Prince Harry’s failed High Court challenge against the government over his security protection heaps more embarrassment on the royals. The Duke of Sussex was told today that the decision to downgrade his security status following his departure from the royal family was legitimate. Once again, it means the Royals are in the headlines for the wrong reasons.

We are not yet three months into 2024, and this year shows every sign of being the worst in memory for the royal family. This is an impressive achievement, given that 2023 began with Prince Harry publishing an embarrassing tell-all memoir, rich in revelation about his family’s attitudes and antics. Yet this year has already seen the King having to step back from royal duties after a cancer diagnosis, Prince William being criticised for his unprecedented intervention in global politics, the continuing mystery as to the Princess of Wales’s health condition and whereabouts, and, yesterday, the ill-fated and deeply misguided decision to put the disgraced Duke of York front and centre at the memorial service for King Constantine of Greece.

You would not have known, looking at the pictures from the event, that Prince Andrew was a humiliated figure who had supposedly retired from royal duties. Instead, he looked every inch the paterfamilias, grinning widely and proudly as he led his daughters and former wife Sarah Ferguson into St George’s Chapel at Windsor. Observers might have thought he was heading off for a day at the races, rather than a solemn occasion, but it was a reminder that the grand old Duke of York has never been very good at judging the mood of an occasion. It was salutary to see that the official royal family, bar the Queen, were all absent; the King and the Princess of Wales suffering from ill health, Prince William absent because of a mysterious ‘personal matter’ and Prince Harry – well, the reasons are too numerous to list.

Harry has not yet responded publicly to the High Court verdict this morning but there is likely to be weeping and gnashing of teeth in Montecito. The decision is not, perhaps, an enormous surprise; since stepping down as a working royal at the beginning of 2020, the government’s Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, also known as Ravec, decided that Harry is no longer automatically entitled to police protection when he visits the United Kingdom. Instead, his security needs are met on a ‘bespoke’ and ‘case-by-case’ basis.

The ever-litigious duke has now wasted a vast amount of time and effort on his doomed legal battle. Sir Peter Lane’s ruling concluded that: ‘The court has found that there hasn’t been any unlawfulness in reaching the decision of 28 Feb 2020. Any departure from policy was justified. The decision wasn’t irrational [or] marred by procedural unfairness.’

In other words, ever since Harry decided to stage his own mini-abdication four years ago, he has had to accept that there are consequences, even downsides, to giving up the responsibilities that come with being a working member of the royal family. The absence of taxpayer-funded police protection is one of the difficulties he now faces, as the Home Office pronounced themselves ‘pleased’ at the outcome of the case. Yet it is hard to feel too sorry for Harry; after all, his privately funded security detail will fulfil his needs, no doubt paid for by a combination of Netflix deals and Spare royalties.

‘The Firm’ may not be shedding any tears over Harry’s humiliating defeat. Perhaps some of them will even be privately remarking that he deserves this outcome for his hubristic decision to take the government of his former home country to court. Still, it would be easier for them to look down on the departed duke if the institution that he quit wasn’t drifting into crisis, apparently through a mixture of bad luck and negligence.

If there is someone capable of sending Prince Andrew back into obscurity, Prince Harry back to America and the Princess of Wales back into the public eye, their services should be called upon, and quickly. Otherwise this situation looks like it will only be getting worse throughout the rest of this annus horribilis.