‘Hypocritical!’: Harry and Meghan’s cry for security won’t wash

The Telegraph Harry and Meghan have been accused of milking their latest paparazzi scare to get the taxpayer-funded protection they so desperately want. But will it work? Meanwhile, Defiant Earl Spencer hits back at the King over his aggressive statement after claims in his new book. Another week, another royal circus. Welcome to The Royal Tea with me, Camilla Tominey. And me, Hannah Furness. Hannah, you said in your newsletter that you were overusing the word circus. But I think we can appreciate why, because the Sussexes have again hit the headlines. This time they're criticising extraordinarily reckless paparazzi at their children's school. So Archie and Lilibet left one school after a couple of days because they realised that the school run wasn't safe. They were kind of sitting ducks on a country. And it wasn't ideal because when it was recce, they did it in the school holidays. And obviously that wasn't representative of what the roads are like when school term is on. But now we hear two men with backpacks using a white van that they had rented were spotted by private security and school staff near the new school. And the couple have said that that's unacceptable intrusion. I agree with that. I'm not sure whether I agree with the spokesman suggesting that it may, in some way, be linked to the incident at RAF Fairford. Yeah, well, let's start with total clarity here. So no child at school should have paparazzi walking around the perimeter of the school. Agreed. Duke and Duchess of Sussex have got a seven-year-old and a five-year-old who have the total right to live and breathe and go to school in privacy. Nobody in the British media uses paparazzi pictures. We don't authorise paparazzi pictures and we don't send people to children's schools. So let's just clarify that before we get into the more nuanced parts of this. And just a quickie on that. We haven't needed to because Megan and Kate and others give us these perfect family album shots of their children. Okay, in the Sussex case, taken from behind, but whatever. We have such good imagery of these children produced by their own parents these days that there is no need for long lens photography. And also, post Diana's death in Leveson, it's just completely frowned upon now to use really intrusive pictures. Yeah, there's no public appetite for it. This is something that the Wales family, this is something that the Wales family, or the Cambridges as they were then, went through years ago when Prince George was a baby and they've come up with this system which works pretty perfectly for them now. It didn't back then. There were some horrible years where we had paparazzi, European paparazzi photographers creating hides in the back of cars to get photos of George on the beach or in playgrounds. It was really grim and it caused them a lot of turmoil. It was really frightening. Can we also make the distinction, when we keep on saying European photographers, we're not being like Brexiteers about it, but we're basically saying, there are different rules for European publications than there are in the UK. And part of the rules in the UK are down to kind of, I would say, privacy law precedent. This idea that we have evolved into a Fleet Street, in averted commas, that now doesn't use those sorts of intrusive pricks. Yes. I was going to just say the bar is, you know, would the subjects have a reasonable expectation of privacy in any given setting? And I think behind school gates, there is, of course, a reasonable expectation. But the European paps are a bit more gung-ho, aren't they, Hannah? Yeah. And they end up, these sorts of photographs, certainly when George and Charlotte were little, would end up in European magazines. And they're always used alongside a story of, look at these cute children, aren't they adorable? So they're spun in a way that if you're buying those magazines on the continent, quite far removed from the day-to-day of the royal family over here, you can easily look at them and just think, oh, what lovely photos, without understanding the background of how the photos have come to be. Over here, I think, the public have a much better understanding of that and there's no appetite for it. And the British press, just solid line. We do not publish them. Don't do it. And I think, actually, the Waleses understand that distinction all too well because of, let's call it boob gate, why not? Kate being photographed topless back in the day, sunbathing out at a property that was owned by Lord Linley in the south of France. And the British press wouldn't touch such images. She's there. She's topless. I think she's smoking a couple of Marlboro, lights, you know, go for it. You're on your holidays. She's allowed. She's allowed. And there was a big hullabaloo and they were published in Europe but not in the UK. And Prince William particularly found this all quite grotesque. But it did establish that stark contrast between how we behave and how some of these European publications do, who tend to publish more with impunity than we ever would. Yes. The Waleses have been really successful in bringing the market for photographs, their children to almost nothing over here because exactly as you say, they provide these moments, these very carefully controlled moments through the year where the public feels like they see enough of the children. You know, their publicly funded lives and taxpayer funded security and everything. It is all a little bit of a relationship that makes sense to people. You know, people just want to see a little photo and say, oh, haven't they grown? What lovely children. Doesn't she look like her mum? Doesn't he look like his grandfather? I mean, we get quite a lot of that. It's very harmless and we get enough. That everybody is completely happy, I think. Any reasonable person is happy with the situation. Yes, I agree with that. What's difficult for the Sussexes is, of course, they've opted out of that system. There's no justification in their minds for sharing photographs of their children with their faces. They don't do it. They do it on their own terms. Backs of heads, sides of faces, careful angles on Instagram. But they've opted out of a system that William and Catherine kind of pioneered. They forged this path that has worked and they couldn't. They could have followed if they stayed in the royal family, but they didn't want to. What's not clear now is how they're going to be able to manage this situation, not with the British media, as, to be fair to them, they have made that distinction themselves. They have explicitly called this European paparazzi. How they're going to manage that without going back to the system that they absolutely wanted out of. They didn't want to feel like they were handing over images of their children to the press. No, although they did willingly do so when both children were born. Yes. That's a serious thing. We did see their faces as babies. We saw them. I wouldn't say we willingly saw them. Right. So they felt they were harangued into doing that because it was part of royal protocol. They found that difficult. Right. OK. I think the idea. They felt like, as I understand it, they were sort of being compelled to hand up the handover images of their children, serve them up on a plate for a media which they hated and they wanted out of at the time. They seem to be in quite a different mindset now about the British media. I just don't quite know. I can't predict how they're going to manage this situation, actually. I know, but then they illustrated your newsletter with a picture of Harry and Meghan and she's there with a mama T-shirt on. So she's very much wanting to push the whole kind of, you know, can I remind everyone that I am a royal mother? And yet, at the same time, we have this bizarre situation of backs of headshots. I'm not saying it's coherent. No, they were reserved the right to do that. But I'm also quite curious about suddenly the spokesman dropping into conversation while this incident has happened at RAF Fairford, therefore, dot, dot, dot. Now, we know that the couple are on a quest to have their security paid for by the taxpayer. They want that official home office security wraparound that involves armed officers from the Met Police. So let me just caveat this before I start getting Sussex squatters attacking me, which is a daily occurrence anyway. I'm not saying this didn't happen. I'm sure it did. But it's actually, obviously, the timing is usually useful to the couple. They're trying to make an argument for more protection. And now they can add paparazzo chasing their children around to the list of grievances to justify this claim. Yes. I'm not sure how seriously RAVIC, which is the committee that is currently carrying out a risk assessment into both of them, I don't know whether they take that on board or not, Hannah. So this is the nuance here, is that this has happened. There's no reason to believe this didn't happen, as you say. But rogue paparazzi taking photos or trying to take photos is not the same. It's not the same as a security incident. RAVIC have made that explicitly clear. There was a high court ruling in 2024 where they said, which I will paraphrase, that paparazzi photos are bad, but they're nothing to do with RAVIC. They're nothing to do with security. Because RAVIC's looking at lone, fixated individuals, terrorists, legitimate sort of security threats to the couple. Who are trying to cause them harm. Yes. And the idea about paparazzi is that it's very challenging and it's difficult. And there may be harm caused. There may be harm caused in other ways by them, but they're not setting out to target these children and cause them harm. And I don't think that the Duke of Sussex would agree with that argument. No, of course not. But that is the argument. I mean, Ken Wolfe, Princess Diana's former bodyguard, used to say, you know, nobody ever got killed by somebody taking a photograph, which is why they came to agreements with paparazzi in private moments to basically allow them to have a picture and then say, get lost. Of course, Harry would disagree with that. He will say, no, actually, the taking of an image may have contributed to it. He may have contributed to my mother's death in August 1997 in a tunnel in Paris. Yeah. The thing at the moment is there's almost nothing that the Sussexes can't and won't link to security. Right. And I think there is a sense among the public, as far as I hear it, of a little bit of weariness about this and puddings being over eggs left, right and centre and is sitting in a traffic jam on the way to school. Would most people recognise that as a really serious security threat? Well-- It's hard to explain. The Prince and Princess of Wales wouldn't because I assume that they are sometimes caught in traffic with children in the car. I mean, the trouble is with this, we can't make close comparisons because we cannot actually discuss the security arrangements in detail because we don't want to give anything away to people that might have some kind of malicious intent. Yes. But let's be honest, William and Kate go about their daily lives traveling around the country. They've got a place up in Norfolk, seemingly without incident. But then the Sussexes would say, well, yeah, that's because they've got taxpayer funded securities. And I think what I find quite challenging is how much we hear about the flaws in the Sussexes security arrangement. We know exactly where they're vulnerable because they keep telling us it's the school run, it's traffic jams. And I find it very challenging to understand why if you want to take your security very, very seriously, why you let this stuff be known. Why mention Fairford because of its geographical location? Why mention as well that some children of America? Some children of Americans attend the school as well, which again leads to a degree of being able to identify it. There are very serious things that Ravik need to think about and have been thinking about for six years. Although the Duke of Sussex doesn't believe that to be true. There is a lot of frustration behind the scenes of people who are working on this stuff and take people's security really seriously. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are not the only people who require taxpayer funded security. No, they're not. There are all sorts of people who they are also looking at. There is a lot of frustration behind the scenes, I think, that the Sussexes don't seem to be taking their own security as seriously as they want taxpayers to take it. Well, this is back to the whole South Park World Privacy Tour thing. You know, they want their privacy. They want people to not know their whereabouts. And yet they are constantly courting headlines which may invade their privacy and indeed give away details of their whereabouts. I mean, it's funny because Liz Truss was in here earlier this week. She's got a whole security detail. And if you think about her and how she's viewed by the public and how controversial she is and the fact that she's become this bête noire for the left. She crashed the economy, her mini budget. And I sort of looked at the security operation around her and thought, well, gosh, that's quite difficult being her out and about in the public, isn't it? When you think about people that could do something stupid. So comparatively, they're off in the Cotswolds. Nobody's really paying them much attention. I think the public could be forgiven for feeling it. I think that's the moment through the media that they are in the middle of Harry's own security battle. This is an argument he's having with Ravik through people like us. Yeah, don't bring us into it, mate. Yeah, that's quite right. However, on the plus side, and this is something I think we need to get our pre-orders in for. Meghan's brand, as ever, is launching an advent calendar. Now, advent calendars, Hannah, I don't know if you remember, used to be a thing that you bought for a pound. They initially had windows without chocolates. Then they had chocolates inside. Now they have become these things that include, you know, 25 days worth of beauty products. The children might, your children might not be old enough. My youngest said to me last week, hello, it's still September. No, it's the 1st of October. Whatever, it's too soon for this. I've already selected my advent calendar. I thought, oh, great, we'll remortgage the house for that. So she's come out with a collaboration with gourmet Los Angeles chocolatier Compartes in their newsletter with an image of Meghan next to the box. Shades of deal or no deal. And it is basically an as ever mass chocolate collection in advent calendar form featuring numbered labels in what appear to be, wait for it, Meghan's calligraphic handwriting. What's not to love about that? It looks love. To be fair, it looks absolutely delightful and really quite British. And I think we should get one. Can you get me one? Every day of the daily of the royalty, you can open a new window. Right. How much? How much joy would that bring us? Put that alongside my Thatcher and other icons on the right advent calendar 2026. Can we speak about Earl Spencer, who's given an interview to Tina Brown, which is interesting because Tina Brown's epic book on Diana did sell very many copies and she famously spoke about the last time they met. Tina Brown's epic book on Diana did sell very many copies and she famously spoke about the last time they met in New York and Diana wanted to become this kind of global ambassador and she'd made up with Prince Charles according to Brown and they were having tea regularly at Kensington Palace and Brown said that Charles and her were so close that Diana had entertained the idea of them getting back together, said she would take Charles back in a heartbeat. And now she lands this interview with Diana's brother after the row with the king. He is still claiming that King Charles is gaslighting him. By casting doubt on the accuracy of his memories of the time of her death, where he thinks that the king was giddy, elated and acting like a lottery winner. Yes. Safe to say he has no regrets about anything he's done. No. My goodness me. I mean, where are we with this? Because actually, Tina Brown was quite kind of straightforward with him, wasn't she? She sort of said, well, this has caused a bit of controversy. And this is the latest in a very long series of interviews. Al Spencer has done about this book. He's done a lot over here. He's on a lot of American television. And he said broadly the same thing in every one, which is the king is gaslighting me. It's all true. He's gone to war with Piers Morgan or Piers Morgan's gone to war with him. What is this phrase, gaslighting? It's terrible, isn't it? Gaslighting. It's just one people chuck in nowadays. My husband says this about mansplaining. It used to be serious. It's like, why has me explaining something that you don't understand become something called mansplaining? In the same way, why has people disagreeing become gaslighting? Yes, pass. I don't know. It's the modern world. Also, he says, oh, the king's response was really aggressive. It absolutely wasn't. It was laced in the kind of palace speak that we associate with recollections may vary. I mean, recollections may vary was just a very, very elegant way of saying, you're making this up. This was, what was the word? Something about. It was fraternal grief can cloud judgment. I mean, it's not aggressive language, is it? Fraternal grief can cloud judgment. Maybe it is. It's aggressive as palace speak goes. It's men in gray suits. I love the idea that, yeah, Earl Spencer of all people finds this aggressive language. Also, he suggested, and we had Piers Morgan on last week, so please do watch that show because it was very funny. Piers Morgan basically going into the hypocrisy of Earl Spencer, attacking him for attacking him over his claims in the book. Basically, Earl Spencer doesn't seem to know that Piers Morgan is still trying to sue him because Earl Spencer claimed that it was Piers Morgan who was editor at the Mirror when some great, grotesquely invasive photographs were taken of Princess Diana at the gym in a leotard. Piers Morgan pointed out, I wasn't even at the Mirror then. I was still at the Sun. Why have you got this basic piece of information wrong? Your whole book must be wrong because you haven't fact checked. Spencer then apologized and he says, yeah, but as far as I know, Morgan isn't suing me. And now Morgan's put the legal letters on X. Yes, which he sent to the publishers, I think. So maybe Earl Spencer didn't know if we're going to be fair about it. Yeah, it's just escalating. If there's one person you don't want to get something just clearly factually wrong about in your book, Piers Morgan would be up there probably, wouldn't he? Yeah, I know. Do you think that the palace have got away with this? How do you think people's opinions have changed about the king after this book? Have they or not? I mean, I think they think it's a classic he said, he said. But I think they think that Earl Spencer's made a bit of a wally of himself. And when I've spoken to people about it, just kind of in everyday life, so to speak, is even at the Labour Party conference, met up with some girlfriends who I used to play football with. And they're like, give us everything you know about Earl Spencer versus the king. And I said, listen, you know, facts have come to light that don't surprise anybody. The king was clearly in shock when his ex-wife died very suddenly in a car crash. The king is prone to anger and has a short temper. I was like, well, most of the Windsors do, funny enough. Earl Spencer has been four times married and can be a bit tricky. Oh, shock horror. The two men have never. Quite a few people have been citing the whole, well, didn't Diana fall out with her brother towards the end? And did he or didn't he give her accommodation at all four? And wasn't that why she ended up in the arms of Dodi Al-Fayed in Paris and all the rest of it? Actually, Earl Spencer addresses that in the book. She wasn't on good terms with her brother at that time, but she wasn't on good terms with lots of people. Because, of course, that Panorama interview with Martin Bashir had made her think that her nearest and dearest, including Spencer and key members of staff, had been selling information about her to the press. So that whole period was sort of clouded in so much turmoil. It's very hard to see the wood for the trees. But overall, I think the public probably believes the king more than they believe Earl Spencer. What do you think? What I found interesting is how quickly people have gone to their own periods of grief. Like quite often when you talk about it, people will say, well, when this awful thing happened to me, I behaved in this really odd way. I said these things and I must have appeared completely mad. At the time, everyone seems to have an example of that. And I think there is some sympathy, more sympathy than you might have expected on the first day of this story towards the king. It's an unusual circumstance where I think quite a lot of people are thinking, well, maybe he did say that. But actually, we can understand why. Yes. Rather than I did say it or I didn't say it. It was like Ingrid Seward said to us in our interview with her last week about her book, which kind of compares and contrasts Diana and Catherine. She lost her husband, Ross Benson. very, very suddenly had a heart attack. they were both a toast of the journalistic scene and suddenly he was dead and she said she went into such shock she actually became quite hyper and started behaving quite oddly because she just didn't know how to process it and one can imagine that happens it's interesting isn't it that grief and loss of family members has been a theme of this month with Andy Burnham also choking up during a kind of barnstorming speech to the Labour Party conference where he references his late father Roy I think actually when people in the public eye when we kind of delve into these very personal and intimate moments they become more relatable not less don't they because we've all been there we've all lost someone yeah and certainly post the king's cancer diagnosis and treatment the palace talks about how he's become a very human king he's much more touchable if you like than the late queen was and I think the public nowadays or the public mood nowadays particularly when compared to 1997 is so much more forgiving and so much more empathetic and understanding about the personal vulnerabilities people might have in a situation like that yeah I wonder if Earl Spencer has been surprised that there hasn't been this outrage yeah and outpouring against the king yeah he thinks it's still 1997 and it isn't we're nearly 30 years old attitudes towards the king and Camilla actually have changed markedly just a quick final end note Catherine with the old ladies oh lovely that was cute it was so nice I actually loved I loved that engagement because it felt so different to some of the things they've done recently it was a really surprising format to me pop on a minibus you know we're tricky in the media because we keep calling things a surprise this wasn't a surprise we knew that it was happening because the press go along it's an engagement but the old ladies for people who were there and a nice surprise so she popped herself on a minibus went to pick up a and they went to lunch with them ate some crisps talked about washing up and you'll have seen the videos of it it was just a really charming exactly the sort of thing that the royal family should be doing yes and I found it just a really nice reminder of why they do what they do like take away the circus and the headlines and the security and the Sussexes and the Spencers and strip it down they've been to Leeds and Wakefield to see Sir Kevin Sinfield do his M&D challenge incredibly emotional incredibly important cause you know I think it's a really good thing that they've been able to do that and I think it's Catherine has gone to hang out with some elderly folk in a bid to you know highlight community and ending loneliness yes that's about a lunch club that takes uh women and men who are widowed and alone and give some lunch for the day so that they a don't have to cook and b can see people I also love it I always love covering engagements with old people you never like children they just don't care what they say I mean one woman's saying to Kay I bet you don't eat crisps she's like stuffing some kettle chips down her neck actually they're fine yeah quite like salted ones which is all good value Hannah I'm sure we'll be back in the studio to discuss the latest installment of the Sussex drama at some point next week let's hope you