Just a day before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle fled the UK for North America, it has emerged that then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the Duke of Sussex not to leave his country.
Mr Johnson made the “hopeless” last-minute request at the behest of Buckingham Palace and Downing Street officials, the former PM is set to reveal in his forthcoming memoir of his tumultuous years in power. Coming out October 10, Boris’s ‘Unleashed’ is reported to pull back the curtain on a “ridiculous” few days in the history of the British Government.
Officials at the top of Whitehall and the Royal household are said to have made the plea for Boris to give Prince Harry a “manly pep talk,” in January 2020 as the Duke mulled making a break from the UK – where he has complained of intrusions into his privacy and of attacks on his family.
The former Prime Minister was put into the sticky situation shortly after winning his landslide 2019 victory, the Telegraph reports, with Johnson describing the moment in his book as ” a ridiculous business… when they made me try to persuade Harry to stay. Kind of manly pep talk. Totally hopeless.”
It is reported that this “manly pep talk”, between then-35-year-old Harry and the PM 20 years his senior, took place at a UK-Africa investment summit in London, which would become one of the Duke’s final ever official appearances as a British royal. It was a last ditch attempt, after Harry, William, Charles and Queen Elizabeth met the week before to persuade him to stay, in what was called the ‘Sandringham Summit’.
At the time, their meeting was called “an informal ‘catch-up’ chat behind closed doors,” with just the two men and no political advisors or personal aides. It was to last just 20 minutes.
A friend of the PM has described the tense meeting to the Daily Mail, describing how Boris told the Prince he was a “great asset” to the country and that he valued Meghan’s “great work” promoting women’s education around the world – something Mr Johnson has been vocal about in the past.
“It was a man-to-man conversation, they were totally alone. But Harry wasn’t for turning – he was unpersuadable by that point. Boris succeeded in delivering Brexit but even he couldn’t stop Megxit.”
As history would play out, the day after Boris made his pitch for Harry to stay in the UK and keep up his royal duties, the Prince left with his family to take up residence in California.
Despite the difficulty of the Duke’s decision for Queen Elizabeth and the wider Royal Family, she was keen to still show support for her grandson in making the move, saying in a statement at the time: “My family and I are entirely supportive of Harry and Meghan’s desire to create a new life as a young family.
“Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working members of the Royal Family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family.”
After the move to the US, the Duke and Duchess caused months of headlines and headaches for the Royal Family and government, first in their bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview that alleged racism, then with the publication of Harry’s memoir ‘Spare’, which alleged mistreatment and manhandling within the Firm.
