bitchy | Telegraph: Ravec thinks it’s a ‘political risk’ to give police protection to Prince Harry

Last September, Prince Harry had tea with his father. It was the first time father and son had seen each other since February 2024, and it seemed like a real thaw took place that month and in the months that followed. In December, we learned that Harry had once again requested that the Home Office do a risk assessment on whether or not he (and his wife and children) deserved automatic police protection when they were in the UK. The Home Office agreed to the risk assessment. That’s when things started to get dicey. In January, someone leaked that Harry believed that the assessment would obviously be “automatic security” and that the announcement or decision would be announced any day now. We’re coming up on Easter and no announcement has been made. So what’s going on? Well, this curious piece appeared in the Telegraph:

Home Office officials are trying to block the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from being given taxpayer-funded security over fears of a public backlash. The Royal and VIP Executive Committee (Ravec), which authorises security for senior members of the Royal family on behalf of the Home Office, is assessing whether or not to reinstate security provision for Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan.

Civil servants from the Home Office, the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office who sit on the committee are understood to oppose granting the couple taxpayer-funded protection whenever they are in the UK because it would carry too much political risk.

A full risk assessment is under way, but a decision has not yet been made. However, a Home Office source told The Telegraph there was a split in the ranks. The source said: “There is nervousness among certain members of the committee who fear a public backlash. The political side believe there is too much political risk while the police and security chiefs believe that he absolutely must have it due to the extant threat.”

A spokesman for the Duke declined to comment, but there were believed to be concerns in his camp that the decision would “again be influenced by politics” rather than security and “the realities of the situation”.

Last year, he lost a legal challenge in which he had argued that he was entitled to an official risk assessment to determine the threat level against him. His last full risk analysis was in April 2019, when he was deemed such a target that he was put in the highest risk category. The Duke described his court defeat as a “good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up” and blamed the royal household for influencing the decision to reduce his protection.

Ravec’s members include a chairman, whose identity The Telegraph has been asked not to reveal, Sir Clive Alderton, the King’s private secretary, and representatives from the Prince of Wales’s household, the Metropolitan Police, the Home Office, the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office.

The Duke, who lives in Florida, is next due in Britain in July for an event to start the one-year countdown to the 2026 Invictus Games, which will be held in Birmingham. He is concerned the threat against him has worsened since he left the UK. There are thought to be three Britons at large who have been jailed then released after plotting to cause him harm.

[From The Telegraph]

The fact that the Telegraph proudly reports that Harry lives in Florida is mind-boggling. It honestly makes me doubt the entire report. Honestly, though, I was suspicious of the lack of information and the fact that there’s been no movement (in public) about this issue for months. This makes sense though – opinion is split within RAVEC, and the committee is dragging their feet. Posing this as a “political risk” is the royal household’s attempt to pass the buck, or avoid accountability for their sh-tty decisions. Harry has said publicly that there was an establishment stitch-up, and that he’s been screwed over repeatedly by Clive Alderton (King Charles’s de facto chief-of-staff) – all of that means that if RAVEC comes out and says “it’s still no, we refuse to give police protection to Harry,” it all comes back onto the royals themselves. My question is: why is the Home Office taking the hit for the dogsh-t father?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.