Secret Bid to Stop Prince Harry Quitting UK Revealed

Britain’s former prime minister held a special one-on-one meeting with Prince Harry back in 2020 to make a secret bid to stop him leaving Britain, it has been revealed.

Boris Johnson, who took office in 2019 and resigned in 2022, has revealed in his upcoming memoir details of their meeting for the first time. Newsweek approached representatives of Prince Harry via email for comment.

Harry and Meghan Markle‘s decision to step down from their roles as working members of the royal family and move to North America sent shock waves through Britain and around the world in January 2020.

On January 8, the couple launched a new website stating that they were seeking a new working arrangement with the monarchy. This would have effectively seen them become part-time royals, splitting time between private working opportunities and public duties.

Five days later, Harry attended a crisis meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles (then Prince of Wales) and Prince William, accompanied by senior aides; it has since been nicknamed the “Sandringham Summit,” after Sandringham House in Norfolk, eastern England.

Harry has said that at the meeting he was effectively given two options: all-in, to stay as a full-time working royal; or all-out, to relinquish all formal working ties with the monarchy.

Later that same day, Buckingham Palace in London announced plans for the latter option to be put in place for a one-year grace period.

Now, in a detail from an upcoming extract of his soon-to-be released memoir, Unleashed, run by the U.K. newspaper Daily Mail, Boris Johnson has said he was asked to talk Harry into changing his mind.

Johnson described it as: “A ridiculous business … when they made me try to persuade Harry to stay. Kind of manly pep talk. Totally hopeless.”

The meeting took place in London on January 20, 2020, where the prime minister was attending a U.K.-Africa investment summit. The night before, Harry had made an emotional speech at a charity event, saying he had “no other option” for his choice.

Since then, the prince has said that his main motivations for moving with Meghan and his young family away from Britain and the monarchy were the toxicity of the tabloid press, as well as frictions within the royal household and family.

Johnsons “manly pep talk” didn’t work, and Harry left to rejoin Meghan who was in Canada with the couple’s son, Prince Archie, at the time.

The one-year grace period for the transition out of the monarchy ended in March 2021. Days before this, Buckingham Palace announced that the duke and duchess had decided not to return to Britain or their working positions within the royal family.

Speaking of Johnson’s memoir revelation, Newsweek‘s chief royal correspondent, Jack Royston, told Good Morning Britain that it illustrated that people at the highest level had made attempts to keep Harry from leaving.

“This meeting, the Sandringham Summit, there was a lot of bad blood that Harry took away from that and, less than a week later, somebody’s tapped the prime minister on the shoulder and said, ‘Well, actually, look, could you please just try and see if you can rope Harry into staying?'” Royston said.

“So, whoever that was not only thought that it was a possibility but cared so much about trying to get Harry and Meghan to stay in Britain that they were willing to potentially put the prime minister’s reputation on the line.”

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek‘s royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.

Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We’d love to hear from you.