Prince Harry’s war with the press is back in court. But this time it is different

It may feel as if we’re back in familiar territory – the Duke of Sussex is about to take a case to a London court claiming newspapers use illegal methods to gather information.

But in many ways, Prince Harry appears to be in a different place in his life. It appears that he is now thinking more about reconciliation with his family rather than allegations and counter-allegations.

When the case against the publisher of the Daily Mail begins on Monday, Prince Harry will be energetically fighting the press, yet he no longer seems to be fighting the rest of the world either.

It is the third major court battle for Prince Harry, who has accused newspaper groups of unlawful behaviour and has appeared as a witness in the civil case against Associated Newspapers, along with other claimants, including Sir Elton John, Liz Hurley and Baroness Lawrence, the campaigning mother of murdered Stephen Lawrence.

The Daily Mail’s publishers have dismissed the allegations as “nonsense” and are prepared to mount a robust defence of their journalism.

But the backdrop for Prince Harry feels different from when he gave evidence against the Mirror Group in 2023. That was the year when his no-holds-barred memoir Spare and, after a year, the Harry and Meghan Netflix documentary were released. Both are full of controversial views on the royal family.

His successful court battle against the Mirror was huge news in itself, marking the largest royal appearance in the witness box in modern times.

He had no problem with the questions, but he presented an isolated figure, with no one present in the courtroom except his legal team and security.

But, ahead of his latest court case, the mood music sounds different: he’s now building bridges instead of blowing them up.

Prince Harry talks about his desire to end his differences with his family.

In his BBC interview last May, Prince Harry talks about his desire to end differences with his family Saying, “There is no point in fighting anymore; life is precious.”

And in September, he met his father, King Charles, face to face for the first time in 19 months. This was a sign of improvement in relations.

His UK security review may also ease Harry’s travel. Next year’s Invictus Games will come to Birmingham, his biggest event in the UK since his bitter departure in 2020.

Along with this sense of growing rapprochement with his family is the unspoken expectation that Harry will be keeping his head down for the time being, avoiding bombastic interviews, and not rocking the royal boat.

So he will not meet his father during this court case, as the king wants to maintain distance from such high-profile legal proceedings. And his brother Prince William has an engagement in Scotland.

Royal commentator Richard Palmer described it as “Harry’s final tirade at the national newspapers, whom he blames for ruining his life.”.

“His father and the royal family would clearly have preferred not to pursue this trial and are recusing themselves from it. They hope Harry won’t involve the king or family in the evidence.

“If he says the wrong thing, it could affect his hopes of a reconciliation, so I’m sure it will have an impact on his mind.”

But he adds, “It’s interesting that, as far as we know, he is not planning to give any interviews to publicise this case. He is in a different place now, calmer and less eager to mend differences with his family.

Royal commentator Professor Pauline MacLaren also thinks Harry is likely to keep a low profile “given his desire to rebuild bridges, certainly with his father and reports he is expected to join him at the opening of the Invictus Games”.

“They might have learnt that as far as the royals are concerned, less is more.

She adds, “So as long as he continues his pursuit against Associated Newspapers, I think he will stay out of the spotlight.”

Monday’s hearing may be his last court campaign against the papers, but Prince Harry should know it won’t be the easiest one for him.

Unlike other newspaper groups, The Mail and Mail on Sunday were never caught up in an investigation into a phone-hacking scandal or illegal payments to public officials more than a decade ago.

The editor of the Mail, Paul Dacre, told the Leveson inquiry into press standards in 2012 that he had conducted a “major internal investigation” and was “confident” that there was no case of phone hacking by his newspapers.

Yes, their reporters used private investigators with databases to legally obtain phone numbers, so they didn’t have to go through phone books. He described the inquiry as ending when one of the investigators admitted a data security breach.

Fast forward to October 2022; suddenly, six very famous people accused Associated Newspapers of not only accessing their voicemail messages and using private investigators to “blag” their personal information but also bugging phones and using invasive surveillance techniques.

To top it all, one of them was Baroness Doreen Lawrence. The Mail strongly supported her campaign to bring her son Stephen’s killers to justice in the 1990s.

Now, he claims that a senior reporter had tasked investigators with phone tapping and bugging to get information for stories.

It was a bombshell in a long history of allegations against the press.

In the suit, the claimants – Baroness Lawrence, Prince Harry, actresses Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost Law, Sir Elton John, her husband David Furnish and former Liberal Democrat minister Sir Simon Hughes, who joined the action at a later stage – must prove that journalists working for Associated Newspapers had their privacy violated.

The first challenge: there is a six-year statute of limitations to claim a privacy violation, starting from when it happened, and some allegations are decades old. To avoid this rule, they must show that they did not know they had a possible case until recently.

Associated alleges that to achieve this, privacy friendly journalists published articles on fringe news websites to create an artificial “watershed moment” when it could be claimed that the victims had “discovered” the truth about what the newspapers had done. The other side vehemently denies this. The judge will decide.

Some of the evidence they were hoping to deploy came from private investigators themselves. Some payment has been made for the information. While this may not be a significant issue in civil courts, the judge must weigh whether it compromises the credibility of their evidence.

There have also been dramatic disputes behind the scenes between researchers working for the claimants and private investigators who were expected to become star witnesses.

One, Gavin Burrows, appears to have signed a lengthy statement detailing what he knew about the use of illegal methods but later claimed that his signature had been forged. They are expected to give evidence.

Prince Harry’s legal team also hoped to prove the general claim that illegal practices were “widespread or habitual” at Associated Newspapers, partly because the journalists joined from other publications where it was also routine and were using the same private investigators.

After all, what was the possibility that the competitors Mail and Mail on Sunday did not use illegal techniques to obtain information that was widely disseminated by the Sun, News of the World, The Mirror and the Sunday Mirror?

But the no-nonsense judges presiding over these often ill-tempered proceedings are desperate to prevent them from turning into “public enquiries”. Last year, he ruled that he would not accept these “normal” claims.

In short, the Big Seven will have to present their case, allegation after allegation. Team Harry begins the test with one hand tied behind his back.

Unless an agreement is reached, as happened in the Case against the newsgroup newspapers Prince Harry will present his claim against the unfair and dishonest excesses of press intrusion in the High Court. He holds this cause in high regard.

Once the case is over, sources close to Harry suggest his priority will be to support his charitable work, and there are no further court cases against the media currently in the pipeline.