Harry and Meghan suffered a new blow tonight after a German documentary accused the couple of hypocrisy while enjoying an ‘elitist’ lifestyle in the United States.
The programme entitled ‘Harry: The Lost Prince’ includes damning criticism of the couple’s attempts to build a new life for themselves as charity activists and campaigners since leaving the Royal family.
Femail was given a preview of the documentary before it was screened to an audience of millions in Germany tonight.
The programme takes a dig at the couple by detailing how their much-publicised visits to poverty-stricken countries such as Nigeria and Colombia sits uneasily with Meghan’s love of expensive designer clothes.
One stinging voice in the documentary is former soldier Ben McBean, who lost his left arm and had his right leg amputated above the knee after being seriously injured by a landmine blast in Afghanistan in 2008.
McBean who shared a flight home from Afghanistan with Harry did not hold back in criticising the prince over his revelations about his family in his bombshell memoir Spare and in his Netflix show.
The veteran soldier says: ‘I just thought, with him kind of whinging about his family and he was saying something about his brother pushing him over or something like that, I was just like, “Mate, just leave it out”.
‘You and your brother had a little fisticuffs…but family’s family, you know.
‘If one of my friends fell out with his partner and started posting things on social media and saying my ex is this and that, I’d have told him to shut up as well.’
The German documentary also points the finger at Harry and Meghan for inevitably trading off their former Royal roles by seeking to make money to support their lifestyle.
It even pours scorn on them for ‘failing’ to mix with wealthy neighbours in the celebrity enclave of Montecito of California, where they have made their home with children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
But Harry and Meghan may be most uncomfortable with the documentary reminding viewers that they had admitted spending just one hour a week working for their charity Archewell.
In another, the programme highlights how donations to Archewell dropped from $13million in 2021 to just $2million dollars in 2022.
The couple did face harsh criticism over ‘Megxit’ in some sections of the media in Germany when they announced their decision to step back as ‘senior members’ of the British Royal family in January 2020.
Their reputations soared, however, in Germany in September last year when they attended the Invictus games, featuring competing injured servicemen and women, in Dusseldorf.
But the new documentary – the first TV analysis of the couple in Germany since ‘Megxit’ – even questions the cost of the Dusseldorf games by pointing out that they were funded by a €40million donation from Germany’s Ministry of Defence.
The documentary will no doubt leave the couple unimpressed as it extensively quotes British Royal reporters and experts, talking about the gulf between their supposedly noble work and their luxury lifestyle.
One reporter Russel Myers says on the show: ‘If you’re going to places like Nigeria, like Colombia, which have huge socio-economic problems, some of the world’s poorest communities in these countries, and you’re turning up wearing tens of thousands of pounds worth of designer clothes – it really doesn’t send the right message.’
Jack Royston from the podcast The Royal Report also picked up on the couple’s desire to be ‘half in and half out’ of the Royal family which was dismissed by the late Queen.
He says: ‘If you have a situation where Harry and Meghan are earning huge amounts of money in Hollywood trading off their reputations, but then they’re also bolstering their reputations by working for the Queen – they’re able to present themselves on the world stage as being these working members of the royal family who are also available for a price.
‘That is a huge compromise to demand off the monarchy. If they were to be perceived to be promoting their commercial projects while representing the Queen, then that’s also… starting to border on corruption there because they should never be using the monarchy as a platform.’
Royston adds: ‘The particular way in which Harry and Meghan crashed out of the Royal Family, firing hand grenades at Harry’s relatives, caused their reputation to be significantly damaged.
‘And that has had a major impact on their capacity to make the world a better place because a lot of people just aren’t listening to them at all!’
Royston also points out the huge cost of the Invictus games with the massive contribution by the German taxpayer and the expectation that public funds in the UK will have to support the games which are booked to be held in Birmingham in 2027.
Describing it as ‘a huge amount of money and obviously falling on the taxpayer’, he said: ‘It’s going to be a big issue at the 2027 games which is in Birmingham, as Birmingham recently was driven to the verge of bankruptcy.’
Royston also refers to Harry and Meghan as now being ‘part of an elite in America’, leading lives which separate them even further from the Royal family.
Richard Mineards, one of the couple’s neighbours in Montecito, also appears, talking about the exclusive lifestyle that the couple enjoy in the area.
He says: ‘It doesn’t come cheap. I mean…most houses are about eight or nine million dollars.’
But he added: ‘I personally don’t think that Meghan is an asset to our community… She doesn’t really go out or get involved with the community.
‘Harry has to a certain extent, because he’s quite jolly…but Meghan doesn’t seem to get seen anywhere…. And you don’t see him either.’
The documentary also features Royal biographer Angela Levin, talking about Harry’s dissatisfaction at ‘Megxit’, saying, ‘he didn’t get exactly what he wanted – that he could be half in the royal family and half out.’
She explains in the programme: ‘But the late Queen who died said that actually doesn’t work and I don’t want you to use your position within the royal family to make money.’
German journalist Dr Ulrike Grunewald, who directed the documentary, says: ‘What surprised me most was how ineffectively Harry and Meghan’s foundation is organised.
‘The amount of donations has fallen drastically in one year: from $13million in 2021 to $2million in 2022. According to their own documents, Harry and Meghan only work one hour a week for the Archewell Foundation.’
Dai Davies, a former Head of Royal Protection and a Divisional Commander in the Metropolitan Police, also criticises Harry, accusing him of making others a target by detailing in his book how many Taliban fighters he had killed in his Apache helicopter.
Davies says: ‘In his book, Spare, for him to disclose, as he did, that he had killed a number of Taliban was, in my opinion, totally unwise, because I was aware, as indeed he was, that the Taliban and various groups had put a price on his head.
‘And really, I think that price still remains, which could form a basis for him saying, well, I need security.
‘If you open your big mouth, as he has collectively, that book, not just on that, but given away all kinds of secrets, then it’s not surprising that some people might regard you as a potential target.’
Davies also accuses Harry of failing to mix much with ordinary people on what he describes as their ‘carefully orchestrated’ international trips.
He says: ‘In Colombia, although there are very rich people there, the vast majority, 85 per cent or 90 per cent, are very poor.
‘And what I’ve noticed of these tours, he mixes with the upper classes. He doesn’t really, apart from carefree orchestrated areas where he mixes with so-called the ‘normal people’ – well they’re not.
‘These are carefully orchestrated campaigns as far as I can see… I look quite dispassionately at the evidence and the evidence I’ve seen is, it’s all about Harry and Meghan.
‘It’s very little to do with an actual alleged rationale for going there.’
