Harry and Meghan are moving back to a UK that will be even worse for them than before they left

In January 2020, there were only confused whispers about a coronavirus that had hit some international territories, and maybe we would’ve paid more attention if we weren’t all contending with the sensational news that Harry and Meghan were quitting royal life.

Is that something you can do when you’re, at the time, sixth in line to British throne?

Turns out, you could. You could up sticks and move halfway around the world to North America – first to Vancouver Island and then settling in California – to carve out a new path for your young family.

Goodbye, tea, crumpets and polite conversations about some village’s oldest mill, and hello, independence and freedom.

Of course, it was never the drudgery of small talk that Harry and Meghan objected to, it was the never-ending media intrusion and, what he claimed, the toxicity of his family relationships that they wanted distance from.

Which makes the revelation that the couple, and their children Archie and Lilibet, will be relocating back to the UK by next month so jaw-dropping. The two kids, according to UK press, are already enrolled for the new school year which begins in September.

Perhaps you can never underestimate the pull of family for someone like Harry, who grew up in an incredibly intense bubble of duty and destiny, and no amount of therapy (he certainly speaks like someone who has had his time on the couch) can fully un-spool that conditioning.

There is also the matter of King Charles’ health. Buckingham Palace announced in February 2024 that Charles had been diagnosed with an unspecified cancer, and late last year gave an update that he had “responded exceptionally well” to treatment.

While that official check-in suggested Charles, 77, had turned a corner and that he would face a reduced treatment schedule in 2026, it’s still a testing time for any family, and cancer has a way of being unpredictable.

That kind of event can have the effect of bringing estranged members back into the fold.

So, there are certainly reasons for the prodigal son to return to his homeland.

If Harry and Meghan have a clear-eyed view about this move back, they must know that there will be entering a lion’s den.

If they thought they were having a rough time of it already – and we don’t know what words were exchanged behind the scenes in the lead-up to their departure – this is going to be exponentially more challenging.

At least six years earlier, the enmity hadn’t broken out in public in such a disruptive way. That is not to judge them, necessarily, for doing it, because we do live in a public confessional culture which has its pros and cons.

On the plus side, more generally not talking about issues such as domestic violence and mental health has meant an endless number of people have lived alone in silence and with darkness. Talking about them is the first step to finding solutions.

When people with high profiles reveal their personal struggles, it makes it slightly easier for someone else going through the same, and no matter your opinion of Harry, it is fact that he has been through a lot.

His conflicts with his family are his story to tell, and Harry has had no control over how any narrative about his life has been packaged and sold.

His life has been a commodity – tabloid media used him to sell papers and subscriptions, and the royal family used him as a soft power tool to hold up an antiquated institution responsible for centuries of colonial crimes.

Other people have been profiting off his image since before his birth, is it any surprise he thought it was his turn?

That’s the more empathetic reading of the past six years, which many in the UK and a lot of its media do not share.

To them, Harry is a brat who has greatly betrayed his family and therefore the country, by the tell-alls in his memoirs, his docu-series and various interviews with friendly American media.

And Meghan is the Lady Macbeth pulling the strings – a sexist trope that both unfairly characterises her and denies his agency.

The public voraciously ate up all the details about his and William’s alleged physical confrontation in Nottingham Cottage, and then tsk-ed tsk-ed his daring to lay it all out.

This is what Harry and Meghan are returning to. They are no more favourably thought of than when they left.

One of the more instructive things to remember is that for a long time, the British public disliked Meghan more than they did Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. And that’s after all the lurid Jeffrey Epstein-associated allegations.

Meghan is just a second-tier American actress who is sometimes a little bit too much.

The appetite for schadenfreude is already strong, and the British media will be more than happy to serve them up on a platter. Some of them are also out for blood.

Harry has spent years not just criticising how the British media pack operates but also actively suing them in the courts.

In a recent case, he and his co-claimants, which included Elton John and Liz Hurley, lost a four-year battle against Associated News Limited, the publisher of the Daily Mail, alleging unlawful information gathering.

Harry’s side, after the loss, attacked the judge, Justice Matthew Nicklin, who presided over the trial and pointed out that Nicklin had previously acted as a barrister for The Daily Mirror’s publisher in a phone-hacking case.

In 2023, Harry won a lawsuit against the Mirror, and in 2025, News Corp, which publishes The Sun in the UK, settled with him rather than go to trial.

The point is, he has gone after the UK’s top-selling tabloid papers, and now that he’s back on their turf, it doesn’t seem likely they’re just going to leave him and his family alone to be the private citizens they are.

There are certain protocols about how the royals are treated by the media when they’re not on official engagements, and while there are many instances where that has been breached (and Harry will tell you specifics), more often than not, it’s observed.

Because there’s a symbiotic relationship in which each props the other up, it’s in everyone’s interest to mostly get along. It’s also why the royals as an institution leaked and backgrounded against Harry and Meghan so often, because it was seen to serve the “greater good” of The Firm.

There are no such niceties when it comes to Harry and Meghan, and it will be pointed out that they’re not working royals and, unless it’s been renegotiated, are not entitled to police escorts.

They’ve worked really hard to keep images of Archie and Lilibet out of the public eye, and that’s going to end.

It’s going to be a free-for-all and it’s going to be ugly.