Harry v US: ‘Pompous Brit’ shatters protocol

NEW YORK: Prince Harry used a keynote speech to the UN in New York to unleash an extraordinary attack on his adopted home country, the US.

The Duke of Sussex, supported by his wife Meghan, compared the US government to Russia invading Ukraine as part of a “global assault on democracy and freedom”. He opined that the US was responsible for the “rolling back of constitutional rights”, in seeming reference to the legal decision on the Roe v Wade abortion precedent by the Supreme Court, a co-equal branch of the US government

alongside the White House and congress. It was an unprecedented break in the royal family’s protocol of not commenting on geopolitical decisions, a long-running practice that has made his grandmother, the Queen, so beloved across the political spectrum and on both sides of the Atlantic. Harry’s comments were made amid otherwise benign remarks to observe Mandela Day, a celebration of the life of Nelson Mandela, who was close to the prince’s mother, Princess Diana. He began his foray into the US political debate by saying it was easy to feel anger or despair during “a time of global uncertainty and division”.

“This has been a painful year in a painful decade. We’re living through a pandemic that continues to ravage communities in every corner of the globe, climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all,” Harry began.

“The few, weaponising lies and disinformation at the expense of the many,” he continued. “And from the horrific war in Ukraine, to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom, the cause of Mandela’s life.”

Under the US constitution, the judicial branch of the US government that interprets the law, the Supreme Court, is of equal importance to the legislative branch that makes the law, the congress, and the executive branch that enforces it, the White House.

Harry’s suggestion that the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the constitution was an “assault on democracy” is seen as criticising the presidency and congress over their political decisions.

Amber Athey, The Spectator’s Washington editor, said “the pompous Brit who called the First Amendment ‘bonkers’ doesn’t get to opine on the alleged ‘rolling back’ of constitutional rights”.