Prince Harry accused of ‘hypocritical privilege’ by BBC Question Time audience

Only one audience member on BBC’s Question Time came to the defence of the Duke of Sussex in the wake of his memoir controversy.

On Thursday night, host Fiona Bruce asked the panel to discuss whether Prince Harry’s potentially damaging and intimate revelations have damaged the Royal family.

When the discussion was opened to the studio audience, one man said the Duke’s decision to publish Spare was “an example of hypocritical privilege”. 

He said: “He’s been happy to accept everything that comes with his role right the way through his life, he’s criticised the media and said ‘I don’t want anything to do with them’ and now he’s using them at his will to make money. 

“I’m sorry but that is just as low as it gets,” he added, receiving loud applause from the rest of the crowd. 

Ms Bruce then asked the audience whether anyone “wanted to put in a good word for Harry,” saying that “there must be” someone, to which the BBC studio fell uncharacteristically silent.

One person chimed in to defend the Duke, but her response was not met with any enthusiasm from the audience.

The young woman, a politics student, said: “I think Harry has done his best to address some personal struggles and when I watched the interview with ITV he was quite candid.

“What kind of country are we going to be if you can’t even express freely how you feel and what you’re going through.”

She added: “What we also have to acknowledge is yes, he may be making money, but…one thing that I would personally like to address as a black woman is that a lot of people negatively in the press have been blaming Meghan.

“We saw the very derogatory words by Jeremy Clarkson… and that again is an example of where we begin to blur the lines and we then see problems.

“Harry - even before Meghan came along - felt disenfranchised… racism is prevalent in the press and it needs to be addressed.” 

The young woman’s response received no applause from the audience, unlike the previous guest who spoke against the Duke’s memoir, and Ms Bruce moved on to get her panel’s opinion. 

This comes after a poll suggested on Thursday that the Duke’s popularity among Britons had fallen to an all-time low, falling six points in the week after the publication of Spare.

The YouGov survey revealed that only 24 per cent of people have a positive view of Prince Harry compared with 68 per cent who are critical.

The poll of over 1,600 people also found that the Sussexes now have lower approval ratings among over-65s Britons than the Duke of York.