BREAKING: Harry and Meghan are reportedly set to return to Britain six years after ‘Megxit’, with the couple expected to move into a non-royal residence. The reported move would mark a significant development in the relationship between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the Royal Family, with claims that the King was informed of the plans on Sunday. Patrick Christys reacts to the news and asks what their return could mean.
‘They are going to move into a non-royal residence.’ Patrick examines the reported plans and the questions surrounding Harry and Meghan’s return to the UK. Despite the move, the couple are expected to remain private citizens, raising questions about their future role, their relationship with the Royal Family and how their return will be received.
GB News Royal Correspondent Cameron Walker joins the discussion to analyse the incredibly significant development and the potential implications for the Sussexes and the wider Royal Family.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are reportedly moving back to the UK at the end of August with their children, Archie and Lilibet, who will enroll in British schools. While they will reside in a non-royal home as private citizens rather than working royals, the move raises significant questions regarding security, family relations, and their previous criticisms of the UK.
I have some major breaking news to bring you now.
We can reveal that Harry and Meghan are moving back to Britain.
Yes, that is correct.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are moving back to the UK.
There were rumours swirling around about this a little earlier on today,
but now it has been confirmed.
So, it's a Megxit bombshell, I'm afraid.
Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle are moving back to the UK,
six years after leaving the United States.
They will make that shock return at the end of August
for an extended period with kids Archie and Lilibet
enrolling at school here.
Well, there you go. That in itself is very interesting, isn't it?
Were some of the schools around California
not quite good enough for them, I wonder?
They want to give those children a good British education,
despite fleeing the country, it not being safe for them,
and them saying some very disparaging things about our country
and indeed our royal family over the last few years.
But they have decided, it appears, to educate their children here.
The Sussexes did have a reunion with King Charles last month,
and they have apparently now found a new home in the UK.
So, it obviously does raise serious questions
about the future of that Sandringham Agreement,
which was dubbed Megxit.
Charles, King Charles, was apparently only told on Sunday
that Prince Harry and his daughter-in-law, Meghan Markle,
are returning to Britain.
So, that is a point that is worth emphasising,
that they had a little bit of a reunion with King Charles last month,
they found a home here in the UK,
presumably they spent quite a bit of time
finding a school for their children,
and yet they supposedly only told King Charles on Sunday
that they would actually be coming back.
They're going to move into a non-royal residence.
We haven't got our panel here tonight,
but our royal correspondent, Cameron Walker,
has hot-footed it into the studio for us.
Cameron, thank you very, very much.
Very significant news, this.
Harry and Meghan are moving back to Britain.
Incredibly significant news,
and GB News can confirm that the story is accurate.
Harry and Meghan are, after six years out in the United States,
moving back to the United Kingdom.
Both Archie and Lilibus, as you say, Patrick,
will be enrolling in school.
It's understood that the King was informed on Sunday.
Clearly, this raises now a number of questions.
First of all, let's look back to 2020.
Such a dramatic exit from the royal family,
to the point where there was a bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview.
Prince Harry, of course,
wrote to all of Ed, all of his dirty laundry,
in his memoir, Spare.
Now, Harry would say that he was trying to correct
what he saw as mistruths reported in the press
during his time as a working royal.
Meghan even spoke during the Netflix documentary
about being a working royal,
on occasions gave her suicidal thoughts.
You know, this was how serious Harry and Meghan's time
as working members of the royal family were
before they decided to make the move.
Now, I must just stress,
there is no suggestion whatsoever at this stage
that Harry and Meghan are going to be returning
as working royals.
They're still going to be private citizens
when they're in the United Kingdom.
But, I mean, security for one, Patrick.
I mean, what's going to go on there?
We know over the last couple of years,
Harry has sued the Home Office unsuccessfully
to try and get his taxpayer-funded
24-7 arms police protection reinstated.
That has not happened, as far as we can tell.
So what has changed in order for Harry to feel safe enough
to bring his wife and children to the United Kingdom?
Not only just for a secret visit,
as we saw with Highgrove a couple of weeks ago.
Apparently this wasn't discussed at Highgrove, by the way,
when they went to visit the king and Camilla back in July.
But what has changed for them to allow to make this decision?
Well, quite.
I mean, these are the great unanswered questions
at the moment.
It's just worth noting as well,
some of the things that Harry and Meghan have actually said
about our great country in recent years.
Prince Harry explicitly labelled the UK tabloid media
as bigoted, stating that they actively manufacture
a toxic environment rooted in control and fear.
Well, with respect, moving back into that country
with that same tabloid press,
which he has just unsuccessfully tried to sue,
is probably not going to be a great idea for him.
I can't help but wonder whether or not,
with my conspiracy theory hat on,
he knew that this was in the pipeline
and he wanted to secure a victory over them
before he came back in order to try to get them to back off,
knowing that his family would be here.
He said that they were the driving force
behind his family's exit from the country.
Well, what's changed?
He also revealed that being in London
acts as a mental health trigger for him
due to the trauma surrounding his mother's death
and his experience, again, with the British media.
Yeah, I'll rattle this off.
The British monarchy and institutional racism,
some of the allegations that they made there.
Concerns over the skin tone of one of their children.
We'll play you a clip of this in a little bit,
but that was an iconic moment, actually.
In fact, shall we play it?
I think we might as well.
It's the clip of the Oprah Winfrey interview
where they were saying that there was concerns
about the skin tone of their child.
Let's have a look at this.
Hold up.
There's several conversations about it.
There's a conversation with you.
With Harry.
About how dark your baby is going to be?
Potentially, and what that would mean or look like.
Ooh.
That conversation, I'm never going to share.
But at the time, at the time it was awkward,
I was a bit shocked.
Can you tell us what the question was?
No, I'm not comfortable sharing that.
But now, after all of that,
Meghan and Harry are moving back to Britain.
Well, yes, and you have to ask the question as to why.
Clearly, there has been some positives
that have come out of them being in California.
There's also been some pretty disastrous negatives,
to put it frankly.
We know, of course, that Harry and Meghan
had contracts with Netflix.
In fact, they still do.
They had a contract with Spotify.
They also had, clearly, the book deal,
or Prince Harry did anyway.
The Spotify deal was terminated early, for example.
The Netflix shows which they have produced
in the last couple of years, apart from that original one
where they documented their exit as working royals,
have not been that successful
when you look at the raw numbers.
Meghan has also been trying to become
a bit of a lifestyle guru, a businesswoman, if you like,
with a lifestyle brand.
It's really hard to quantify how well that business is doing,
but presumably, bearing in mind all of the products
available with her As Ever brand
are only available within the United States.
You cannot buy them in Britain here.
You can't buy them.
The fact that she's willing to move back to the United Kingdom,
a place where these products aren't available,
suggests to me that the business is not doing as well
as perhaps you would be led to believe.
That is a very interesting point, yes,
because if Meghan was the Duchess of Montecito,
she was incredibly popular over there,
a kind of better, classier Kardashian, as it were,
and she was the toast of every single dinner party
and red carpet, there was absolutely no way
that they would be moving back, I would have thought.
Well, no, I don't think they would be at all.
And, you know, we heard in the early days
that they were cosying up to Oprah Winfrey,
who lived just down the road from her Montecito mansion
and all the rest of it.
Those sorts of stories have dried up.
And also, when Harry came back to the UK in recent weeks
and in recent years, he was clearly,
I mean, I've observed him up close
when he's here in Britain,
and he is clearly very happy doing the charity work,
which he did as a working royal, you know,
spending time with young kids whose dad and mums were soldiers
and were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan,
you know, in Victor's Game, supporting wounded veterans,
and Well Child, supporting very sick,
injured people, young children as well.
All of that, you know, is kind of hard to criticise him for,
but because of all the flack that has come
with complaining about your life as a working royal,
taking newspapers to court,
taking the governments to court,
bearing in mind he is suing His Majesty's government
in His Majesty's courtroom,
putting the king in a very difficult constitutional position,
all of that has overshadowed what he wanted,
what he likes, what he should be really doing in the UK.
Meghan, on the other hand, does not have that foothold.
So I think, arguably, it's going to be much harder
for Meghan to try and fit back in.
And we haven't even started talking about the elephant
in the room, which is Prince William,
the Prince of Wales, who I know for a fact
has not spoken to his brother for a number of years.
So that is going to be very hard to defrost that relationship.
Can you imagine, seriously, if Prince William
has found out about this, what, on Sunday?
It's a few days on from that now,
and he has not had a phone call with his brother
about the fact that he's moving back.
I do want to ask you,
before we play another couple of clips
and we'll go to our panel,
but the security aspect of it, huge issue, huge reason.
I do not feel safe in the UK.
My children are not safe in the UK,
and yet they have decided to come back to Britain
to enrol their children in a British school.
What was the point of all of that, then?
Good question, Patrick, a really, really good question.
And the answer is, we don't know exactly
what security arrangements have been put in place, if any.
We know that when Harry comes back to the UK,
he has to give the Home Office 28 days' notice
for them to decide what level of protection he gets.
From speaking to sources close to him,
more often than not, it's a police liaison telephone number
for a police liaison officer.
Arguably, clearly, if somebody was running at him with a knife,
it's quicker to call 999,
but that's kind of the level of protection
he would usually get.
Unless it's an official royal event,
so if it's a state funeral or a royal wedding or something,
excuse me, he'll be within the guard's perimeter
of the other members of the royal family.
Similarly to if he stays in the royal property,
of course, he was offered Buckingham Palace.
There was a bit of a briefing war
that last month when he came over to the UK.
He ended up not staying in Buckingham Palace
because he turned it down and then changed his mind
that that wasn't enough notice for the royal household.
The Sun reporting, I can't verify this fact,
but the Sun is reporting that the family's new accommodation
is not a royal property.
So presumably, to answer your original question, Patrick,
that means it will need some kind of protection around it
if Harry is still this paranoid about his protection
or lack of, as he would see it.
We've got a clip for you here now,
which is that infamous trip to South Africa,
the couple's first official tour,
and Meghan Markle spoke to ITV about the unbearable pressure...
Oh, camera's waving at me. I'm sorry, I've just got some news
to share with you from a royal source.
So, GB News can confirm that the King was first made aware
of these plans on Sunday.
And Sander King naturally welcomes the opportunity
to see much more of the Sussex family
in a private and a personal capacity.
So separate from, of course, being a working royal.
And the King is absolutely clear, I'm told, I understand even,
that there is no change in the status or the role
of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
They remain private individuals in the eyes of the King.
They are not working members of the royal family.
And that is clearly in keeping with what they wished to do
when they left in 2020,
and to absolutely categorically confirm
what the late Queen ordered back in the Sandringham summit,
there is still no half-in, half-out model.
However, I would suggest that that is a grey area
because we have seen Harry carrying out charitable engagements
and similarly to Meghan, but Meghan also, you know,
having a business with her jam and everything else.
Yes, and let's just, yeah, let's just remind ourselves
of this clip as well.
So this is when they're in South Africa.
This is when Meghan Markle was saying
that there was an unbearable pressure of life in the spotlight.
It was no longer enough for her to just survive it.
We can play you that clip.