Just over a year ago, Prince Harry stood before the cameras following his high-profile High Court security defeat and delivered what he clearly meant to be a mic-drop declaration: “I can’t see a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the UK at this point.”

It was framed as a tragedy of safety – a heartbroken father claiming he had been forced into permanent exile to keep his family out of harm’s way. Yet here we are. The ink on his court rulings has barely dried, official state-funded police protection has not magically returned, and the British media landscape remains as intense as ever. Yet the removal vans are packed, the Montecito dream has been shelved, and Archie and Lilibet are bound for British schools for the next academic year. So what’s changed?

Nothing, except Harry’s sudden willingness to perform a U-turn so dizzying it would make Keir Starmer blush.

For the last two years, the ex-PM built a reputation as Westminster’s undisputed king of the flip-flop. Now, it seems the Duke of Sussex has taken a leaf straight out of his playbook.

When Harry lost his legal battle over state-funded armed protection, his reaction wasn’t just disappointment – it was a blanket condemnation of his home country. He essentially painted the UK as an unnavigable danger zone for his wife and children. It was a line in the sand – a narrative that allowed the Sussexes to play the perpetual victims of a cold, unfeeling British state.

At the time, we were expected to believe that bringing his family back to the UK was a life-threatening risk he simply could not take. Fast forward to today, and that solemn vow has evaporated into thin air. Did the Home Office reverse its stance? No. Did the courts grant him the elite-level bodyguards he dragged them to judicial review for? Absolutely not.

The UK’s security apparatus remains exactly what it was when he made that defiant statement. Which leaves us with a glaring contradiction that the Duke seems to hope the British public will conveniently overlook. If Britain was truly too unsafe for Meghan, Archie, and Lilibet a year ago, it is logically just as unsafe now. You cannot treat the safety of your young children as an uncompromising principle one minute, and then casually brush it aside the next because life in California didn’t quite deliver the glitzy Hollywood sunset you were promised.

Like a politician caught in a glaring policy reversal, Harry appears to think that if he simply acts with enough confidence, no one will call out his bluff.

Well, the British public has a long memory. We haven’t forgotten the accusations, we haven’t forgotten the half-a-million pounds in taxpayer money spent defending his legal battles, and we certainly haven’t forgotten the dramatic ‘safety’ warnings.

If Harry wants to bring his family home, that is his choice as a father and a son. But don’t insult our intelligence by pretending the danger vanished overnight. Just own it, Harry – it was never about an unsafe UK. It was just another grand declaration that aged like milk – and it’s the biggest U-turn of the year.