The newspapers said it all today: “Just fuck off and don’t come back,” said the Mail. “You bastards: you didn’t even tell the Queen.,” said the Express. “Gutless Harry does what he’s told by manipulative yank who hates Britain,” said the Telegraph. “Love Island beauty gets her tits out,” said the Star. As Prince Harry and Meghan Markle take the first steps to move away from the Royal Family – and let’s not kid ourselves that this isn’t happening – it’s very obvious why.
Actually, the newspapers didn’t use these exact words, but they didn’t need to. And don’t always mention Ms Markle’s colour, because they didn’t need to, because simmering just below the surface is racism. Not clear and open racism, as displayed by the likes of Boris Johnson and other right wing comedians, but subtle, corrosive racism, wrapped up within vicious criticism that has applied to no other royal.
Granted that Prince Andrew has attempted, probably unconsciously, to draw the heat from Meghan by hanging around a convicted sex offender and paedophile, but it won’t keep the heat off Harry for long.
We knew long ago that this was coming. We heard the comments from Harry about how he saw parallels between the death of his mother at the hands of the media and how he feared the same thing could happen to his wife. We read about the fact that Meghan is suing some red top newspapers. It did not require the brain of a rocket scientist to understand that they would eventually say, ‘enough is enough’. If I had the time and inclination, I would dig out a blog I wrote last year predicting that something like this was sure to happen.
What happens next will be an explosion of anger from the gutter press. The campaign to undermine the credibility of Harry and Meghan will be stepped up to a new, ugly level. Some members of the public, maybe quite a lot of members of the public, will turn on Harry and Meghan. Listening to Radio Five Live this morning, there was plenty of evidence of that. It was Britain at its post Brexit angriest and ugliest.
I doubt that Harry and Meghan will be allowed to live in a halfway house within the House of Windsor. I doubt that after a few more months of tabloid venom they will want to. Rather than dividing their time between Britain and North America, they will depart, full time, to the latter.
Having been converted to the Royal family late in life, primarily because of the likes of Prince Harry and Prince William, I have found my new found support dwindling away. I admire the elderly and increasingly frail Queen, less so Prince Charles, her “slobbering, weak-chinned dauphin of a son” as the late Christopher Hitchens astutely described him. Whilst more bland and traditional than his brother, Prince William still comes across as the one remaining beacon of light within this chronically dysfunctional family. If he fell under a bus tomorrow, I’d recommended winding up the Royal company with immediate effect.
Like with everything else, you usually end up with what you deserve in life. You get the political party, the government, you deserve. You get the football club you deserve. And in this instance, you get the Royal Family you deserve. If you bought the hideous newspapers that fed the Paparazzi who followed Princess Diana to her death and have since provided a relentless line of attack on Meghan Markle, with all the underlying racism, you are as guilty as anyone.
And when people suggest that if Harry and Meghan love America so much, why don’t they just go and live there, don’t be surprised when one day they decide to do just that.
