Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has claimed he was asked by Buckingham Palace to persuade Prince Harry not to quit royal life or leave the UK shortly before the Sussexes moved to North America. In Mr Johnson’s new book, ‘Unleashed’, which will be released on 10 October, the 60-year-old claimed that he delivered a “manly pep talk” to the Duke of Sussex in a bid to convince him it would be a mistake to leave Britain. He said that officials in Downing Street and Buckingham Palace approached him in January 2020, believing that he might be able to dissuade Prince Harry of his decision.
It was “a ridiculous business … when they made me try to persuade Harry to stay. Kind of manly pep talk. Totally hopeless,” Mr Johnson wrote in the book, per the BBC.
Notably, the meeting between Mr Johnson and Prince Harry took place on the margins of a UK-Africa investment summit in London Docklands. It came just hours after Prince Harry announced with “great sadness” that he and Meghan Markle felt they had “no other option” but to step away from royal life. During the subsequent meeting, the two men met for 20 minutes without aides as Mr Johnson tried to persuade the prince to reconsider.
However, the following day, the duke flew to Canada to be reunited with Meghan Markle and their young son, Archie. The family later moved to Montecito, California, where they remain today, having given up their lives as working royals.
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According to the BBC, Mr Johnson, in his effort to keep the prince from departing, had hailed him as a valuable asset to the UK and praised his work, such as the Invictus Games for military veterans.
Meanwhile, the former UK PM has previously said that the memoir will be his “personal account of the huge realignment that took place in UK politics in the last 15 years”, taking in his leadership of the Brexit campaign that severed Britain’s ties with the EU, as well as his management of the Covid pandemic and the subsequent scandals that rocked his government until his downfall as PM in September 2022.