‘Clearly not working’: Huge Harry admission in bombshell new report

A bombshell new report has shed new light on a top secret plot involving Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and his future.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you chuck a couple literary references into a story you sound a notch more intellectual. And there is no more perfect one for a thinker of royal thoughts than the line from Henry IV, “Busy giddy minds/With foreign quarrels”.

Can there be a better phrase to describe the 21st century’s own Prince Hal – Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex?

After four and a half years of Harry plot twists, turns and shockers, we have just gotten a bombshell bit of new reporting about the duke.

Hold onto your hats, because the self-exiled royal has, according to the Daily Mail, “sought advice from trusted former aides in Britain on how to mastermind a return from exile in the United States”. (Which may or may not have taken the form of him sending a single WhatsApp message that just read “Help” with a cup emoji, at which point some nice men with old Etonian ties and King Charles’ private fax number learned that Americans make tea using microwaves and were so appalled they immediately dropped everything to save him).

Harry’s “overtures” in the direction of London, per the Mail, “signify the first stage in a strategy to ‘rehabilitate’ Harry,” a plan “that would involve him spending more time in the UK to repair his relationship with his father and potentially initiate a partial return to the royal fold”.

You read that right. The actual prospect has now been raised that we might once again see Duke of Sussex + ceremonial shovel + commemorative tree-planting.

The plan ‘would involve him spending more time in the UK to repair his relationship with his father and potentially initiate a partial return to the royal fold’. Picture: Jonathan Brady – WPA Pool/Getty Images

One strategy that has been worked out by one of Harry’s friends would see him carrying out “very low-key royal duties”. This plan-devising friend, you see, “believes if Harry comes back to the UK with zero fuss, and does zero publicity and attends very mundane events, he could prove himself and win over the British public again”.

“He would have to accept, though, that he might be reduced to ribbon cutting for a long period. But it would give him purpose to work again,” they said. (Meanwhile, back in California, Netflix execs are busy feeling like chopped liver. That or trying to work out how soon they can consciously uncouple from Harry and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex).

A source has told the Mail: “Harry is turning away from all sorts of Hollywood publicists and is seeking counsel from his old friends and associates”.

“He is clearly reaching out thinking, ‘I need to do something different because what I’m doing is clearly not working’. In short, he is rethinking the way he operates.”

These old chums of the Duke of Sussex are not the only ones jotting down ideas on the back of their Coutts statements to try and work out how to solve a problem like Maria … sorry, Harry. According to the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes, Diana, Princess of Wales’ sisters and brother, the Spencers, are also at it with one Spencer source revealing that the aristocratic family is “working hard to get [Harry and Prince William] to reconcile”.

Another Spencer source and neighbour told the Beast: “They understand William’s hurt at Harry’s betrayal, but they also understand Harry’s position because of the way Diana was treated by the Windsors”.

Also involved in this project, their velvet thinking caps firmly in place, are some of Harry’s mates, “with some referring to their task as Operation Bring Harry In From The Cold”.

One such friend told the Mail that, of the last time he had seen Harry’s former private secretary Edward Lane Fox, “I wanted to take him by the shoulders and say, ‘Ed, please bring our boy home’. It’s the right time now.”

Where is the duchess in this plan to ‘rehabilitate’ the duke? Picture: Darren England/Pool/AFP

Let us duly note though that “bring our boy home” makes it sound like he is being held hostage, which is quite the super-sized serving of misogyny. The Duke of Sussex is busy drinking oat lattes and mooning over his business empire-aspiring wife, not being held in a North Korean re-education facility.

Which handily gives us a nice, natural segue. There is one word crucially lacking from the Mail’s piece: Meghan. What of the duchess in this plan to “rehabilitate” the duke?

I cannot see any scenario, no matter how fantastical, where the duchess would gladly return, even very occasionally, to a life or role in the UK after she suffered to such an extreme degree she was left feeling suicidal last time.

However, there is one way I can envisage the duke “returning from exile” and doing some “very low-key royal duties” with his very Californian life going hand-in-hand.

The last 18 months have seen the Sussexes’ professional brands and careers very clearly diverge.

Harry has largely focused on his eminently successful Invictus Games and learning how to make polo ponies stand still for TV cameras while Meghan seems intent on taking a much more entrepreneurial route. There is her as-yet-to-launch lifestyle business American Riviera Orchard, and last week the New York Times revealed she is getting into the venture capital business. In 2020 she invested in vegan latte company Clevr Brands and the Times reports that the 43-year-old has also now taken a financial interest in handbag brand Cesta Collective, among other investments.

Harry and Meghan’s professional interests and ambitions appear to have forked off – but that’s a fact that has no bearing on their actual relationship. When they were in Colombia recently, they giddily gave the world what might have been their 84555th instance of PDA in their five years of marriage. There is touchy-feely and ooey-gooey and there is Sussex.

There is touchy-feely and ooey-gooey and there is Sussex. Picture: Vizzor Image/Getty Images

Instead, just like 99 per cent of the world’s couples, they would seem to be two people who are in love and who simultaneously want to pursue different work paths. Don’t forget, over the course of the last two years since the late Queen’s death, Harry has made six trips back to the UK on his own, so him potentially combining carrying “very low-key royal duties” while still being very happily married makes perfect sense.

My point here is, this could all work. Harry relearns how to occasionally christen minor naval vessels (the HMAS Let Me Back In?) while Meghan beavers away at making herself the Elon Musk of Montecito.

But if this all did come to pass, if there is real substance to the Mail’s reporting, then the underlying, unsaid part of things is that the Sussexes’ California life of telly-making and going to the odd Kevin Costner charity fundraiser isn’t quite doing it for Harry, in terms of purpose.

If the duke really has come to the point of admitting, even very quietly to himself in the dark, inky depths of night, that “this is not working”, then that raises a simple question: Can or will or should or might he ever actually say three very particular words – “I was wrong”?

Not wrong to leave Crown Inc or wrong to want a life defined on his own terms or wrong to write a book or wrong to want to set his story straight in his own words or wrong to want to extricate his wife from a life where she was plainly miserable, but wrong to go about it all in the way that he did.

Surely those three words, should they ever be muttered or messaged or sent via carrier pigeon in the direction of King Charles, would go some way to helping.

For now though, next up in the Neverending Story of Harry is him jetting off to New York later this month for the UN’s Climate Week. And conveniently – or very, very inconveniently depending on your view – who will also be in town, but none other than Prince William?

Boring, the Duke of Sussex’s life never, ever is.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as ‘Clearly not working’: Huge Harry admission in bombshell new report