The coded message behind Harry and Meghan’s children moving school after two days

It’s only a day since a perky Instagram reel displayed the upbeat vibes from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Cotswolds hideaway, showing the happy family on a muddy English walk and introducing the British public to at least the back view of their two energetic children. Today, it’s a different and more sombre story. The couple has pulled their children from school after only two days in the new term over “security concerns” about their commute, ranging from heavy school-run traffic and the distance between their home – chosen for optimal privacy – and the schools, as well as operational difficulties for their bodyguards trying to convoy Archie and Lilibet to school safely. Much of this boils down to practicalities – school runs in the well-heeled English countryside are just busy, in the way that Sheffield Drive in Montecito, the couple’s California home for the past years, gets busy. And some of this could have been anticipated. A private school, chosen because it had a free-wheeling, outdoorsy ethos, was never going to be as well-guarded as an urban educational fortress. Oxfordshire is not the Golden State, despite the proliferation of luxury 4x4s on the roads and high-end temporary American residents. The couple did thank the school warmly for its attentiveness to avoid any sense that they were flouncing away. Yet, the bigger picture here is one which matters hugely to the Sussexes – and that’s where they feel they can secure an overdue win against their detractors. That is about their status under the VIP protection arrangements, a longstanding bone of contention for the Duke. That’s the purview of the Home Office committee Ravec – Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures – which makes dispensations about the level taxpayer funded security can be justified for royals and other prominent individuals. Now the committee has written to the couple, initiating a new “risk assessment” for both the Duke and Duchess. Crucially, as the couple insist they are here in the UK for a lengthy if unspecified period, they escape the situation which angered Harry previously – under which the committee, which features members from the royal household, judged the Sussexes not to meet a threshold for official protection because they were fleetingly in the UK and had an irregular pattern of visits. That, I am told, fell well short of a “pattern of life” assessment which needs to be conducted to establish access to full security protection – which is not a cheap affair. A new risk assessment is a concession by the committee and it must be said that it has occurred because Harry, who has a Jarndyce v Jarndyce level of commitment to lengthy legal cases and appeals, has changed one important factor here by moving to the UK with his wife and family. The school-run anxieties and foregrounding the security risks of convoys on busy roads duly boosts the couple’s claim that they should have a higher level of protection, because the risks cannot otherwise be sensibly dealt with. In more “political” terms, the security issue is a lever which the Duke and Duchess can deploy, based on their status in public life and prominence. Harry and his legal team have seen a grain of legal argument to work with here: while the court of appeal upheld the original court decision not to fund protection for the couple when they were infrequently in the UK, it pointed out that in terms of rights to protection “the Prince had left the cohort of individuals automatically protected by Ravec when he stepped back from official duties, but he re-entered that protective cohort under bespoke terms for his visits to the UK”. So, while Harry lost previous security battles and an appeal, he believes that he will win the security war. And this plays into a broader tussle – namely the couple’s resentment at the abrupt communication from the Lord Chamberlain, a senior Palace official a couple of weeks ago. It stated that they were not to be considered as working royals or addressed as such and, crucially, was issued at short notice – a power move which essentially said that the Palace was not interested in any additional conversation on the matter. Looked at from Harry’s perspective, he has all of the risks and expensive inconvenience of being associated with the royal family – even if he can no longer be “HRH Prince Harry” – and few of the upsides. That is, of course, a consequence of the couple’s desire to leave the UK having declared royal life intolerable, only to turn up again on terms which seem, at best, opaque. But the story so far has indicated that they will not “go quietly” as the late Princess of Wales once put it – and life among the Soho Farmhouse set of the Cotswolds is hardly a silent retreat. Now the need for an abrupt school change will raise the security issue but also a broader one. So do a welter of social postings – today’s celebrates Prince Harry’s birthday with another tantalising picture of him hugging a tousle-haired daughter to the strains of an acoustic cover of Tina Turner’s “The Best”. Social media is Meghan’s assured channel of communication – and the glimpses of Lillibet and Archie, even revealing their faces, are signs that the family want to share aspects of their new life close-up with the media and public. In the country walk video, one other note was not accidental: the backing track of Wham!, evoking poignant memories of Diana’s carefree 1980s days as a major fan of George Michael. That is surely a reminder from the Sussexes that they have a birth link to the monarchy which cannot simply be expunged – and that biological link to King Charles and as younger brother to William, heir to the throne, is also at the heart of his case. At the Palace, it feels like “same old Harry and Meghan” territory – the couple’s wavering beam of seeking to be at the centre of attention, while at the same time insisting on privacy. The pragmatic significance of the statement re-declaring Harry not to be a working royal is that any public appearance is not covered by protection provided for full royal duties. At the same time, when threat levels to people in public life can be perilously high, no one would want there to be undue risk – nor the responsibility for ignoring it. This time, there may well be a more rewarding outcome in terms of the Ravec assessment Harry feels was previously stacked against him. It still leaves the awkward question of what precisely his status in the UK is. Private citizen with famous parents? Returning royal? Or something in-between? That dividing line is already causing upset and more Harry-and-Meghan attention. Whatever transpires, it’s not going to be quiet months in the country. Anne McElvoy is executive editor at Politico and co-host of the Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast