Meghan and Harry’s select WhatsApp group chat revealed: The messages behind their dramatic return to Britain and why they’ve left so many furious. They’ve sunk to a new low, writes RICHARD EDEN

We journalists value our sources, and nowhere in my chosen profession is this more true than in the hyper-competitive world of royal reporting, where it is extremely difficult to get inside information.

So it’s understandable that some of my colleagues were excited to join a WhatsApp group created by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s ‘Director of Communications’, Liam Maguire.

As members of the selected group, they would be the first to know the latest news from the California-based couple.

It is not difficult to identify the journalists who are members because they all post the same updates on social media, often using the same words, as soon as these stone tablets are distributed from Montecito. This isn’t journalism, but it does mean they have information that others like me don’t.

I cannot pretend that I refused to join the WhatsApp group on ethical or other grounds because Mr. Maguire never invited me to join. As a social diarist for most of my career, I’m used to being treated with caution. After all, ruffling feathers, not caressing them, is part of my job description.

But this week, I must add, I’m very relieved that I’m not a member of the Sussexes’ WhatsApp group, because through no fault of their own they have been compared to award-winning idiots.

Last Friday, they all received a lengthy message confirming details of Prince Harry and Meghan’s return visit to the UK next week. This wasn’t just a short message like the one they sometimes receive, but a long operational memo detailing exactly what the couple would do once they landed in this country.

It has also been confirmed that they will be bringing their seven-year-old children Prince Archie and five-year-old Princess Lilibet with them. It was the children’s first trip to Britain since arriving for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022.

The message also confirmed that the family would remain at the royal residence; This is a significant development considering King Charles has ruled that they should no longer have access to their former Windsor home, Frogmore Cottage, in 2023.

The news of the visit appeared on news sites within minutes and in newspapers the next day. For example, the BBC’s Daniela Relph reported on the company’s website: ‘The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have accepted an offer to stay at the royal residence with their two children when they visit England next month. ‘Harry and Meghan, their seven-year-old son Archie and five-year-old daughter Lilibet, will be the King’s guests at the royal mansion for their first trip to Britain as a family in four years.’

But reporters’ gratitude for confirmation of such a report turned to alarm the next day when The Sun newspaper reported that Harry’s request for automatic, taxpayer-funded police protection had been rejected by a Home Office committee that decides such matters.

This soon led to another ping being made to the WhatsApp group members’ phones. This time it was a message informing them that everything said the previous day and duly reported on their employers’ websites and newspapers was, in fact, false.

As the BBC’s Daniela Relph noted, Harry was now ‘reconsidering plans to bring his wife and children to the UK… after his request for police protection was rejected’.

Think about it for the BBC’s poor viewers and website users! Less than 24 hours after being informed that something was going to happen, with all the powers the company could muster, they were now being told it might not happen at all.

At the same time, readers of the ‘registered newspapers’ who are forced to cover this inversion will also be confused.

Journalists should be forgiven. As royal correspondents, they are used to receiving briefing notes to help them cover events. Because palace memos are often factual, journalists may have expected Harry and Meghan’s messages to be just as reliable.

Great luck.

What’s worse is that nothing actually changed between Friday and Saturday. All the Home Office committee did was repeat what has happened since the Sussexes abandoned royal duties and moved to North America to seek their fortune in 2020. And what was repeated by the judge when Harry lost his appeal against the Home Office decision last year was that the couple were no longer entitled to the automatic, taxpayer-funded cover because they had moved abroad.

The only thing that changed was that Harry threw his toys out of the stroller when he confirmed that Home Office policy still applied to them.

One of the journalists in the WhatsApp group, Tom Sykes of the American website Daily Beast, felt the need to issue a public mea culpa for unwittingly misleading his loyal readers.

“It is now obvious what all this work is about,” Sykes wrote. ‘The tour, the announcement of Meghan and the children’s arrival, the carefully choreographed media coverage, the months of assurances to the Royal Family that it would happen, the requests for accommodation, the detailed planning: all this was to force her poor, weak, loving father to intervene in the Government’s security decision-making; Something Charles, to his eternal credit, refused to do. This is the pinnacle of Harry’s emotional blackmail.’

Powerful things. I think Sykes won’t be the only journalist who refuses to believe a word Harry and Meghan say when it comes to his mobile phone.