Close Protection

Prince Harry’s protectors would be as much use as they were before. If Donald Trump’s piracy in the Caribbean really were against drugs, then Harry’s fraudulently obtained United States visa would already have been revoked. During one of Harry’s frequent returns to these shores, why has he never been arrested for his Class A drug offences?

But then, in December 2021, cocaine was found in 11 out of 12 powder rooms in the Palace of Westminster on the same randomly chosen evening. Mr Speaker Hoyle promised “full and effective action”. Then nothing happened. Drugs-based blackmail is fundamental to political power in this country. In May 2022, Michael Gove was described in edited Fleet Street copy as having been on “a cocaine binge”. Like Prince Harry, Gove and Boris Johnson, who is no longer an American citizen, have lied on their United States visa applications. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng was obviously off his face at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II The Truss Government was so awash with cocaine that it scandalised the servants.

Likewise, when Prince Harry was so out of it that he thought that he was having conversations with a pedal bin, then he was surrounded by some of the most carefully vetted Police Officers in the world. They often are. The then Prince Andrew may have sought to persuade his close protection officer to commit, say, malfeasance in public office, but Prince Harry’s really did so. It is no wonder that drug poisoning deaths hit a record high last year, the fourteenth consecutive annual increase. Junkie Britain is rotting from the head down.

The Greens are trying to corner the pro-drugs vote, but that is not really where the gap is. Rather, we need a party that understood that there could not be a “free” market in general, but not in drugs, or prostitution, or pornography, or unrestricted alcohol, or unrestricted gambling. That is an important part of why there must not be a “free” market in general, which is a political choice, not a law of nature. Enacting and enforcing laws against drugs, prostitution and pornography, and regulating alcohol, tobacco and gambling, are clear examples of State intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction, and that baleful situation, which has been contrived in the past, is being contrived again today.

Unlike the Conservative Party, which merely thinks that it is and acts as if it were, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats are constitutionally committed to the “free” market. Richard Tice wants to legalise cannabis, Nigel Farage concurs with the Green Party in wanting to legalise drugs across the board, and Lee Anderson signed a select committee report in that direction in 2023. Are those now the views of Ann Widdecombe and Danny Kruger?

Instead, we need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. I no longer believe in prison sentences that included the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. Peter Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought should be taught in schools, as pro-drugs propaganda is. And as surely as the former Prince Andrew and any Police Officer whom he might have corrupted, Prince Harry and the Police Officers whom he indisputably compromised should be pursued to the full extent of the law.