In recent years, the anti-Sussex factions in the press have been quite clear: they’re gunning for the Invictus Games, and they’ll do anything to take down Invictus to “ruin” Prince Harry. It’s also been perfectly clear for years that this is Prince William’s goal as well, although I think William would actually prefer to have Invictus still exist, and then William can insert himself as the “royal patron.” But who knows – these people are more than willing to lie about Invictus, to harass veterans and target Invictus sponsors, all in an attempt to “put Harry in his place” and destroy yet another brilliant initiative founded by Harry. In July, Harry is due to visit Birmingham, England for the “One Year To Go” Invictus events. Well, because the games will be held on English soil, the British press is already doing the most to sabotage them. The Mail’s Richard Eden has a very Harry-centered exclusive about how Birmingham Invictus’ vice chair has quit. Tom Sykes’ Royalist Substack immediately picked up on Eden’s exclusive, and Sykes laid out the game plan for taking down Invictus:
A distinguished vice chairman has quit the board of Invictus after just 16 months, while four senior communications and marketing roles remain unfilled with barely 14 months to go to Prince Harry’s 2027 games.
Meanwhile my colleague Paula Froelich has reported that the biggest historical sponsor to the Games, Boeing, has jetted away, while the swollen budget for the whole thing means Invictus Games Birmingham 2027 is not exactly shaping up to be a triumphant homecoming for Prince Harry.
Let’s start with the high level departure. Melloney Poole, vice chairman of the Birmingham 2027 board of trustees, has resigned, according to a report by Richard Eden of the Daily Mail. Poole is one of the most experienced figures in the British charity world. She played a key role at the Heritage Lottery Fund, chaired the board of governors for the Regional Committee of the National Lottery Charities Board, and currently chairs the Florence Nightingale Foundation.
Most significantly, in 2015 the Ministry of Defence asked her to set up and run the Armed Forces Covenant Fund — the very heartland of the military charity sector that Invictus claims as its patch. She duly did so, and it is now an independent charitable trust.
Getting Poole, a lawyer, on board with Invictus in December 2024 to deliver the 2027 games was a genuine coup. Losing her barely sixteen months later, with the Games still over a year away, suggests there are real problems in the organisation.
A spokesman for Invictus tells the Mail Melloney “decided to step down to focus on her other interests — not least the Florence Nightingale Foundation,” adding that her “extensive leadership experience” had been “instrumental” in establishing the foundations for next year’s Games.
I’m sure it was. But people of Melloney Poole’s calibre and commitment do not walk away from prestigious board positions before the job is done on a whim, or due to bad personal time planning.
A LinkedIn post by Ritchie Rebbeck, the Games’ director of communications, reveals that Birmingham 2027 is still actively recruiting for a Communications Manager, Digital Manager, Communications Executive and a Marketing Manager—aka a large part of the comms and marketing operation!
The event seems to be running out of time to get the British public to care. But you cannot build a public profile when you haven’t hired the team to build it. This is basic stuff, and the fact that this team isn’t in place yet tells you a great deal about the state of play behind the scenes.
Which brings us to a superb piece of journalism published this week by Paula Froelich on her Substack, which is required reading for anyone following the Invictus story. Froelich has crunched the numbers behind Birmingham 2027 and laid them alongside the event that inspired the whole enterprise — the US Department of Defense Warrior Games.
The comparison is brutal. Froelich’s source, a UK marketing and event production professional, has worked up a total operating budget projection for Birmingham that lands at a working midpoint of £45 million, within a range of £30 million to £60 million. That covers venues and stadia at £5–10 million, event operations and staffing at £6–12 million, ceremonies and broadcasting at £3–9 million, accommodation and catering at £4–9 million, and a marketing and awareness line of £2–8 million.
[Birmingham] declared effective bankruptcy in September 2023, disclosing an £87 million budget deficit. It technically exited its Section 114 notice in February 2026, but remains financially fragile. Pouring tens of millions of pounds of public money into Harry’s pet project in a city that cannot fund its own basic services is, to put it as gently as possible, politically toxic.
So, we have a vice chair of the board heading for the exit, a comms team that hasn’t been hired, a sponsor list that’s shrunk, a budget that could hit £60 million, and a broke host city with a small but virulent Islamic extremist population. On current trends, Birmingham 2027 isn’t exactly going to rescue Harry’s reputation.
They really think that Harry is “in charge” of everything to do with Invictus, and that it’s Harry’s responsibility to: A) oversee Birmingham’s budget crisis, B) personally hand-hold Invictus sponsors, C) hire a communications team fourteen months in advance of the Birmingham games, D) personally stop vice-chairs from leaving, and E) stop providing Invictus-structured support to thousands of veterans in the name of cost-cutting. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Birmingham games are going to be a disaster too, which is why I didn’t understand why the Invictus board gave the 2027 games to the city. You know why they did though? Because the British government and Birmingham’s local government pledged a huge amount of money to support the games and the government wanted to use Invictus to expand their veterans programs. It’s about more than the games themselves, it’s about the support structure Invictus pioneered for wounded warriors. That’s why so many countries welcome Invictus and welcome Harry’s visits.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
