Why Meghan and Harry felt thwarted by Queen‘s advisers
Harry and Meghan felt they were being obstructed by the Queen’s advisers — but for good reason, her former press secretary reveals. We take a look at who works for the royal households — and how crucial their roles are in the running of the monarchy.
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The Queen might be the boss, but the men in grey suits really run the show — says one of them.
According to tell-all biography Finding Freedom, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex felt thwarted by the “grey suits” and “vipers” who make up the teams of advisers behind the scenes of the royal households.
The Queen’s personal secretaries, according to the book written by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, stood in the way of the prince having his urgent meeting with his grandmother in early January.
“Despite repeated follow-ups with his father’s office, he was unable to secure time with the Queen. She would not be available, he was told, until January 29,” the book states.
“He felt like he was being blocked.”
It’s perfectly possible he was, says Dickie Arbiter, who was the Queen’s press secretary from 1988 to 2000 and worked through the Charles and Diana crisis.
“While the Queen is the boss, the private secretary runs the shop rather like a chief executive,” he tells The Saturday Telegraph.
“If they weren’t making decisions, the Queen would never get anything done.
“You have to have responsible people running the show. If you run to the Queen every five minutes she wouldn’t be able to do her job. If Harry went through the private secretary it’s quite possible he might have said it wasn’t a good idea.”
However, Arbiter stresses, just because a private secretary suggests something, doesn’t mean the Queen will take their advice.
“Being the most senior of the Queen’s advisers and in almost daily contact with her, the private secretary has a great deal of influence but ultimately it is Her Majesty who makes the decisions,” says Joe Little, deputy editor of Majesty Magazine.
“It might be nothing more sinister than the Queen’s diary was full or that the Sussex’s situation had to be fully assessed first by all relevant parties, rather than the private secretary just being bloody-minded.”
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According to extracts from the biography which appeared in The UK Times this week, Harry and Meghan felt unsupported by the teams surrounding the Queen and Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and think their treatment unfair.
So how does it all work behind the scenes? Each royal household has its own team — including a private secretary, press secretary and various assistants.
These roles are crucial in the running of the monarchy — the Queen has relied on nine private secretaries since taking the throne, the first being Captain Sir Alan “Tommy” Lascelles, who fans of The Crown will remember as the fierce guardian of the monarchy, determined not to let the young Queen have any silly modern ideas.
“You need to understand how things are done here,” he said on the show.
“Any departure from the rules is not to be encouraged. It results in disasters like the abdication.”
Her current private secretary is Sir Edward Young, who has been in the post since 2017, having worked his way up the ranks. Prior to that he was in executive positions in industry and politics.
His counterpart in Clarence House, Clive Alderton, private secretary to Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was previously a diplomat.
Demonstrating the clear parallels with politics, Prince William’s private secretary Simon Case is on secondment to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson throughout the coronavirus crisis.
The households are very much run like branch offices of a central hub — like government. And while political manoeuvres are rife, where Harry and Meghan went wrong, says Dickie, was to try to run their division like renegades.
“Harry and Meghan wanted to set up their own household — but you can’t open a branch office without the approval of head office,” he says.
“Harry and Meghan complaining their ideas were flicked into touch was often when they wanted to do things when others already were.
“The idea is the private secretaries get together and discuss what everyone wants to do and if there are any clashes, they look for another time.”
Members of the Royal Family previously found themselves doubling up on trips and events, explains Arbiter, so the rule is royalty further down the hierarchy have to plan their activities around the Queen — and her advisers co-ordinate it.
This didn’t sit well with Harry and Meghan, according to Scobie and Durand.
“While they both respected the hierarchy of the institution, it was difficult when they wanted to focus on a project and were told that a more senior ranking family member, be it Prince William or Prince Charles, had an initiative or tour being announced at the same time — so they would just have to wait,” they wrote.
But those are the rules, says Arbiter. Considering all clashes are to be avoided, was it a coincidence, then, that the Queen’s team scheduled her virtual portrait unveiling for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office last weekend, on the same day Finding Freedom was serialised in The Times.
Notably one of the first to like the post on The Royal Family’s Instagram page was William and Kate’s Kensington Royal.
Harry and Meghan had actually put together an experienced team when they married — including Australian Samantha Cohen who moved from the Queen’s household to become the couple’s private secretary, followed by Fiona Mcilwham, a former ambassador, who was described as “the safest pair of hands you can get”.
So is there an old guard running the ship, reluctant to change with the times? Not according to Arbiter.
“There is no old guard,” he says.
“They are all dead. The monarchy is an institution and staff follow that pattern. There are no vipers, they are just trying to run the organisation.”
“The Buckingham Palace machine is more relaxed than the days of Alan Lascelles but nevertheless there is still structure and formality surrounding everything to do with the monarch,” says Joe Little.
The real issue, Arbiter says, is Harry showed a sense of entitlement when “the only member who can be entitled is the Queen”.
While the authors of Finding Freedom have been at pains to point out they did not speak to Harry and Meghan, insiders believe otherwise.
“Harry and Meghan’s still raw rage leaps off the pages,” Roya Nikkhah, royal correspondent of The Times, wrote.
“Their fingerprints are all over this book,” says Arbiter.
“We’ve been there before with Diana,” he says, explaining in 1992 he was suspicious she had helped Andrew Morton with his book Diana: Her True Story.
“She looked me square in the eye and said, ‘No, I didn’t,’ but I knew there had been some kind of help.”
As for how the palace will be reacting to the latest scandal, Dickie says they’ve been here many times before, but it will hurt even more because this time the criticism of the Royal Family is coming from a beloved grandson.
“You might expect it from a daughter-in-law, but not to be kicked down like that from a grandson, not from family,” he says.
“I think it will end in tears. These things always do. It’s very sad.”