Harry’s Royal Brand Under Threat: Assessing the Future Amid Chaos at Polo, Reveals Richard Kay

The Sentebale shambles has left no one unscathed. The chairwoman alleged a charity plagued by bullying and misogyny, and the trustees who anonymously criticized her didn’t fare any better.

Who, though, would have thought the figure whose reputation would suffer most of all would be Prince Harry?

It was his youthful passion and determination to build something that would make his late mother proud that first brought Sentebale to life.

Yesterday, questions were not just being asked about the charity’s future but also about where this leaves Harry.

The once glorious image of Sentebale has been tarnished, with the current chair, Dr. Sophie Chandauka, revealing a darker side post Harry and Meghan’s relocation to the US after Megxit.

Sentebale lost corporate sponsors as well as donors – and so far as Dr Chandauka was concerned, it was clear where the fault lay.

Upon assuming her role in July 2023, Dr. Chandauka reviewed the charity’s finances over the past seven years. She found a stark correlation between the decline in commercial support and Prince Harry’s departure from the UK.

Attempts to address the issue had been fruitless, she said. When she tried to raise it, she was told ‘it’s an uncomfortable conversation to have with Prince Harry in the room’.

She claimed the charity trustees had been in place too long, saying: ‘This is not how a properly run organisation should work. There’s a reason why you have time limits because people begin to mark their own homework, and turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.’

But in her escalating war of words, Dr Chandauka revealed the crisis at Sentebale’s heart – the malign impact of Harry’s reputation or, as she put it: ‘The number one risk for this organisation was the toxicity of its lead patron’s brand.’

Even allowing for the fact that the Zimbabwe-born lawyer had been viewed a controversial and at times divisive figure, this was a devastating indictment.

Nothing reveals more about this extraordinary state of affairs than the saga over the Florida polo challenge in April last year when a fundraiser was effectively hijacked by Harry for a Netflix documentary.

A wealthy family had provided facilities for the game which would raise much-needed money for Sentebale’s depleted reserves. ‘Then about a month before the event, Prince Harry called the team and said, “I’m doing a Netflix show and I would love to bring a camera crew so that I can include some footage”,’ Dr Chandauka said.There was an immediate crisis. The contract with the venue’s owner had to change because it was now ‘a commercial undertaking’. As Dr Chandauka recalled: ‘We couldn’t afford it. So now we lost the venue.’

After finding a new location, organisers were told that the Duchess of Sussex, who had said she would not be present, had decided to attend after all.

What’s more she would be bringing her celebrity friend, tennis star Serena Williams.

This was what led to the chaos on stage when Meghan asked the charity boss to stand aside for the presentation, a moment caught on camera and made even more awkward as Dr Chandauka was obliged to duck under the trophy being held by the prince and his wife.

What happened next was even more astonishing. Harry asked Dr Chandauka for a statement backing Meghan over the episode, which had begun to generate huge interest. She refused, insisting that to do so would not only increase the chances Meghan would ‘get even worse trolling’ but also because the charity could not be an extension of the Sussex brand.

With the benefit of hindsight, this would seem to have triggered the move to remove her and Harry’s resignation.

‘Really, what Prince Harry wanted to do was eject me from the organisation,’ she claimed. ‘And this went on for months through bullying, harassment. I have documentation.’ In her interview with Sky News’s Trevor Phillips, she accused the prince of ‘unleashing the Sussex machine on me’, when he authorised releasing a statement revealing he had quit the charity. This, she said, was ‘an example of harassment and bullying at scale’. It would be hard to exaggerate how devastating these words will have been for a prince who has spent much of the past five years painting himself and Meghan as victims.

To be accused of the offences they have levelled at others – with the Sussexes as the supposed victims – must surely give even Harry pause for thought.

The prince will have to face a hard but inescapable question: is there any future for his kind of royal brand?

While Dr Chandauka was touring the TV stations, another unpalatable truth – unpalatable for Harry, at least – was taking shape: that his kind of ‘white saviour’ charitable endeavour is looking not just old fashioned but frankly out of time.

This argument suggests there is something unsavoury about a charity devoted to the wellbeing of dirt-poor black children being supported by monied, privileged white people.

As one figure who helps royals with their charity profiles told me: ‘Watching glamorous, rich people on horseback enjoying themselves while being po-faced about how it’s for charity, is not really a good look anymore. Polo is elitist and the people who play it are elitist. Whatever the cause, it looks old fashioned.’

If this does not ring alarm bells, it should. Three years ago, on a tour of the Caribbean, Prince William and Kate found themselves in a public relations disaster after they were photographed making contact with Jamaican children pushing their hands through a wire fence. Critics accused them of taking part in a white-saviour parody. It was not the only misstep. Riding in an open-top Land Rover to review a military parade was an unfortunate reminder of more deferential times. William left that trip vowing to change things.

One wonders if Harry will have the wherewithal to realise he too must change.

For all its noble virtues when he set it up in 2006, the circumstances surrounding Sentebale today have changed. Aids and HIV among young people were the central issues he wanted to address back then. Nineteen years later, Sentebale’s work has shifted to poverty and other climate-related problems.

Heightened sensitivity about race has also played a significant part in the way charities operate. Comic Relief ditched its films of so-called white saviours amid research that showed there was rising resentment about such stereotypes.

For Harry this is a profound moment. Sentebale and the Invictus Games for disabled military veterans are his most successful achievements – and the only residue of his former royal life. If Sentebale goes, he is left with a gathering of his Invictus family every two years. How will he fill his empty days?

Reports at the weekend suggested he rarely leaves the marital mansion in Montecito, California. He was said to miss family and friends, and insiders were quoted as saying that he had not been informed about the King’s temporary admission to hospital last week because ‘the Palace did not want to cause unnecessary alarm’.

Since Megxit, his old royal life has vanished. He has given up his status and military titles. Now his charity world appears to be in retreat, too.

With her lifestyle shows and podcasts, Meghan is busier than ever. As his world contracts, hers expands. I wonder how often Harry spends time considering who is to blame?