'Outrageous cheek'! Princess Diana's bodyguard slams Harry for demanding security detail
A former royal protection officer, who worked closely with Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, and her kids, has slammed Prince Harry after it was reported that he’s planning to sue the British government after security detail for him and his family was revoked. The Duke of Sussex had claimed that he won’t use taxpayers’ money for his bodyguards and would pay for them himself, but Ken Wharfe said, “Royalty doesn’t work like that.”
In a piece for The Daily Mail, Wharfe noted, “Police protection should not be for sale. Prince Harry has an outrageous cheek, demanding a full royal security detail to be reinstated when he visits the UK. For the Queen and her government to accede to his demand and set this precedent is unthinkable. Harry is now a private citizen, domiciled in a foreign country – entirely by his own choice. None of the royals wanted this to happen, least of all his father and brother, but it has.”
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Explaining why Harry’s demand was unacceptable, Wharfe, who has written a book titled ‘Guarding Diana - Protecting The Princess Around the World’, said, “If he is granted the services of the Metropolitan’s royal protection squad for which he has magnanimously offered to pay, every visiting Hollywood star and wealthy celebrity may as well expect the same privileges. Britain would face the humiliating prospect of hiring out our highly trained and armed officers to any reality television narcissist or tinpot dictator’s children who can foot the bill.”
Criticizing Harry and Meghan Markle’s two-year-old decision to step down from the senior royal duties and live an independent life on the other side of the sea, Wharfe alleged that the 37-year-old wants benefits from both worlds. “He thought at first he would be able to keep one foot in the Royal Family, hanging on to his military honours and charity patronages as well as his status as His Royal Highness. The Queen immediately disabused him of that fantasy. When he left, he knew the score," he wrote.
Earlier, a legal representative for Harry said, “The UK will always be Prince Harry’s home and a country he wants his wife and children to be safe in. With the lack of police protection, comes too great a personal risk. Prince Harry inherited a security risk at birth, for life. He remains sixth in line to the throne, served two tours of combat duty in Afghanistan, and in recent years his family has been subjected to well-documented neo-Nazi and extremist threats. While his role within the Institution has changed, his profile as a member of the royal family has not. Nor has the threat to him and his family.”
However, Wharfe has mentioned that he was made well aware that “he would not be permitted to ‘pay personally for UK police protection for himself and his family’.” The author stated, “He cannot claim he was not told. For him now to be threatening legal action against the Government, and by extension against the Queen herself, is completely unprecedented for any royal, even one who has abdicated his official duties.”
Wharfe also took note of Diana’s death and said Harry “holds them [paparazzi] largely responsible for his mother’s death in a car crash at the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, Paris, in 1997.” “Ever since I left the police 20 years ago, I have argued that the press didn’t kill Diana. The cause of that tragedy was the incompetence of security staff provided by the family of her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, who was killed with her, and the drunkenness of their chauffeur, Henri Paul, who also died in the crash,” he added.
“In Britain, unlike America, it is illegal for anyone except police and the military to carry firearms. If Harry arrives in a private jet escorted by men with sunglasses and pistol holsters, they will have to surrender their guns immediately. There do exist reciprocal arrangements with foreign heads of state, including the US president, which allow their bodyguards to carry guns. But Harry is emphatically not an official representative of any government. No matter how entitled he and Meghan believe they are, no matter how much money they have banked since leaving the UK, they cannot reclaim what they threw away two years ago,” Wharfe concluded.