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Since he stepped down from life as a working royal Prince Harry ’s security arrangements have been a major source of contention.
The Duke of Sussex waged a very public war with British authorities trying to get his protection officers reinstated without luck.
While many accused him of trying to have the perks of royal life without having to do the work, Harry has insisted his fight has always been about safety.
With reports emerging of a stalker who followed the prince around London on his recent trip home, he’s finally proved the threat is real.
It’s time that the powers that be stopped treating Harry’s security like a privilege he forfeited. It’s a necessity he never stopped needing.
What security threats does Prince Harry face?
During his September 2025 visit to London, a known stalker managed to get extremely close to Harry on two separate occasions.
The woman entered a “secure zone” within the Royal Lancaster Hotel on September 8 on the day the prince was due to attend the WellChild Awards.
She was found hiding in a hotel bathroom less than half an hour before Harry’s arrival.
Two days later, she got within meters of Harry as he visited the Centre for Blast Injury Studies in West London.
Fortunately, she was prevented from reaching the royal when a member of the duke’s staff recognised and “body-blocked” her, reported the British Telegraph.
This action was taken while the staff member was unsure about whether the woman was armed or not.
Scarily, these are not the first encounters Harry’s team have had to deal with the person.
She is known to have a “fixation” on the prince and has previously followed him and wife Meghan Markle around the world.
She also tried to approach the pair in May 2024 while they were visiting Abuja in Nigeria.
“It should not be left to two office staff to act as extra eyes and ears or provide a physical barrier,” a friend of Harry told the newspaper.
“That should not happen. It is only going to take one motivated, lone individual for this to go south very quickly.”
There have been other threats directed toward the Duke and Duchess of Sussex too.
Two neo-Nazi podcasters were sentenced to prison in January 2024 following comments that encouraged their listeners to commit violence against Harry and his son Archie.
What kind of security does Prince Harry have?
Harry was once guarded by British state security that was fully taxpayer funded.
It was a privilege he lost shortly after heading to Canada in early 2020 to start a new life with Meghan and their infant son Archie.
“I was stunned that my family would allow security to be taken away, especially at the most vulnerable point for us,” Harry told GMA in January 2023.
Now in the US, the duke and duchess use private bodyguards for protection that they pay for themselves.
He also has no rights to police protection on his visits back to the UK.
The trips are assessed on a case-by-case basis by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures.
He has to give plenty of notice of visits, something which Harry has argued could expose him and his family to danger.
This arrangement has resulted in him having minimal to no police protection on his rare visits.
Harry has access to a liaison officer to contact in the event something goes wrong. This person has been described as a “suit in an office”.
His other option would be to call emergency services, the equivalent of triple 000 in the UK.
Harry has made it clear that he doesn’t believe this arrangement is enough to keep him and his family safe.
He spent years in court battling the Home Office to have the decision reversed.
What was the ruling on Prince Harry’s security appeal?
Prince Harry argued in court that the government committee responsible for planning security for the royals did not consider his circumstances properly in 2020 when they made the decision to remove his right to protection.
“Prince Harry inherited a security risk at birth, for life. He remains sixth in line to the throne, served two tours of combat duty in Afghanistan, and in recent years his family has been subjected to well-documented neo-Nazi and extremist threats,” his legal team told the court.
“While his role within the institution has changed, his profile as a member of the Royal Family has not. Nor has the threat to him and his family.”
Harry lost the appeal over his security in May 2025. Judge Sir Geoffrey Vos ruled that while his safety concerns were both “powerful and moving”, Harry’s “sense of grievance” did not “translate into a legal argument”.
In an interview with the BBC shortly after the ruling, Harry said he cannot “see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point”.
Could King Charles help with Prince Harry’s security?
Harry revealed that the legal battle over his protection had become a roadblock in his attempts to reconcile with King Charles.
“[My father] won’t speak to me because of this security stuff,” he admitted.
It’s understood that the King felt it would have been constitutionally improper to intervene while the case was being considered by the courts.
However, his sons close encounters with his stalker has reignited the debate over whether the King should intervene.
“If the [Metropolitan Police] had been asked to protect the Duke of Sussex, by either the head of state – whether it was the Queen at the time or the future King – we would protect that person,” Neil Basu, the former head of the UK’s counter-terrorism police who worked in various positions on Ravec between 2018 and 2021, told The Telegraph.
“There is nothing whatsoever that would have led us to say: ‘No, I’m sorry Sir, or M’am, we’re not doing that.'”
But even without royal intervention, the committee could review their own decision.
While an argument could be made that Harry is just now a “celebrity”, it wouldn’t be the first time that one had the same level of protection out of need.
Taylor Swift was granted royal-style and taxpayer funded police protection for her spate of sell-out Wembley gigs in London in 2024 after her concerts where targeted by a terrorist plot in Austria.
Why does Prince Harry need his security rights reinstated in Britain?
His recent brush with danger in London is a sobering reminder that wealth and fame aren’t protection from threats.
The last full risk assessment on Prince Harry was completed in 2019.
At the time he was placed in the highest category-level 7- which included only Queen Elizabeth II and then Prime Minister Theresa May.
Basu said he felt it was a “mistake” not to formally assess the threat faced by the Duke now.
“The most common nature of threat to a member of the Royal family has been fixated individuals,” he told The Telegraph. “And it is the hardest thing to guard against.”
Harry is still the son of the King and is currently 5th in line to the British throne. What has changed since 2019 is his popularity, which has plunged in the UK in recent years.
Of course, Harry has brought a lot of this negative attention on himself thanks to a series of tell-all books and his memoir Spare which made shocking allegations of mistreatment by his royal relatives.
But as bad as his behaviour may have been, do you want him or a member of his staff to get killed or seriously hurt for it?
While he may no longer be a working royal, Hary will continue to step out in support of the Invictus Games and to charitable events associated with his late mother like the Wellchild Awards.
Providing the Sussex’s with protection isn’t about privilege, it is about risk, which didn’t evaporate as soon as he stepped down from the official job.
In the end security isn’t a perk of being royal. And authorities need to ask themselves if they really want to wait for a tragedy first to prove the danger was real.
