opposite side of the world

because actually he's got plenty of his own things to be getting on with. But rest of short, loyal subjects, he'll still pop in when he feels. like it if you can, time permitting. Later in the same interview, Harry makes a stunning omission that he's not considering becoming an American citizen. Would you think about becoming a citizen? I have considered it, yeah? Yeah?

What would stop you from doing it? I have no idea. You know what it might be? You have to give up your titles if you're becoming a US citizen. I'd say the biggest senior member of the British royal family whose only remaining relevance comes from monetising his ever-weakening royal links is a pretty obvious barrier. Whether the US authorities would even consider making Harry a citizen

after he gloated about his prodigious drug use and his memoir spare is another issue. And just hours after revealing that he might abandon Britain for good, Harry began his briefings all over again. This time that it'd be known that, heroically, he's prepared to don his ginger cape and saw back to Britain fulfilling some of the ailing King's duties while he's treated. In a typically irritating learning or missive, Harry is offered a, quote, hybrid working model.

The regular equivalent of meeting on Zoom in your underpants. Prince Harry is keen to be reconciled with his father and has been telling people that he wants a return that he's happy to step in in some sort of temporary royal role while his father's away. And well, obviously, the king has cancer. He's away from public duties. But also, Princess of Wales is off. She's recovering from abdominal surgery. She's not going to be around until east. What I've been told is that Prince Harry is very keen. He's always wanted to have a foot back in the fold. He never really wanted to be all the way out. All very valiant, Harry, but there's one little problem.

Nobody wants you back. Four years ago, Harry and Meghan abandoned the royal family and the monarchy and resigned their royal duties to embark on a new life in California. The late Queen was crystal clear at the time. You cannot be half in, half out. go, you're gone for good. And it seems that the king himself has agreed with that. Harry jetted into the UK immediately after hearing his father's cancer diagnosis. No one can

criticize him for that. But he might have been surprised at a less than hearty reception. The king's aide made Harry stay in a hotel. He was allowed just one hasty 30-minute meeting at Clarence's house, not at Sandringham where the king flew off on his helicopter to recuperate. because you know why they were kind of worried that they wouldn't get rid of Harry and also a little bit worried that someone who's committed all the private thoughts of his family to books and podcasts and television interviews in a scathing derogatory manner might just do it all over again. They also knew that the king is a 75-year-old man being treated for a very serious illness

that needs time to rest. He doesn't need to be part of the ongoing Sussex psychodrama. Now compare and contrasts of dignified. behaviour of Prince William, who's been taking care of his wife and only just returned to public duties. Last night he attended the BAFTAs and glided around the place with a gravitas and decorum that he always does. No vane glorious narcissism, no attention-seeking, no self-pity. Of course, there was no meeting at all last week between Harry and his brother. Harry's supporters, apparently there are some of them somewhere, felt that was spiteful.

Really? They must have had the recall skills of a goldfish or President Biden. Don't forget but this time last year, the Royals were still reeling from Harry and Megan's Netflix show, which condemned Britain and the monarchy as irredeemably racist and torched the reputations of their closest family members. It was terrifying to have my brother screaming shout at me and my father say things that just simply weren't true and my grandmother, you know, quietly sit there and sort of take it all in. Harry went on to Mawl his own brother in that show and smeared his own father, the king as a liar. The monarchy was directly accused of destroying two of its own to protect itself.

even the late Queen, was appallingly presented as a dupe, manipulated by sinister courtiers in a dark plot to smear the poor Sussexes. As if that six-hour onsul of sycophancy and sedition wasn't enough, along came the memoir. Across 416 pages of pure poison, the Prince of Privacy, revealed toe-curling details about excruciating and deeply personal disputes with his family, including this about his brother.

He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog's bowl, which cracked under my back. The piece is cutting into me. We all laughed, of course, but do you think William laughed at that? The man who will be our next monarch would laugh at being ridiculed and mocked in that manner by his own brother? Is it really any wonder that Prince William wants nothing to do with him? The Prince of Wales is now facing up to the massive responsibility that awaits him as Britain's next head of state,

but his own brother has gone out of his way to shatter his reputation and that of his wife. Why on earth would he want to reconcile with someone like that? It's been a relentless one-way attack. That was a low point for Harry, but Harry, well, he can always find a way to go lower, digging deeper and deeper until he finds the gutter. He called Camilla, the new queen and the love of his father's life dangerous, and a villain. Reportedly, he refused to even be in the same room as her when he came over on his mercy mission last week. Harry's also boasted about his drug use and losing his virginity. He revealed the number of people he killed in Afghanistan, breaking all north of people he killed in Afghanistan, breaking all north of

rules of how the military behave. He spilled details from intensely private conversations with the king who'd begged him not to make his final years of misery. We don't need to wait for history to judge how he's getting on with that. And as the global media, he supposedly loathes, gorgeed on the red meat, he'd toss them. Harry did precisely what any dignified member of Britain's proudest institution would never do. He talked with TV studios, with lurid tip bits for clapping seals. Can you explain how it is that the Royal Standard got first?

We've taken quite a leap from grief and trauma to my todger. Todger, that's a very gentle word. It's a gentle? Todger. Sounds like a nice nickname. Was that befitting of a member of the Royal Family? Can anyone seriously take Harry seriously as a council of state, shouldering the burden of a thousand years of history, as Britain's representative across the world?

Harry and Megan are not exactly turning down the gas on their flame throwing. journalist and professional Lickspittle, Omid Scobie, published a book in which he accidentally outed the King and Princess Catherine as racist, an implausible, ludicrous claim, which unwittingly did more damage to the Sussex racism smear than anything else. And they jetted to Jamaica to attend a movie premiere, just as King Charles revealed, has been treated in hospital for an enlarged prostate, posing for smiling photographs with the Jamaican Prime Minister who literally wants to abolish the monarchy. For Harry to now claim he's ready and willing to serve his country and his king is frankly an insult.

We all know what this is really about. Netflix is reportedly planning to pull the plug on Harry and Megan's $100 million deal. Their series caused a media outrage, but did even crack with top 200 shows on the platform last year. Spotify canceled Megan's dreary podcast. Without their royal links, the brutal reality is that Harry and Megan have no interest to anybody. And that's why they're rebranding, yet again, to double-double-dial. on their dubious royal status. Their previous website, Archiewell, inspired by their son Archie,

now automatically redirects to Sussex.com. A glossy picture of the couple dominates the main page, overlaid with the text to the office of Prince Harry and Megan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The website has nothing to do with King and Country or the Royal Family, and Harry and Megan are no rule duties to speak on. They never put a shift in. They're brazenly exploiting the institution

they simultaneously profit from trashing, and were all being taken. for the ride. The late Queen was right. They can't be half in, half out, and they're out. They sold their royal souls for life as reality stars, trading every private cough and splutter for cash. The King should now return the favour and strip them of their tenuous titles and end this Sussex Circus for good. Well, to debate all this is my Royal Pact, the uncensored contributor, Paula Ron Adrian, the Royal Editor, Sarah Hewson, and from New York, the columnist Maureen,

Well, welcome to all of you. All right, let me start with you, Sarah, to set the scene here for what's really going on behind the scenes. Lots of messages seemingly being communicated to the media. Mixed messages, I think. Very much mixed messages. What do you read into it? What should we read into it?

It's really hard to read between the lines here. But there were reports over the weekend that Prince Harry has made it be known that he would be willing to make a temporary return. to the royal fold to try and relieve some of the pressure on the royal family while his father and his sister-in-lawing capacity. Look, I mean, I think... It looked well-sourced to me. Yeah, I think...

I mean, I think it's probably very likely that he has said at some point, and perhaps in some ways we could say it's laudable. He said, look, if you're really struggling, I can come back. I will do that. But it's not going to happen. You know what I was struggling with, using the word struggling, was his explanation that, you know, these kind of family situations where someone's very sick can bring everyone back together when he, according to the other members of the family, is single-handedly responsible for all the fallout in the first place.

But it seems to me from his tone and his language that he is now seeking some kind of reprosch more. It's much more conciliatory language that we're hearing from Harry. No more demands for an apology from the family before any kind of contact. From what I've read, and it looked pretty well sourced again, an emphatic no thanks. Yeah, absolutely no way back. Particularly from Prince William. I think that's the biggest mountain that Harry has to climb. It may well be that behind the scenes, there are cordial conversations taking place with his father.

And that is what he's talking about when he says, you know, this can bring families back together. And so it should. You know, his father has cancer and has always wanted Harry to come back. There's a big difference between family relations. And then Harry making an official comeback as a working member of the Royal Family. The terms of the Sandringham Summit were absolutely clear. All in or all out. You can't be half in, half out.

Okay. Let me bring in Maureen here. I mean, Maureen, I've got to say, whenever we try and find people in America to defend Harry and Meghan, it's almost impossible. Nobody wants to come on and defend them over there. What is the mood about them over there? Well, it appears, this is, again, it seems like we talk about this all the time whenever I'm lucky enough to do your show, the feeling of Americans. And we have absolutely had it. And the temerity of Harry to go on an American morning breakfast program, Good Morning America, and use a sort of trumped up event, a year out promoting the Invictus games to have. happened next year to soft pedal some sort of possible reconciliation with Prince Charles,

and then to later leapfrog off of that with a story placed in the Times of London with this bombshell claim that not only did Harry want to return and was willing to help out what an offer, but that the palace might be open to that as well. It's been really a remarkable two weeks in terms of just the timeline of events and the series of humiliations that Harry and Megan have suffered from the breakneck 24-hour trip to London

to the UK to see Charles and to get only 30 minutes to hear later from Charles' staff that they, quote, couldn't wait to get rid of him. because they were afraid he would never leave. To William, not seeing him nor speaking to him, to William then saying emphatically,

and Charles's office briefing emphatically, there is no way back for these two. And when you couple that with Megan's rare quietude this week, she was seen but not heard from on GMA in America. She was barely mentioned in the Times of London, and when she was it was at the bottom of the piece. I actually think there's quite a lot of intrigue happening right now. And it will still, it will continue to unfold in the coming weeks and days.

Yeah, and I'm afraid the cynic in me says that this is all because their life in America is not going as well as they hoped. The millions have been stemmed by them being turfed off platforms like Spotify because they were effing grifters, according to one of the executives there and produced terrible content. and in their desperation to try and maintain their very high standard of living and their celebrity status is all they have now out there, they've now flipped Archiewell, the charitable organisation named after their son, to Sussex.com, which seems to me a flagrant abuse of all the accepted practice with the royals,

you do not explicitly exploit your royal titles like that. So you put it all together, and the jump on the point, when clearly he wasn't expected or particularly welcome, it turned out. And you left, I think, with a really cynical taste in the mouth, which is this is all about preserving their brand. Paula. Preserving a brand, peers, yes, you are very cynical. What has happened is that a son has discovered that his father is suffering from cancer.

And in his dash to be by his side, he did whatever he could do. to get there to spend that time with him. Now I've also read that Prince Harry's time was limited by the men in suits, however they're referred. But that- Wasp and Fly as Harry, yeah. Well, hang on, they were just getting- Charles and Camilla were just getting a helicopter to Sandria, right?

The king is the king. If he wanted to spend longer with his son who'd phone all the way from Los Angeles, he'd have spent longer with his son and the chopper would have waited. That's the real world. So this idea that actually Charles was furious, and would have liked to carry on for hours,

or even get on the chopper and come with us, son, which is what I would do to my sons, because they still talk to me and don't trash my family on television every 10 minutes. That's the real world. So I think you're accepting that you've read that story as well, and that you are choosing to ignore that story and to focus on the story that suits your story.

I'm calling your story. And we can't do that. We know the chopper took off. Because what's important, To Sandringham, where he was just going to rest. What's important is to recognise that Prince Harry, he has. Hasn't he sent out that fig leaf? He is saying to everybody, I want peace.

That is true. That is true. But I would say to that, the fig leaf has been snapped in half and whacked back. I mean, that's the reality of what happened here. And that's unfortunate. So I don't dispute that he wants to send out a fig leaf. What I do think is true is whilst Charles is his son, he may think, you know what, I just need to suck this up

and just put up with it and let him back, William is utterly implacable. And I'm told, no way, after what Harry did to his wife with that book, not a chance. And so what do we do about that? Do we define the lines even more? Do we dig the trenches even further?

Or do we support this family? I think we stripped the... I think, you know, the easiest thing? When I saw the Sussex.com stuff, I was like, really? You're even going to do that. You're going to make it that trance. transparent. I come from Sussex. I've spent more time in Sussex in the last week than they have in their lives.

So do you not want them to earn money, Pete? I don't want them to exploit royal titles for personal financial gain. No. He's a member of the royal family. Doing no royal duty to justify exploiting the titles. No. He would like to. No. Well, he's now saying to be able to help. All right. But okay, Sarah, this comes to the number of this debate, isn't it? Because, yeah. I'm sure he does want to, because I'm sure he's seeing, particularly, I think, from the Platinum Jubilee balcony scene onwards, you're either one of the stars or you're not. Well, and interestingly, the position that Megan would have wanted to be in, not playing second fiddle, actually, they'd be right there now. Right.

If they'd stuck around, they'd be right there, right at the centre. I totally agree. And to me, they blew it, but they blew it in such spectacular fashion. Look, just put yourself in the heads of this family. putting aside their royals, right? You've got these two in America repeatedly, not just once, but from Oprah Winfrey onwards, repeatedly trashing them in the most vile manner in public.

Fine, you know, a tabloid newspaper can do it. I've done it as a tabloid editor over the years, but always had the likes of Harry immediately piping up, attacking the papers for being intrusive and so on. Fine, he's entitled to that view. But what's he been doing? It's any different, honestly.

Forgive me for interrupting, but we're acting as if Harry just woke up one morning and decided that he no longer favoured his father, no longer favoured his family. That's not what happened, Pear. We are talking about a lifetime in terms of Harry thinking and believing that he has been mistreated.

Actually, we're talking about a timeline that really begins when he meets Megamarkle. And again, the cynic in me... So we blame the woman. We blame the... I've got to say, if one of my sons, one of my sons came to me, don't do him a disservice by denying him that. If one of my son's going to miss it, Dad, great news, I'm going to marry an American divorcee. He's five years older than me.

And she wants nobody from her family at the wedding apart from her mother on either side, right? And has just disowned her dad, et cetera, et cetera. I think I would say, I think I would say, that's, if I were you, I'd. If I were you, I'd swerve this one if I were you. to her father before the wedding. And her father had staged the photographs, et cetera. But, and let's remember the mood around the time of that wedding. There was a huge sense of optimism about what she could bring

and that Harry had finally found someone who could hold their own and could deal with. I wrote a piece on the wedding day myself about what a breath of fresh air it was to see a non-white wedding with a woman from a biracial American background. Everyone loved it. This idea that the media were out to get, Megyn Markle, out to get them as a couple, totally invented. revisionism. I remember it. All the papers were ecstatic. Absolutely ecstatic. She was this fantastic, glamorous actress. Straight out of Compton. Harry had been wearing, wearing, wearing tides that didn't suit the color of her skin. Let me bring in more in, because it seemed to me the tipping point was after the wedding when all the hypocrisy began, all the preaching about carbon footprint and climate change,

as they used Elton John and George Clooney's private jets like a taxi service. preaching, get this, on the day of the half a million dollar baby shower, sending out a tweet about poverty on their Twitter account, as they're literally having a half a million dollar baby shower with a bunch of celebrities in New York, and then flying back on the Clooney Jet, et cetera, et cetera. And I remember, because I was writing a column at the time, about all this, a growing sense of disillusionment from the public

that this lovely couple, who seemed so well-suited and so good for the country, seem to be getting into a place where they wanted to be constantly having their royal cake and eat it. 100%. And that goes full circle to, as you pointed out, the relaunch of the Sussex.com website, which is a complete abrogation of what Her Majesty, the late Queen, told them. There was to be no monetizing of their royal titles. That was why, per the Sandringham Accord, you are either in, or you are out, one of the two. So they relaunch this website with Megan's Royal Coat of Arms.

Again, either the Royal Family has mistreated you to the point where you are suicidal. Exactly. And asking for help that you are denied. Or you are so proud to have married into this family that you are boasting your coat of arms online. You are running an incredibly lengthy CV in which. you, without a shred of irony, say that one of your top priorities as whatever kind of philanthropist or activist she's spinning herself to be, prioritizes, quote, unquote, family care. And if we really want to get down to the nuts and bolts of it, this is why Harry cannot

be let back in and cannot be trusted. Kate is ill. What is ailing her is a very closely guarded piece of information. That is their right. Harry and Megan remind me of the fable of the scorpion and the frog. The scorpion asked the frog to float him across a river. The frog says you're a scorpion. You will bite me and kill me. And the scorpion says, it would make no sense. I can't cross the river without you.

Halfway through, scorpion stings the frog. The frog says, why did you do that? The scorpion says, it's my nature. I can't help it. Yeah. That's Harry and Megan. Paula, we have the scorpion and the frog, a perfect metaphor. Perhaps if Harry were here, he might say that he's been stung so many times that he couldn't take the pain any longer.

I'm sure he would. He's been whining about all this. And that's why he spoke out. Well, I mean, you use the word whining, but of course he is somebody who has, he says he has suffered significantly and that it's impacted on his mental health. So I think the term whining. Let me ask her on that point. Should be. So I wrote a column for the son tonight about William, right, who I think has been amazing. You've got to put yourself in his shoes for a moment, right?

So he loses his two beloved grandparents. grandparents and mentors for potentially one day being king. His wife has been seriously ill. His father, the king, has cancer, which apart from anything else, may mean that he himself has to consider potentially exceeding to the throne earlier than he would have ever wanted to do. He doesn't speak to his only sibling who's been trashing him in public, left, right and center. And they both suffered the same trauma when they were kids of losing their mother,

which was a trauma. I knew Dinah, I loved Dinah like we all did. It was awful, horrific, the whole thing. But I don't see that William has had to go through any worse than Harry. The only difference is that rather go down the path of running to America and fleecing his titles for hundreds of millions of dollars whilst constantly trashing the institution that bestowed them, William has chosen silence in public, dignity, decorum and duty.

Well, he didn't have much choice, did he, because of the position. She did, he could walk away. Edward, when he fell in love with an American woman, walked away? But I think Maureen's point about Kate's illness at the moment is a big factor of why there was no meeting between those brothers, if ever that was going to be on the card. Because he is so protective over his wife. And there is no trust there.

There is no trust that anything, any conversations that happen aren't going to be briefed down to the American family. Just to remind everybody, Harry even wrote about private conversations. conversations with his father and his brother at Prince Phillips' funeral side. Yeah, in the grounds of Fort Moore House when his father apparently didn't make my last year's a misery. Think about that for a moment. Revealing conversations you have with your father and your brother at your grandfather's funeral in a book. But it's why I said I thought Harry's tone has shifted because that interview on Good Morning America was actually pretty guarded.

He talked about being grateful for the time he had. also talked about wanting to be American. And you know why? He said it wasn't a high priority. Yeah, you know why? Because if he wants to be an American, he has to give up the titles. Yes, you can't have them.

First thing you have to do, and Maury, I'll bring you back in here. First thing you have to do if you take out American citizenship, you give up all your titles if you're British. And so Harry would go back to just being Harry. And Megan, and by the way, good luck to those two with their empire commercial plans if they don't have the royal stuff to exploit.

Yeah, I mean, we saw. that in America, and the first thing I thought was, well, so much for just Harry. You know, he's never going to give those titles up. Megan clings to them as well. It is Exhibit A in terms of their rampant and unceasing hypocrisy. My favorite detail from the Whistler Trip was that the head of the Invictus event there was instructed to call Harry and Megan sir and ma'am. So if anyone thinks these two are just going to get back down with the rest of American civilians and, you know, Megan's going to forfeit showing up in a glamour shot with a $3,000 Hermes coat while she's meeting wounded warriors. I mean, these two continue to dig their own

holes. It is unlike anything I've ever seen. I mean, here in America, I consider it one of the greatest pieces of performance art we've got going. You know what? I think they lost most Americans, Sarah, when they came up with this obviously cock and bull story about being chased around New York 100 miles an hour for two hours, anyone who's been in New York knows that's impossible. The traffic doesn't move. You were dying to get in there. Well, it's the point about the dining out on the Royal Connections. They were heavily criticised for the use of the Sussex name. They're going to take it as a family name.

Look, Harry was Harry Wales, George and Charlotte and Louis before they became. the Wales is were the Cambridges. So there's nothing new about them taking Sussex. Why do you want your kids to have a royal title? When you believe the monarchy as an institution has caused you such irreparable damage? Well, I agree with that. But I also find it interesting that Archie and Lilibut will be known as Sussex

because actually it's a far less royal sounding name for an American market than Mountbatten Williams. Yeah, but it goes for their Duke and Duchess, right? So I understand that Harry's issue was with the institution. And I know that you keep referencing that he's trashing his father and trashing his brother. But I think we also need to be fair. Well, I think we also need to be fair.

It's right that Harry hasn't hidden behind the and a royal source reports because we know that that's what happens. Very often stories are in the papers about the Windsor House or the Sussex House or the Cambridge House and it's a royal source is reported. Now, Harry doesn't have that to hide behind

but to suggest that there are stories put out about Harry doesn't have what? A royal source. Oh, please do me a favour. Please do me a favour. What I'm saying is, Paula, how do you think we even, how do you think, how do you think people magazine, but the stories come out? How do you think people magazine knew about his fig leaf?

The stories come out. You know how? You can't suggest that nobody is putting out stories against Harry. Because his own people brief just as much as the palace. Okay, so you're accepting again, you're accepting again what I'm saying then. I think you should accept, I probably know a little bit more with respect about the way this all works. Having been part of the media for 35 years,

I can tell you, that's right. He and his wife used the media just as aggressively as anyone at the palace does on the other side. I can tell you that. Anyway, we're going to leave it there. Thank you all very much indeed to my pack and to moreover in New York. Much appreciate it.

Doubtless we will meet again to discuss this. They're never going to go away.