Amanda Platell is still crying about Harry and Meghan and their security

Amanda Platell has written a column in the Daily Mail arguing that British taxpayers should not have to fund police protection for Prince Harry during his July Birmingham visit. She called it beyond outrageous. She described Meghan as self-aggrandising and selfish. She said Harry has given up his royal privileges to monetise his connections while launching spiteful and vicious attacks on the institution. Before we go any further let us establish the single most important fact in this entire debate. Harry went to court specifically to seek permission to reimburse the Metropolitan Police for his own security costs. He wanted to pay for it himself. The court told him he could not. The British legal system ruled that police protection cannot be treated as a private commercial service and that accepting personal payment from a protected individual would compromise the independence of the service. So the argument that Harry should pay for his own security has already been made, already been tested in court and already been rejected by the very legal system Platell's publication usually champions when it suits them. Platell knows this. She was almost certainly cheering that ruling when it came down, arguing that the police are not hired guns. And now she is writing a column furious that taxpayers are picking up the bill. The position requires her to simultaneously believe Harry should not get taxpayer-funded security and should not be allowed to pay for it himself. That is not a policy position. That is a desire for Harry to have no security at all. Now let us talk about the laundry list of people whose security Platell has never written a column about. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Arrested in February. Under active police investigation. Living on the King's estate in Norfolk. Almost certainly still receiving round-the-clock protection funded by the state. His daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, neither working royals, also receive protection. The extended royal family's security arrangements, as the National Audit Office report demonstrated this week, are rarely subjected to the same scrutiny as anything connected to Harry. There is also the public safety argument that Platell completely ignores. It is not simply about whether Harry gets hurt. If Harry attends a public event in Birmingham with large crowds and no adequate security infrastructure and something happens, the consequences extend far beyond Harry himself. The people around him are at risk. The event is at risk. The implications for Birmingham 2027 would be catastrophic. The monarchy, which Platell claims to be protecting, would face an accountability crisis of historic proportions if Princess Diana's son was harmed on British soil due to an institutionally engineered security gap. The Home Office has reportedly agreed to cover security for Invictus-related events but not for Meghan and the children and not beyond those events. That arrangement, if accurate, is itself revealing. The government of the United Kingdom is willing to protect Harry when he is doing work that benefits the country's international reputation but not when he is simply existing as a British citizen and the son of the King. Platell ended her column calling herself a monarchist and suggesting that protecting Harry would fuel the republican cause. But Republic was on the Mall this weekend with Epstein photographs and Stop The Reign umbrellas. The republican cause does not need Harry's security bill to fuel it. It has Andrew's security bill, the NAO report, the peppercorn rents, the Forest Lodge renovation lies and a police investigation that has produced no charges to keep it going indefinitely. Harry tried to pay for his own security. He was told no. He is coming to Birmingham. The government should do its job.