“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” says an anonymous texter to BBC Radio Five Live’s Breakfast show. He – I’ll call him or her he on try grounds it’s likely to be a ‘he’ – is responding to the decision of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to take the Mail on Sunday to court after it published one of her private letters. For the hard of thinking, allow me to explain that the texter is suggesting that if the young royals don’t like media harassment, they should step away from public life. They are, apparently, public property. We are entitled to know everything about them. There can be no privacy where they are concerned.
The MoS says they will “vigorously defend” the action. You can look up the grounds on which they will justify their decision not to simply apologise because I’m not going to. But I do think this adds to my suspicion that, sooner or later, and to protect his family, it is entirely possible that Harry and Meghan will depart public life.
If you listened to Five Live this morning, you will have noted that the texts supporting and condemning Harry suggested that public opinion were evenly split 50/50. Half of us think the young royals, like anyone else, should be entitled to some degree of privacy and the other half think that media intrusion into private lives are not just acceptable but necessary. Although Five Live may be doing its usual dismal trick of trying to provide ‘balance’, it may also be that large swathes of the public believe they should have full access to every aspect of the life of the royals because we pay for them. I suspect it is the latter.
Let’s be honest: people buy newspapers that reflect their point of view. That’s how it works. A soggy left of centre liberal, a position that was once called mainstream Labour, will probably read the the Guardian or, more likely, the Mirror. A soggy liberal, like me, doesn’t want added tittle-tattle so I’ll buy the Guardian. The Mail on Sunday published the private correspondence of Meghan Markle. If you didn’t agree with them doing this, surely you wouldn’t buy it, would you?
I’m no legal expert so it’s probably best for me not to speculate specifically on the rights and wrongs of this particular royal legal action. I recognise that an unknown, little read blog will hardly affect public opinion but here’s my thoughts, anyway.
Prince Harry understands, perhaps more than anyone in the land, the potential effects of media harassment and abuse. His own mother died following years of it, arguably as a direct result of it. He can see the same thing happening again today. His mother became isolated from the royal family. People forget she wasn’t actually a Princess at all. They chewed her up, they spat her out. And then she died. How could he not be worried that the same thing might happen to his wife? Only a fool would say that Meghan’s colour – she is black, in case you hadn’t noticed – is not a factor. Do you not read the red tops? What price Harry will call it a day with the royal family?
My thoughts are not facts. It’s a feeling, that’s all. A feeling based upon what went before and a desire to ensure it never happens again. A simple court action won’t end the relentless and intrusive of the royals in general and Harry and Meghan in particular. It will go on and on. Why would he want to risk history repeating itself?
