Prince Harry can't seem to help doing things that land him being labelled a hypocrite. Photo / Getty Images
Prince Harry can't seem to help doing things that land him being labelled a hypocrite. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion:
$2165. That's how much the most expensive return, first-class ticket from Santa Barbara to Aspen will cost you and that is how much Prince Harry could have spent to avoid the latest PR fiasco he has found himself embroiled in.
Last week, Harry flew from his home in Montecito to play in a charity polo match in the Colorado town to raise funds for his Aids charity Sentebale, the first time the royal had been seen in months, aside from briefly popping up in the background of wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex's recent birthday video.
When photos of the glitzy, horsey event came out, what made news wasn't the shots of him astride a shiny, glossy pony, mallet in hand for the first time since he and brother Prince William took part in match in July 2019 while their wives managed to assiduously not talk to (or even barely look at) each other.
The match was the first time Harry had publicly played since he and brother Prince William took part in a match in July 2019. Photo / Getty Images
No, what had people talking was how the royal had gotten himself to Aspen, namely via a borrowed private jet.
This should be par for the course: he's well-connected enough to surely have plenty of cashed-up pals with a Gulfstream or six to their names so he can cadge a free ride whenever he fancies.
But Harry is not just another 1 percenter with a wildly impressive contacts list but a man who has made climate change one of the key pillars of his personal brand.
Once news of his Aspen journey broke, so too did another round of pundits and people on social media wagging their fingers at him and hurling around the word "hypocrite". (Unfortunately for him, "hypocrite Harry" is just too deliciously alliterative.)
Despite warning just three months ago that climate change was one of the "most pressing issues" the world is facing, despite terrifying fires still blazing in the Pacific Northwest and despite a terrifying "heat dome" descending on parts of the US recently, Harry chose the gas guzzling-but-glamorous private jet option.
There is a certain symmetry here given this month marks two years since Harry's penchant for private travel first landed him in hot water. (Much like sea temperatures.)
In late July 2019, Harry attended Google Camp where he reportedly delivered a barefoot speech about climate change only for he and Meghan to then take four private jet flights in 11 days.
When he pitched up in Amsterdam a couple of weeks after that to launch his eco-travel initiative Travelyst – oh the irony – he defended his actions saying that "99 per cent" of the time he took commercial flights however that he "occasionally" used private jets to "ensure my family are safe".
(Curious that given that only weeks before, around the same time the Sussexes were jetting back and forth across Europe, his brother Prince William and his family had flown budget airline Flybe for their annual holiday in Scotland.)
However, the reason we need to talk about private jets today is because this latest Aspen trip perfectly illustrates the key thing that could blow out of the water Harry's plans to make it in the US.
The problem is, the man has a confounding ability to say one thing and then promptly hare off into another direction and do the polar opposite.
To be clear, I think Harry's heart is entirely in the right place. His passion for the issues, such as climate change and mental health, that he has fervently taken up is unimpeachable. Where things start to go a bit off the rails is when his best intentions collide with reality.
Meghan and Harry flew Qantas when they visited Australia but they are partial to a private jet. Photo / Getty Images
Take, for example, when he and Meghan launched their Archewell Foundation website last year, they declared they wanted to "unleash the power of compassion" and that "Together, we can choose to put compassion in action. We invite you to join us. As we work to build a better world. One act of compassion at a time." Stirring stuff.
And yet, where has that much vaunted compassion been of late? When he left the UK the day before his grandmother the Queen's first birthday as a widow? When he and Meghan sat down for a blistering two-hour tell-all with Oprah Winfrey while his grandfather Prince Philip was in hospital?
Or let's talk about respect. Time and again, Harry has spoken of how much respect he has for Her Majesty and yet royal news, this year, has nearly been entirely dominated by the 36-year-old's painful, all-too-public repeated airings of Windsor family dirty laundry.
Then there's the money question. When the Sussexes announced they were quitting as frontline members of the royal family in January last year they said they wanted to "work to become financially independent". Insert all the plaudits here – good for them for deciding they didn't want to suckle from the royal cash teat any longer.
You know there is a "but" coming here, right?
Because when Harry spoke to Oprah he complained that "my family literally cut me off financially" and that "I've got what my mum left me, and, without that, we would not have been able to do this". (They really thought their plan to hastily leave through didn't they?)
And it is this weird, ongoing chasm between what his words and actions that Harry needs to somehow breach.
He and Meghan are, according to their biographer Omid Scobie, about to enter "the era of visibility". Great, get out there and change lives, you crazy kids! The Sussexes have the chutzpah, gusto and contacts to become an unstoppable force for good.
However, no one is going to truly buy into what they are trying to sell, so to speak, unless they walk the walk themselves. Damning polling out this week found that 53.8 per cent of Brits and 52.3 per cent of Americans surveyed thought that Harry and Meghan "should stay out of publicly commenting on world affairs".
Until their real world choices align with their rhetoric then they will continue to fail to truly become the public figures they seem to aspire to be.
They need, to borrow from 1001 vomitus Instagram quote tiles, to be authentic.
And that would be a huge bloody waste of potential and possibility.
Having thoroughly junked royal life to become content producers and California ratepayers, now that the Sussexes are wholly unfettered by pernickety palace strictures, if they were to squander this opportunity to really shake things up, it would be positively infuriating.
Hamlet, another lost soul of a prince, warns of the danger of being "hoist with his own petard". Unless the Duke of Sussex sorts a few things out, his very own petard is getting sharper by the minute.
