A London politics watcher reads about Harry and Meghan’s private visit with barriers and pooled press, and what it means for the Home Office review of royal security
Wednesday, 21 October 2026. Kennington. On my sofa after a long day, cheese on toast, a blanket and the radiator knocking for attention, 9.10pm.
A Policy Question Disguised As A Royal Story
Most people read royal stories for the outfits. I read them for the policy. It is a sickness. It comes from working near Westminster, where every story eventually turns into a question about which department is paying for it.
So when I read the report on how Harry and Meghan insist they are private citizens, I skipped the bit about the burgundy coat and went straight to the paragraph on security. The piece is fair about the facts. In Nottingham, the couple used a private security team rather than the police convoys assigned to senior working royals. Whether they should get taxpayer-funded protection is unresolved. Harry has lost a Court of Appeal challenge on the issue, and the Home Secretary has announced a review of protective security for people in public life.
That last sentence is where my professional interest woke up. A review. In Westminster, a review is the most powerful thing a government can announce, because it means nothing has to happen for at least a year.
The Three Boxes
The report imagines the Home Office creating a department to administer a new category, privately royal but publicly private, with six hundred civil servants, fourteen committees and a two hundred page application form. The form has three boxes. Yes. No. Depends who is paying.
Gwen, our policy officer and a former civil servant, read this and said it was not a joke. She said she has personally seen forms with worse options. She once worked on a consultation where the final question was: on a scale of one to five, how consulted do you feel. Nobody answered five. Nobody answered one. Everybody answered three, which she says is the British national score for everything.
Four Categories, One Bill
The report’s constitutional expert concludes that the couple are private citizens when the subject is institutional obligation, public figures when the subject is security, royal celebrities when conducting engagements and ordinary parents when asking photographers to leave their children alone. All four can be true provided nobody asks which one applies at a given moment.
I would like to be even-handed, because my charity is non-partisan and because I genuinely think this is hard. If someone is famous, recognisable and the subject of real threats, there is a serious case for protection regardless of title. If someone has chosen to step back from public duties, there is a serious case that the public should not pay for their public life. Both can be true. The review will have to decide how much of each. The report’s joke is not that the question is silly. It is that everybody involved wants to answer it differently depending on the weather.
The Taxpayer Angle
I tried the issue out on my housemates over dinner. Rhodri, who works in a bank in Canary Wharf, said the couple should pay for their own security because they are rich. Aisha, who is a junior doctor, said security should be based on threat, not money. Tom, who works for a think tank and is insufferable about it, said it was a classic principal-agent problem. Rhodri threw a crouton at him. The crouton is now under the sofa, where it will remain, privately public, until someone decides who is responsible for cleaning it up.
The Companion Piece
The companion report on Harry and Meghan’s return to Britain takes the gentler line, arguing that charity can function perfectly well without palace permission, taxpayer millions or a man carrying a gold stick. As someone who works for a charity, I agree completely. We have never had a royal visit. We have had a visit from a local councillor who stayed for eleven minutes, ate two biscuits and said our work was invaluable. Then the council cut our grant. That, I suppose, is the non-royal version of a walkabout.
There is also, I think, a quieter point buried in both pieces, which is that the public mood about the Sussexes has very little to do with security budgets and a great deal to do with a feeling of fairness. Most people in Britain cannot choose when they are private. Nurses on night shifts, delivery drivers, the families we house in temporary accommodation in Croydon: none of them get to tick a box marked depends who is paying. When a famous couple appears to have that option, people notice. Not because they hate them. Because they would quite like the option too. Good policy, Gwen always says, starts by noticing what people resent and asking whether they are right to.
Bedtime Policy Note
If I were writing the brief for the Home Secretary’s review, and nobody has asked me, I would say this. Decide protection on risk. Decide funding on role. Publish the criteria. Apply them to everybody. Then nobody needs four categories and an aspirin. It would take a page. It will not happen, because a page cannot be reviewed for a year.
The radiator has stopped knocking. Either it has given up or it is waiting for its own review. Cheese on toast finished. Somewhere in California, a couple are deciding which category they are in tonight. In Kennington, I am in the category called tired, and nobody needs a form for that.