RICHARD EDEN: What one of Harry’s best friends told me about ‘spiteful’ move. I was astonished by his words… and I think you will be too

With his charm, oratorical skills and campaigning brio, Boris Johnson helped persuade Britain to vote to leave the European Union with ‘Brexit’ in 2016. He was, however, unable to avert ‘Megxit’ four years later.

Boris, who was Prime Minister when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex decided to quit royal duties and seek their fortune in North America, wrote in Saturday’s Daily Mail of his regret that he’d failed to persuade Prince Harry to change his mind.

Boris had said to him: ‘I honestly think it’s a pity. I think there is so much good you can do here, so many good causes. Why not stick around?’

Yet, as the former PM admits, ‘It was clear I was getting nowhere.’ And he now begs the couple: ‘Come back to Britain, with your heads held high.’

Harry has made clear one of the factors preventing his return to this country with Meghan and their children, Prince Archie, six, and Princess Lilibet, four: His family was stripped of its automatic right to armed police protection, paid for by Britain’s hard-pressed taxpayers.

Last year, he lost a legal battle with the Home Office to have it reinstated. He claimed this was a ‘good old-fashioned Establishment stitch-up’.

His subsequent request to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood for a full risk assessment to be carried out was granted last December, and the committee making the final decision on the level of police protection was expected to meet in January to discuss the reinstatement.

Last week it was disclosed that officials are trying to block the couple from receiving taxpayer-funded security over fears of a public backlash.

Civil servants from the Home Office, the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office who sit on the royal and VIP executive committee, which authorises security for senior royals, were reported by The Telegraph to be against granting the Sussexes taxpayer-funded protection whenever they are in Britain because it carries too much political risk.

Civil servants receive a lot of criticism, often condemned as pen-pushers who block politicians from taking decisions. In this case I say, ‘Three cheers for the mandarins!’

There is a deepening ‘Establishment plot’ to bring back Harry and Meghan, known as Project Thaw, involving senior politicians and some key figures at Buckingham Palace. And I, for one, am grateful that brave civil servants are prepared to stand up for the quiet majority of British people who don’t want to pay for the California-based couple’s comeback.

Harry’s frustration that Project Thaw has hit a snag is reflected in comments made to me by one his best friends.

Alex Rayner, who went to the North Pole with Harry on a charity trek in 2011 and is in regular contact with him, told me at the weekend: ‘Harry is a royal who’s significantly served in the Armed Forces. To ask him to pay for it [security] privately feels a tiny bit spiteful, given that there are other members of the Royal Family who receive it who do far less.’

I found Rayner’s comments astonishing. What is spiteful is Harry and Meghan’s behaviour since they left Britain.

To take just one example, they chose to go ahead with their explosive, deeply hurtful interview with Oprah Winfrey when Harry’s grandfather, Prince Philip, was seriously ill in hospital for what turned out to be the last time.

In another example, the former actress gave the appearance of mocking the Queen, who was in failing health, with the elaborate curtsy she performed in their tawdry, insulting Netflix series, Harry & Meghan.

There is nothing spiteful about refusing to hand the Sussexes automatic armed police protection, paid for by Britain’s taxpayers. They forfeited that when they moved abroad, as the courts made clear last year.

If they want it back, there are two things that they can easily do. They can apologise in private and in public for the hurtful, offensive things they have said about members of the Royal Family, including Prince William and Catherine.

And they can abandon their money-making activities and devote themselves to public service instead.