The Social World

Tag: Prince Harry

  • Is Prince Harry about to spend a lot more time in Britain?

    Is Prince Harry about to spend a lot more time in Britain?

    For lovers of self-destructive hubris – a quality that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex surely possess in spades – the saga of Prince Harry’s security is surely the gift that keeps on giving. His attempts to obtain British taxpayer-funded armed protection whenever he brings his family back to the UK have been expressed with much fervor and repetitiveness. And now, in this season of miracles, it looks as if he might have got his wish after all. 

    It seemed certain, after various expensive and amusingly humiliating courtroom defeats, that Harry’s desire to hire members of the London Metropolitan Police as his private security detail whenever he is back in the country of his birth would be denied. He even railed against the UK government’s successful attempts to thwart his desires as a “good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up,” blustering: “The other side have won in keeping me unsafe. I can’t see a world in which I will be bringing my wife and children back at this point.”

    Those of us who are not losing sleep at the prospect of the star of With Love, Meghan once again bringing her special brand of joy to the United Kingdom were not, perhaps, beside themselves at this prospect. 

    Yet there has now been an unexpected volte-face, courtesy of Britain’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and the Home Office. RAVEC, the Royal and VIP Executive Committee, has ordered that its risk management board be prepared to reassess Harry’s threat level for the first time since February 2020. This is not a suggestion that the prince poses his own danger to the country, but instead that he is considered a public individual who deserves police protection at the highest level, in the same vein as the King or the Prime Minister. And if the decision is upheld, once again the British taxpayer will be on the hook for police protection for the Sussex clan whenever they are in the UK.

    It should be noted that the final decision will not be made until next month, and that Ravec might still decide to maintain the status quo: cue weeping and gnashing of teeth if so. However, the fact that there has been a reassessment of this nature after a protracted and expensive court fight, which Harry repeatedly lost, must be seen as a surprisingly non-pyrrhic victory for the Duke of Sussex. It is also a suggestion that he was justified in the fuss that he has so consistently made. 

    Still, even if he is granted this belated Christmas wish, it is uncertain as to whether or not the Sussexes will be frequent visitors in the UK once again. This is despite the sentimental protestations that the King would like to see his grandchildren once again. Meghan has not set foot in London since Elizabeth II’s funeral in September 2022, and it is doubtful that she has any pressing urge to do so. Her husband’s largely successful solo trip in September – only slightly overshadowed by the eventual leaks of his rapprochement with his semi-estranged father – demonstrated that he is perfectly capable of conducting a quasi-royal visit home by himself and being well received in the process.

    Many might think that the current situation works well for all concerned, then, and would question the necessity of an expensive, time-consuming climbdown by Ravec. But in a year of consistently dreadful tidings for the royal family, the knowledge that 2026 might yet see a comeback by the cadet branch – with commensurate focus on the ongoing estrangement between Harry and his elder brother – is yet another reason for the Firm not to be cheerful.

  • Why shouldn’t Trump deport Prince Harry?

    There are many things Americans admire about Britain – Shakespeare, Churchill and parliamentary democracy (on a good day). Above all, we admire the monarchy: that ancient, faintly miraculous institution which maintains its dignity even as the rest of the West dissolves into hashtag-fueled hysteria. What we do not admire, however, is being used as a backdrop for Prince Harry’s increasingly frantic attempts to remain relevant.

    No, I do not actually wish for President Trump to deport Harry to the Tower of London – although the image is, I confess, delicious, and might conceivably enjoy rare cross-party support on both sides of the Atlantic. But a man can dream and, if the Duke insists on turning America into the rehearsal studio for his political neuroses, one can’t help wandering into the realm of fantasy.

    Harry swaggered on to the set of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show this week in order to offer up a glib little jab at President Donald J. Trump. “I heard you elected a king,” he quipped, wearing the self-satisfied smirk of a man convinced he has coined something Wildean.

    Except the joke collapsed, quite magnificently. He was booed – by a New York liberal audience. Achieving that requires an almost athletic level of misjudgment. It is the political equivalent of being asked to leave a vegan café for excessive piety.

    All this, mind you, while his father-in-law lies seriously ill in a Filipino hospital. Any ordinary son-in-law might have managed a momentary display of concern. Harry, by contrast, is on American television performing sketches and mocking the president of the country he now depends upon for wealth, status and the perpetuation of his Californian cosplay of aristocratic grievance. It is tone-deafness elevated to an aesthetic.

    More to the point, it places his family – his real one, in Britain – in an excruciating position. The late Queen Elizabeth II set the gold standard for royal political neutrality. She neither dabbled nor sniped. She certainly did not ascend late-night sofas to titter about the occupant of the Oval Office. Her sense of duty was immaculate. It is a quality conspicuously absent in her grandson, who seems determined to turn the Crown into a cudgel and his title into a bargaining chip. At some stage, the King will have to contemplate the question of forfeiture.

    Harry appears to forget a crucial fact: he is a guest in America. Not a commentator, not a philosopher-king and certainly not a comedian, though often unintentionally, a clown. A guest with a visa, no less – a visa whose continued viability depends on the goodwill of the administration he has chosen to mock. This would be reckless for anyone. For a man who publicly boasted of drug use – something that can, in the United States, complicate one’s immigration status – it is spectacularly ill-judged.

    There was a time when Harry possessed a certain rakish charm. That time has long since expired. We inhabit the Prince-for-Hire epoch: the mercenary phase in which every grievance becomes a monetizable asset, every podcast an opportunity for therapeutic rambling and every public appearance a means of flogging the brand formerly known as His Royal Highness.

    Meanwhile, back in Britain, William and Catherine – the future of the institution Harry claims still to revere – carry out their duties with unshowy grace, greeting visiting dignitaries with the kind of quiet professionalism the Crown used to be known for. The contrast is blinding. They are the monarchy’s promise. Harry, its cautionary tale.

    If an international competition existed for sustained public embarrassment, Harry would not merely win – he would secure permanent ownership of the trophy.

    And here is the part that rankles for many Americans: when Harry sneers at Trump, he is not simply mocking the man. He is sneering at the tens of millions who voted for him. One may disapprove of that electorate, but any foreign national who chooses to live among them should at least feign respect for their democratic choices.

    America deserves better house-guests. Britain deserves better representatives. And the British monarchy deserves better than to be hauled, repeatedly, into Harry’s Californian melodrama. To insult the host nation’s president while monetizing one’s royal status is, to put it kindly, unbecoming. Consequences – real ones – are overdue, just as they were for his uncle.

    The Palace must, at some point, draw a line. The monarchy survives because it is apolitical, dignified and – crucially – seen to be both. Harry’s perpetual cringe-fest corrodes these principles. If he refuses to stop, his titles must be reconsidered.

    President Trump has so far dismissed various campaigns to revoke Harry’s visa. But he’s never been shy about tidying up America’s guest list. And if he decides, in the years ahead, to remove Harry, he might be surprised by the popularity of such a move.

  • Will the Andrew formerly known as prince appear before Congress?

    Will the Andrew formerly known as prince appear before Congress?

    Amidst all the ceremony and gravity of Britain’s Remembrance Day service on Sunday, one salient fact could not be ignored. The King has long talked of his desire for a “stripped-down monarchy,” and now he has his wish. The only male figures from the Firm who were out on show alongside him were the Prince of Wales and Prince Edward, who together had the effect of making the royals look a rather paltry selection compared to the grander gatherings of the past.

    We all know about Harry, but although some would like to see him, too, stripped of his royal title, Montecito’s second most famous resident continues to be able to refer to himself as a prince. This is not a luxury that his disgraced uncle enjoys any longer, as he adjusts to life not as Prince Andrew, Duke of York, but plain old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. As he prepares to leave Royal Lodge for a more modest existence in a grace and favor home tucked in some obscure corner of the Sandringham Estate, he may look around and wonder if his disgrace is yet over. Well, judged by recent events, the bad news for him just keeps on coming.

    During his “heyday,” Andrew liked to present himself as a swashbuckling, entrepreneurial figure, thanks to his Pitch@Palace initiative, which invited would-be moneymakers to come to Buckingham Palace and get their businesses off the ground. Unsurprisingly, given his shame, this is no longer a going concern. Documents seen by the Guardian show that the last remaining part of the business, Pitch@Palace Global, has been wound up after its UK side foundered in 2021.

    Admittedly, after Andrew’s disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview, it is doubtful that even the most desperate would-be businessman would have seen the soon-to-be banned old Duke of York as the answer to their prayers, but the knowledge that this beleaguered endeavor is no more shows how total, and terminal, his disgrace is. (Lest we forget, it was from the Chinese arm of Pitch@Palace that the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo emerged, suggesting that Andrew’s judgment when it comes to those he kept company with has always been terrible.)

    And what of middle England? Well, Andrew has a few supporters who argue doughtily for the presumption of innocence before guilt is proved. Yet the overwhelming majority of the country consider that enough wrongdoing has now been established to regard the former prince as unspeakable, and they are not afraid to make their feelings felt. Residents of Prince Andrew Road and Prince Andrew Close in Maidenhead are hoping that the names of their streets will be changed, to avoid the taint of association. One long-sufferer local, Kelly Pevy, told the Daily Telegraph that: “If you’re giving someone the address, it’s the first thing [they’re] going to say. When I speak to energy companies and they ask for the address, they make a little joke. It’s mentioned more and more, and so then you start thinking about it more.”

    It remains to be seen whether the dwellers of Maidenhead succeed in their petition to the local MP to end this little joke, but if Andrew takes a moment out from a head-down routine of self-pity and video games, he may by now be seeing the enormity of the disgrace he faces. The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have asked that he be summoned to the United States and Congress to answer questions about the precise nature of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Although they have no legal power to compel him to attend, Andrew knows that to do so would be potentially hazardous. Not only could he be prosecuted for perjury if any part of his testimony is false, but his presence in America would open him up to investigation, even arrest, for his alleged activities with the then-17-year-old Virginia Giuffre.

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – there is currently some debate as to whether his last name will be hyphenated or not – is as maligned as anyone in public life today. Yet if he had stopped playing Call of Duty on Sunday and watched his elder brother and nephew remember the fallen, he would have been aware of what real courage and real sacrifice look like. Andrew, by contrast, is an insignificant figure, too sinister and grim to be pathetic and too boring to be laughable. His downfall, in all its embarrassing little details, reflects the man perfectly.

  • Trump will be on his best behavior for King Charles

    Trump will be on his best behavior for King Charles

    The Donald has touched down in Britain for his unprecedented second state visit. It makes sense in a way that this most unconventional of American presidents is being granted a privilege that has never been offered to any other US leader, namely a repeat performance of pageantry and pomp that will flatter this Anglophile’s ego to its considerable core. That the event is happening against King Charles’s wishes might bother any other prime minister, but such was Keir Starmer’s desire to curry favor with Trump that he even waved the King’s handwritten invitation on camera. And with that he ensured favorable treatment for the country he is (barely) governing. The question is what happens next.

    Unusually, Trump is not the issue at hand, at least as far as things currently stand. For all of his volatility and unpredictability, he is a fully paid-up admirer of the royal family. He has proudly, if erroneously, boasted that he was the late Queen’s favorite president. As such, he is unlikely to make any sort of trouble during his notably brief visit to Britain.

    He will be feted during Charles’s speech at Windsor Castle during the formal banquet, given every kind of pomp and respect that he surely sees as his due, and will generally be treated like a major global politician. Trump is a man of considerable ego, and that ego will be flattered. From Starmer and the government’s perspective, it is unlikely to be a troublesome trip.

    However, from Charles’s perspective, Trump’s ingress into Britain is less welcome. The two men may only be three years apart in age, but they could scarcely be more different. Charles is a liberal horticulturalist who has a great love of art, literature and history. Trump is a McDonald’s-munching pragmatist whose bestselling book was entitled The Art of the Deal; meanwhile, his host’s best-known publication is called A Vision of Britain.

    The King is a traditionalist – and a small, rather than large, ‘c’ conservative – who likes to think of his country as a fine place besmirched by ugly progress. Trump, meanwhile, shares the monarch’s idea of his own country having fallen behind, but his rabble-rousing slogan of “Make America Great Again” will find no echo this week. For Charles, Britain has never stopped being great.

    There are other issues that might prove contentious. The King has begun cautious steps towards a rapprochement with his younger son, and Trump’s last reported comment on Prince Harry was to say that, although he was now prepared not to deport him over his admitted drug use, “I’ll leave him alone. He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.” It is probably accurate to say that Charles’s thoughts on his daughter-in-law may be similar, but he would rather see his throne fall than ever be caught making such an indiscreet admission.

    This sums up the difference between the two men and their respective values. One has always believed that “never complain, never explain” is an admirable way to live one’s life; the other has complained, explained, and then, for good measure, hurled invective at his enemies. How they will make small talk off camera remains to be seen.

    Still, one thing that decades spent as Prince of Wales have taught Charles is the value of smiling and waving, even when a situation – or a person – is not to his taste. Veteran royal watchers can easily see when the King has exerted his own influence (witness his reception of Zelensky at his private home of Sandringham, a conspicuous mark of regard after his appalling treatment by Trump and his Vice President J.D. Vance in the Oval Office earlier this year). Although Trump will be on his best behavior this week, every tactless or crass remark of the President’s will be noted. You can be sure that Starmer’s government will never be allowed to forget the help that Charles has given them – assuming, that is, Starmer is still in office, if not Labour in power, long enough for the King to ever call in his favor.

  • With Love, Meghan 2 is just as vacuous as season one

    Like death and taxes, the second instalment of With Love, Meghan has come around again, sloughing into view to the usual chorus of disapproval and confusion. The news recently broke that Netflix has deigned to allow Harry ’n’ Meghan another five years of deciding not to make their future projects. In light of that, this second series of the hitherto unloved show – filmed at the same time as the first – has been presented to a previously indifferent global public in the hope that it will distract from many of the unflattering and embarrassing stories about the Duke of Sussex that have proliferated this year.

    Harry is entirely absent from this series of With Love, Meghan, although he and the couple’s children are often referred to. Instead, this is Meghan: the solo show, and as she trills Californian-inflected pieties to her sycophantic assortment of not-so-special guests, there is the occasional gleam of desperation just about visible underneath her equally gleaming smile. It is fair to say that the many attempts to launch her as a solo star – via television, podcasts and, of course, her “As Ever” product range – have not been as successful as she (and those with a vested interest in her earning power) might have wished. Unless she is prepared to write yet another tell-all memoir, she risks dwindling into obscurity.

    With this in mind, what’s With Love, Meghan II like? The surprising answer is that the second run-around is actually slightly more bearable than the first. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still ghastly, tedious dreck, seemingly produced for an audience that has no critical faculties whatsoever and is content to regard whatever is taking place on their televisions without any necessary judgement – but it throws up a few minor points of interest, which is more than the earlier series did. The presence of the Michelin-starred British chef Clare Smyth – who did the catering for Harry and Meghan’s wedding – in the sixth episode lifts proceedings considerably. Smyth is a proper person, unlike most of the non-entities featured here, and in her brief appearance manages to imbue the show with a professionalism and dry wit that are entirely absent from the platitudinous nonsense elsewhere.

    This is brand reinforcement, pure and simple

    As for the rest of it, your tolerance and enjoyment for therapy-speak and carefully ladled-out nuggets of minor gossip will be tested. Meghan offers fleeting, inconsequential details that are expressed with virtually the same amount of gravity, whether it’s her reminiscing about her love for the “grandma radio” show Magic FM, describing her three-week separation from her children in the aftermath of the Queen’s death as something that left her “not well,” or the revelation that she made her husband a personalized baseball cap for his 40th birthday party, emblazoned with the logo PH40. There is also the surreal reminder that Meghan and her friend Chrissy Teigen briefly appeared as briefcase-wielding models on the American version of the quiz show Deal or No Deal, although sadly Meghan never appeared alongside Noel Edmonds, which would have made for a cosmic shock of toxic proportions.

    I cannot imagine that those who shunned the first series of With Love, Meghan will be lured back in for this go-around, and I’m already dreading the Christmas special. The food cooked is largely unappetizing, and viewers are likely to be mystified by both the identity of the “special guests” and why, say, putting a roast chicken in the oven is treated with the kind of reverence usually reserved for the opening of the Ark of the Covenant, but this is not the point. 

    This is brand reinforcement, pure and simple. And should – heaven forbid! – Harry and Meghan ever go their separate ways, this is a reminder that the distaff half of the brand is more than capable of putting herself out into the public eye as a solo prospect. That revelatory memoir has, you feel, just come a tiny bit closer.   

  • Did I underestimate Harry and Meghan?

    It is important for any self-respecting writer to admit when they get it wrong. So it is with an element of contrition that I must report that, despite my confident belief that the dynamic duo themselves, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, would not have their lucrative Netflix deal renewed, such an event has, indeed, come to pass. Amid what must surely be the raucous sound of organic kombucha bottles being opened in Montecito in celebration, it has been announced that Netflix and Hal & Megs will be in business for another five years, giving the haters and naysayers ample reason to weep and gnash their teeth.

    The treats on offer will include not just a second series of the Duchess’s largely unloved and unpopular lifestyle show With Love, Meghan, but a Christmas special – no doubt filmed about now – and a range of potential projects from Archewell’s hitherto undistinguished film and television production arm. This might potentially include their feature film debut, an adaptation of Carley Fortune’s romantic novel Meet Me At The Lake, and worthy-sounding documentaries, including one about orphans in Uganda, tentatively entitled Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within. If all goes according to plan, then the schedules will be choc-a-bloc with Archewell programming over the next few years. Springtime for Netflix and the Sussexes; winter for the rest of us.

    Certainly, the smug quotes from all parties suggest that this particular fait accompli has worked out very well indeed. Meghan, forever with an eye on the prize, announced that: 

    “We’re proud to extend our partnership with Netflix and expand our work together to include the As Ever brand. My husband and I feel inspired by our partners who work closely with us and our Archewell Productions team to create thoughtful content across genres that resonates globally and celebrates our shared vision.” 

    Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria, meanwhile, gushed that:

    “Harry and Meghan are influential voices whose stories resonate with audiences everywhere. The response to their work speaks for itself – Harry & Meghan gave viewers an intimate look into their lives and quickly became one of our most-watched documentary series. More recently, fans have been inspired by With Love, Meghan with products from the new As Ever line consistently selling out in record time. We’re excited to continue our partnership with Archewell Productions and to entertain our members together.”

    So there we are. The wholesome, upstanding couple has been vindicated, sarcastic detractors like me humiliated, and we can expect a happy half-decade of shows ahead. Well, not quite. 

    Springtime for Netflix and the Sussexes; winter for the rest of us

    Dig beneath the PR carapace and in fact there’s a sting in the tail. The Sussexes have indeed signed a new five-year deal with Netflix, but it’s on considerably reduced terms from the original $100 million handout. Instead, it is trumpeted as a “multiyear, first-look deal,” which sounds impressive enough, but in reality means that Netflix are not obliged to make any of the shows that Archewell pitches, simply that they will be the first port of call for their offer. 

    Should, heaven forfend, they not meet with the streaming service’s interest, they can attempt to flog their wares elsewhere. But given the negligible viewing figures for all the non-Sussex shows – and the unexceptional numbers for the much-maligned With Love, Meghan – this is by no means an inevitability.

    Therefore, one cannot begrudge Harry and Meghan a moment of relief after what has been a largely rough and difficult year so far, particularly for the Duke. Yet it is hard to believe that this really does represent the triumphant return to our screens that this has been superficially marketed as. If most of these mooted shows and films do make it to Netflix, I will take pleasure in eating my As Ever-branded raspberry spread (“with a hint of lemon”) in public, with the smallest spoon I can find. But if they don’t, then this should be seen as a face-saving retreat rather than a progression in an increasingly tarnished media empire.

  • Being Mr. Meghan Markle is no honeymoon

    Being Mr. Meghan Markle is no honeymoon

    Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are finally enjoying their “honeymoon period.” Or they are according to the Duchess of Sussex, who made the statement on a fawning podcast as part of a brand building media blitz – and who certainly seems to be enjoying herself.

    But has she asked her husband if he’s reveling in their belated honeymoon quite as much as she is? Once the spare to the throne, his presence as her forlorn shadow at events to honor her now appears largely surplus to requirements even to Meghan.

    “That man loves me so much,” she gushed on Montecito neighbor Jamie Kern Lima’s podcast on Monday. She likened their relationship to a video game where you “slay the dragon, save the princess.” An analogy that firmly implies she is the glittering prize and he should be happy with winning her hand.

    “You have to imagine, at the beginning, everyone has butterflies, and then we immediately went into the trenches together right out of the gate, six months into dating,” Meghan added. “So now, seven years later when you have a little bit of breathing space, you can just enjoy each other in a new way, and that’s why I feel like it’s more of a honeymoon period for us now.”

    As ever, Meghan’s truth does not necessarily accord with everyone else’s reality.

    It’s been a tough week for Harry as Mr. Meghan Markle. His wife undermined his latest warning about the dangers of social media for children by posting photos of their own children on Instagram. He bombed at the Hollywood aviation awards. And he was snubbed by Meghan at the Time100 Summit.

    All while his brother Prince William looked every bit the senior statesman with world leaders at the Pope’s funeral in Rome.

    Harry’s public troubles began in New York last week. While unveiling a memorial dedicated to the memory of children whose families believe harmful online behavior contributed to their deaths, he demanded stronger protection for young people from the dangers of social media. He was “grateful” that his children were still too young to be online, he said.

    Too young, that is, unless Archie and Lilibet are helping Meghan promote her brands.

    Meghan used their three-year-old daughter to promote her jam, or rather “preserves” as she calls them (jam has too much sugar, apparently), on social media on Sunday. She posted an Instagram Story showing her stirring her homemade strawberry preserves, saying, “What do you think Lili?” A child’s hand can be seen and a voice purporting to be Lili – but sounding strangely AI – is heard saying, “I think it’s beautiful.”

    Meghan also posted Instagram pictures of Lili and son Archie, five, in her rose garden, tastefully obscuring their beautiful red hair and faces. How discrete.

    Harry’s woes were compounded during his trip to New York by his wife’s apparent lack of interest in him. When he stepped out of the couple’s car at the TIME event on Wednesday, he reached out to Meghan to hold her hand. But – right in front of the waiting paparazzi – she ignored him, turned away and instead enthusiastically hugged a woman waiting to greet her.

    A blushing Harry grimaced, as if he instantly knew the media would seize on it (he was correct), then awkwardly adjusted the back waistband of his trousers under his jacket and dutifully trotted through a door behind his wife as she was ushered in by staff and security. Was it take your husband to work day?

    Once inside the auditorium at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Harry was forced to take a literal back seat, applauding enthusiastically from the audience as Meghan trotted out some of her signature lines, such as, “Part of what is really, really important is that love language of taking care of people also feeds me.”

    Meghan, wearing a $4,000 Ralph Lauren suit, gave her soft keynote speech promoting her show, podcast, lifestyle brand and family. This marked a stark contrast with the other speakers, such as Yulia Navalnaya, who talked about fighting for human rights after her late husband, the prominent Russian opposition leader and critic of President Vladimir Putin, died in prison.

    Making Harry’s recent “whining” about being stripped of his UK security details seem petty. Then Harry was off – alone – to the Living Legends of Aviation Awards, where last year he was honored for his work as an Apache helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.

    From the stage at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Friday, Harry thanked the first responders who risked their lives to save those devastated by the California fires, but also took a petulant shot at organizers with a joke that didn’t land well. “I feel like I picked the short straw,” he began.

    “Someone had to host a bunch of pilots and firefighters, that’s where they are, there are five tables. I agreed with the organizers that it would be a good idea, let’s get them along. I did not agree to hosting two of the tables.”

    The sad contrast with William could not be more obvious, royal biographer, writer and broadcaster Hugo Vickers tells The Spectator. “One of them is doing a good job for the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. And the other’s doing nothing.”

    Vickers believes Haz, as he is nicknamed by Meghan, is hanging on to his wife for dear life, “Harry is petrified of her and petrified of losing her. It is a nasty syndrome. And maybe I’m wrong, maybe they’re blissfully happy, but he doesn’t look happy.

    “Now he’s just sort of dangling about in the background of Meghan’s various other things she’s promoting.”

    Vickers added that the Sussex children’s appearances on Meghan’s Instagram makes them “awful pawns in the middle of this game.”

    “All this gooey talk that you get from Meghan about connectivity and love and stuff doesn’t seem to extend to her own family, does it? She’s playing silly games with them. I just have a horrible feeling it’s all going to end badly somehow.”

    How much longer can this go on? The old Harry, with his jack-the-lad swagger and roguish sense of humor, was hugely popular with the public, the royals and the media. His former friends, who were pushed aside when he met Meghan, miss that version of Harry. We miss that Harry.

    Perhaps it is time for the prince to pack away his paranoia, apologize and start building bridges with his father, brother and the media, if it is not too late and he loses the petering goodwill toward him that still remains. That couldn’t possibly be more humiliating than this flower-sprinkled existence as Mr. Meghan Markle.

  • Harry and Meghan’s constant rebranding

    Harry and Meghan’s constant rebranding

    Harry and Meghan are at it again — launching themselves into another rebrand — this time embarking on a faux-royal tour to Nigeria, hiring new PR staff in the UK, promoting strawberry jelly on Instagram and — good grief! — touting Netflix shows about friendship and polo. There’s a certain sadness about this latest effort, since the Sussexes’ entire past year has been spent branding and rebranding themselves with practically no effect, and the whiff of desperation now hovers over them.

    You’d feel sorry for the couple if they responded to their misfortune with some degree of humility

    Their annus horribilis of branding mishaps and misfortunes kicked off last April when Meghan signed up with the glitziest of the Hollywood PR giants — William Morris Endeavor. At the time, the Sussex image was in sore need of a turnaround. The consensus had it that they were good at trashing the royal family — via Oprah, Spare and Netflix — but were struggling to prove themselves in any other way. This was unfortunate, as the victimhood narrative was a branding disaster. With the publication of Spare, Harry’s approval ratings in the US dropped an alarming forty-five points to minus seven and Meghan’s fell thirty-six points to minus thirteen. And this was before the disdainful South Park episode about their Worldwide Privacy Tour. It was starting to look like Meghan might not be able to run for president after all.

    Then, in May, the Sussexes made their historic pronouncement about a “near catastrophic car chase” in New York, invoking the image of the death of Diana and securing the bewilderment of New Yorkers from the mayor down, who wondered how a two-hour high-speed car chase could have happened in a city that is permanently gridlocked. This was another major fail; after all, if it looked as though they were telling fibs about this, what else might not be true? Even those who had believed what was said in the Oprah interview now had their doubts. 

    A few weeks later, Spotify dropped Meghan’s Archetypes podcast on the grounds that Archewell had failed to meet “productivity benchmarks.” That description was evidently a euphemism, as explained by Spotify executive Bill Simmons who said: “The Fucking Grifters. That’s the podcast we should have launched with them.” He was expanding on sentiments he’d expressed before: “You live in fucking Montecito and you just sell documentaries and podcasts and nobody cares what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the royal family and you just complain about them.” Simmons was speaking to a growing majority on both sides of the Atlantic which, having turned against Harry and Meghan, was now hungry for every piece of bad news.

    By the summer, the Sussexes’ PR situation was dire. In June it was reported that Meghan was “in talks” to become a brand representative for the French fashion house Dior. Cue a wave of mean but amusing YouTube videos highlighting her many fashion fails. An army of Sussex-watchers sensed that the collaboration was everything that Meghan had ever wanted, and they didn’t think she deserved it. Eventually, Dior denied having spoken to Meghan at all and instead chose Meg Bellamy as its new face. By chance, or not, this was the actress who played Kate Middleton in The Crown.

    By the autumn, the phrase “they’re smashing plates in Montecito” was all over the internet and the year ended badly. In the Netherlands, Omid Scobie’s book Endgame named the “royal racists” of Oprah fame as King Charles and Catherine, the Princess of Wales. In PR terms, this was horrendous for the Sussexes — who were desperately trying to disassociate from family drama in order to move on to “new projects.” That both Charles and Catherine were afterwards diagnosed with cancer made everything a hundred times worse. In other frightful news, the Archewell Foundation accounts were made public, revealing that the couple put in only an hour’s work a week at their charity — deftly reinforcing the “grifters” moniker. 

    And so it went on. Harry was caught up in a devastating scandal at the African Parks charity, of which he is a board member — where employees stand accused of violence and rape. Simultaneously, the Duke was having patchy-to-little success with his mindblowingly expensive legal cases in the UK that made him look petulant. Meghan, meanwhile, was unceremoniously shushed along at a red carpet event, like some B-list celebrity, while on another crimson carpet, a former colleague from Suits, when asked about the duchess, replied in an imperious tone and with great comic timing: “We don’t have her number.” The implication was that Hollywood had no desire to speak to her.

    You’d feel sorry for the couple if they responded to their misfortune with some degree of humility. But the past few months have seen several fresh rebrands, all of them imbued with the grandiosity that we’ve come to associate with the couple. A new Sussex.com website was launched. It was massively regal in style and elevated their achievements to delusional heights. Then Meghan launched her new lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, with soft-focus sepia shots of her in a ballgown swanning around her Montecito mansion. In her early days in the monarchy, she was informed that she and Harry could rival the Obamas in their branding ambitions, and it seems like she still believes it.

    This week Harry will visit the UK for the tenth anniversary of the Invictus games, although Meghan will not be joining him. Invictus is where Harry needs to concentrate his energy. It’s as down-to-earth and substantial as the majority of the Sussex activity has been pie-in-the-sky and vacuous. The Nigeria trip, with Meghan in tow, is also supposed to focus on Nigeria. So, hurrah for that. 

    Meanwhile, the rest of the royal family have weathered the Sussex fiascos with admirable silence and a great deal of dignity. There’s no better branding than having your face on a stamp.

    This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.

  • The issue with a ‘slimmed-down’ monarchy

    The issue with a ‘slimmed-down’ monarchy

    When he was Prince of Wales, the king began to advocate the need for a slimmed-down monarchy. The perception was that there were too many royals, an image confirmed in the eyes of the media and the public when they all appeared together on the balcony following the Trooping the Colour, a ceremonial event in London. The ill-informed man in the street would go away thinking the taxpayer was supporting all these disparate family members. This was a misconception, but it lingered. At the time of the Diamond Jubilee, the queen’s advisors, were delighted when only a handful of royals appeared on the balcony after the service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 2012 — the queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry (the Duke of Edinburgh was in hospital at the time). This image was what media advisors would describe as a better “optic.”

    The queen and Prince Philip had many patronages and presidencies which it is proving a problem to fill

    Then at the time of the Platinum Jubilee a new category was devised — the so-called working royals. These were the queen, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Princess Royal (accompanied by Sir Tim Laurence, her husband), the Earl and Countess of Wessex, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra. So there it was — the slimmed-down monarchy just as the king-to-be had always wanted.

    Frankly, I never thought it would work. Nor did the Princess Royal (who is always worth listening to). Last year she was asked about it. “Well, I think the ‘slimmed-down’ [monarchy] was said in a day when there were a few more people around to make that seem like a justifiable comment… It doesn’t sound like a good idea from where I’m standing, I have to say.”

    The announcement of the king’s cancer diagnosis is a reminder of what a foolish idea a slimmed-down monarchy is. The whole point of the royal family is that they support the king (definitionally not slimmed-down), undertaking the duties and responsibilities that he simply does not have time to do. The most successful members of the royal family are those who support the monarch, rather than those who compete (as we have seen). In the coming days, as the king undergoes his treatment, we will no doubt see much of Queen Camilla out and about. The Queen Mother stood in for George VI a great deal between 1948 and 1952 — at times she was effectively the head of state. Princess Anne has already proved immensely supportive to her brother. Prince William has resumed public duties. It is said that Prince Edward is resting from his duties, but his wife Sophie will be busy.

    Of the others, the Duke of Kent is recovering from an operation and is now eighty-eight, and his sister Princess Alexandra has not been seen in public since last summer. Recently the king invited the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester to Sandringham for the first time in decades. This indicates his increased reliance on them. Their public duties have increased enormously in the last months.

    When I did some conversations with the Duke of Kent for his book A Royal Life, he spoke of his role in the late queen’s reign: “I always felt I wanted to support her. That’s by far the most important thing in life.” When the Duchess of Kent asked me why I wanted to do the book with him, I told her that he was always seeking ways to lighten the queen’s burden, and she said: “Well that’s absolutely perfect. Exactly what he does.”

    There was a time in the early 1950s when there were as few active members of the royal family as there are today. So the young duke was sent off to take the Independence ceremony in Sierra Leone in 1961. Princess Alexandra paid a long visit to Australia and other countries in 1959, when she was only twenty-two and she undertook a vitally important visit to Japan in 1961, which opened the way for better post-war Anglo-Japanese relations and paved the way for Emperor Hirohito’s state visit to Britain in 1971. When not helping the queen, these members of the royal family pursued their own duties. The Duke of Kent was a dedicated president of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for fifty years. In 2022 he presided at the burial of World War One soldiers whose bodies were discovered years later. This got no mention in the press, but was hugely appreciated by the families of those involved.

    For public events these days, members of the royal family — or celebrities — are wanted more than the mayors, councilors or lords of the manor of earlier times. And you get a better deal from the royal family than from most celebrities (who can be expensive and demanding). The queen and Prince Philip had many hundreds of patronages and presidencies between them. They were involved with numerous regiments. It is proving a problem to fill these now that they have gone — not to mention the many public engagements for which royal participation is sought.

    Another crucial role for some royals is to act as Counselor of State. Six are appointed if the monarch goes abroad for an appreciable period of time or is unable to fulfil his duties. There is no need for them at present, but should there be; the two who would act in tandem would most likely be Queen Camilla and Prince William. At one time they used to be the Queen Mother, Prince Philip and the next four in line. When the queen went to Paris on her state visit in 1972, Prince Philip was exempted as he was with her, as were Prince Charles, serving in the navy, and Princess Margaret, who happened to be abroad. The media suggests Prince Harry might be one but he is automatically excluded as he lives abroad. Under the Counselors of State Act of 2022, Prince Edward and Princess Anne are also eligible to serve.

    The king may well find he needs more support to advance the slimmed-down cause from his family. I would encourage further involvement from Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, two very well-raised girls, with university degrees, both of whom already support many charitable endeavors. I am sure they would rise to the challenge.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.

  • Being curious about race does not make you racist

    Being curious about race does not make you racist

    When you exist in a mixed-race family like I do — black dad, white Jewish mom, Asian uncle, Latino ex-husband — race is something that’s hard to escape. We talk about our similarities, explore our differences and consider how the experiences of one generation might be similar or different for the next. Race is somehow always on our tongues. But that doesn’t necessarily make my family racist. Nor does it make the royal family racist either. 

    Back in March 2021 during Oprah Winfrey’s sit-down with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, I was horrified by their now infamous exchange over the alleged concern by unnamed Windsors about the skin color of the Sussexes’ first kid. We all know what supposedly went down. Evil mysterious senior royals, alleged Meghan and Harry, dared to inquire about the appearance of what would essentially be the first official mixed-race kid in the clan’s entire thousand-plus-year history.  

    Meghan was outraged, Harry taken aback, and Oprah nothing less than aghast. But I never bought it. Because there is a vast difference between mere curiosity around race and outright fear or concern. Take it from someone who knows. 

    Nearly a decade ago when my now former-husband and I embarked on the process that would lead us to parenthood, race was an ever-present part of that journey. At least for myself. Nowhere more so than the constant wonder I had about what my multiracial offspring might look like. How dark, how light — how curly the hair or broad the nose? This didn’t make me racist, merely curious and excited. The same type of wonderment, I suspect, felt by those now-vilified royals — and, just as likely, by Meghan’s family as well. But no one would dare call dear Doria Ragland, Meghan’s mother, racist. 

    The taboo around speaking about race has reached levels that are now nothing less than comical. Here is Meghan Markle — who’s crafted her entire public persona around her mixed-race identity and endured (and complained about) very real examples of racism from the press — suddenly declaring race talk off-limits. That might be an option if the Sussexes would offer the world something else to talk about. As both a commoner and royal, Meghan has cannily made identity issues such as race and gender cornerstones of her ever-evolving agendas. Although now irksome and annoying, this was laudable and steeped in merit during Markle’s days in court. After all, if she wasn’t going to talk about these issues, who would? 

    For someone who looks like me and has grown up like me, in many ways Meghan felt like the princess I’d always wanted growing up. I loved seeing Markle — another California kid like myself — thrive in a world where she’s proudly black and white. I loved hearing her talk about her mixed-race identity when doing so can still feel like a revolutionary act. Particularly here in America.

    Don’t forget, barely fifteen years ago Barack Obama — as white as he is black — essentially conceded his whiteness for political expediency when he ran for president as America’s first “black” Democratic nominee. Of course I knew he wasn’t entirely black — and he knew he wasn’t entirety black. But with his African American wife and pair of “black” kids, the optics edified the story — even if it wasn’t the entire story. Helping things along was the chastening absence of Obama’s white mother who passed away when he was just thirty-five. Had she been around like my own mother fortunately is, it would have been far harder to dismiss Obama’s whiteness. 

    Meghan has laudably taken another track — declaring early, publicly and proudly that she’s mixed-race. Many others, like Obama, have chosen not to. Halle Berry, whose mother is white, adhered to the narrative around her status as the first “black” woman to win a best actress Oscar back in 2002. Some two decades later, Vice President Kamala Harris has cultivated a political persona that leans far heavier into her black side in lieu of her Indian side. And let’s not forget about controversial New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who’s built her entire career around African-American racial grievances despite being born to a white mother. Sure, she’s not exactly hiding it. But I suspect few folks know the infamous author of the 1619 Project is as white as she is black. It’s not an opinion — but a genetic fact. 

    It takes a lot to stand up to this kind of racial orthodoxy, and I was always impressed by Meghan’s moxie. Despite the fact that according to the 2020 Census, mixed-race Americans are now some 10 percent of our nation’s population, those who are mixed white and black still face an outsized burden to keep it on the down low. To blacks, we exist as an existential threat to dwindling political numbers in the face of fast-rising Hispanic communities. We also stand as a rebuke to conventional notions around African-American achievement — both the good and the bad — and the roles nature and nurture play in this highly-charged debate. 

    To whites, folks like Meghan and me directly challenge the legacy of the venal “one-drop” rule that’s as outdated as it is obscene. With our white parents, we have every right to claim our whiteness even if we are not actually white. Again, this is generic fact — not an opinion.  

    And so too is the fact that any child of Meghan and Harry would likely look different from all of their previous ancestors. And that’s just fine. No one said a royal has to be white — least of all the royal family. But faced with the specter of a royal actually not being white, curiosity is an organic — if not logical — outcome. True, the monarch is anointed by God, but ultimately he’s merely human. It’s human to be curious about race — but take it from me, that doesn’t make you racist.

    This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.