When Harry went too far

HE'S been packing aid boxes for the victims of the Asian tsunami; teaching children at an inner-city school to play rugby, and working with Aids orphans in southern Africa. But, for all his good works, the image that will live in the memory is the one where he's dressed as a Nazi.

By wearing the uniform of one of Rommel's Afrika Korps, complete with swastika, to a fancy dress party, Prince Harry has effortlessly seized the crown for the ultimate royal gaffe, despite his grandfather's attempts, which now look ham-fisted in comparison, to claim the dishonour for himself.

The timing may have been exquisite - a few months before he joins the British Army as a leader of men, and a few weeks before the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - but these are merely aggravating factors to the main offence: that of insulting the memory of the millions of innocent people who died at the hands of one of the most murderous regimes in history.

He may have apologised, at first through a statement, despite calls for a personal apology, but no amount of contrition, not even a photo opportunity of a solemn-faced prince shedding tears at the gates of Auschwitz, will prevent this monumental error from haunting him for the rest of his life.

It is easy to put it down to stupidity - Harry has never been considered the brightest star in the royal firmament - if it were not part of a pattern of behaviour which has been emerging during his gap "year", now into its 20th month.

Just a few months ago, pictures of a snarling prince laying into a photographer outside a London nightclub prompted accusations he was becoming a yob, but the prince refused to apologise, and a decision to caution him over his behaviour was overruled by senior managers in the Crown Prosecution Service.

Taken together with accusations he cheated in his A-levels, an admission that he smoked cannabis and was an under-age drinker, and a reputation as a hard-drinking partygoer, leering over pretty young fillies in the nightclubs, it adds up to a young man out of control.

The charitable view is that he is simply doing what many other young men do: drinking, chasing girls and taking drugs, without regard to the consequences. Added to this is the privilege his position gives him - who else in his shoes would not try to make the most of the wealth of opportunities that have come his way through an accident of birth?

But this is to ignore the fact that he is not just any other young man. He is third in line to the throne, born into a life of duty, and of living in the public glare. He may not like the attention of the photographers, but he seems happy enough to enjoy the benefits of being the son of the Prince of Wales.

In his defence is the trauma caused by that car crash in Paris when he was just 13. It is difficult to imagine how he must have been affected by the death of his mother, let alone by being forced to grieve in public, and then enduring the constant dissection of Diana's life and death, to feed the insatiable public appetite for the woman who has been elevated into a 20th century saint.

For some, this will excuse a young prince going off the rails, particularly when allied with a father unable to impose any discipline, and it is easy to believe that many of the unflattering headlines would have been avoided if Diana were still alive. Harry would not be the first to have been sent on a downward spiral after the death of a parent; the difference is, his descent has been all too public.

Harry has also been blighted by Princess Margaret Syndrome, the lack of a defined role for the younger sibling to the heir to the throne which leaves them drifting in a vacuum, living an aimless life where duty and pleasure mix uncomfortably.

But there is something else which marks him out from others whose lives have been hit by tragedy: however badly he behaves, however outrageous, however offensive, however obnoxious, he will just be able to carry on, ignoring the tutting and the shaking of heads. There will be no anti-social behaviour orders for Harry, no electronic tagging and no curfews; just a shrug of the shoulders and onto the next party.

And it is this which reveals the real problem at the heart of what will become Nazigate: as long as the royals and their hangers-on are cocooned from the lives of the public who have to work for a living, they will continue to thumb their noses at those whose money they spend.

When Harry donned his Nazi uniform, he was doing much more than giving comedians a wealth of material of how he was following in the family tradition, much more than making Sir Mark Thatcher, that other black sheep of his family, seem like a sensitive guy. He was demonstrating how little concern the royals and their entourage have for what anybody else might think.

Prince Philip may have been the previously acknowledged master of the gaffe, from warning that anybody who stayed in China too long would become slitty-eyed, to suggesting the Scots were alcoholics, but the attitude of almost the entire Royal Family towards public opinion can best be described as one of contempt.

Even those who have apparently kept their heads down are not immune. Notwithstanding that he will one day be king and the fount of all law in this country, Prince William chose to go hunting just after Christmas, in what can only have been a calculated two-fingered gesture to a Parliament which has voted to ban the pastime. He may have disagreed with the decision of his future subjects' elected representatives, but those who are happy to accept the privileges of being born into royalty must also accept the responsibilities.

And amid the furore over Harry's Nazi uniform, the almost equally as offensive theme of the fancy dress party has largely been ignored. Natives and Colonials seems designed to demonstrate how the royals and their circle are living in a long-gone age, when coolies served high tea and the natives didn't like it up 'em.

For his part, William wore a lion and leopardskin outfit, complete with black leggings and joke feet. The only surprise is he didn't stick a bone through his nose, just to complete the picture. It is surely a symptom of the problem that, among the sycophants and lickspittles, there was no-one to hold them back, no-one to say that maybe the swastika wasn't such a good idea, that maybe the future head of the Commonwealth should respect the "natives" a little more.

The royals may complain that they are being judged too harshly, that any mistakes and errors of judgement are cruelly exposed by the constant press intrusion. Other people, they may say, dress up as Nazis without attracting complaint. A West End show even features a chorus of dancing stormtroopers, with barely a murmur of dissent.

It is true that no-one else has their every move and utterance held up to public scrutiny; it is true that no-one else is considered to be on duty 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week, every day of their life. It is also true that they didn't choose their lives, that royal duty has been thrust upon them.

But if there is an unhappiness at the glare of the spotlight, the other side of the coin, the enormous privileges, is still being enthusiastically embraced. Maybe we do ask too much of our royal family - they are only human after all - and maybe no-one could ever live up to our expectations. Maybe it is unfair to inflict such pressure on children, and maybe it is inevitable they will struggle to cope.

And maybe the answer is not to back off, not to leave them alone: why should they not be accountable to a public which funds their lavish lifestyles? Maybe, if the pressure is too much, there is a more obvious solution. If the roya ls want to be treated the same as ordinary people, then perhaps the answer is that they should become ordinary people.