Oh, the irony! Harry and Meghan fled for privacy – only to go from the frying pan to the fire

ONE powerful reason for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex leaving our shores was their distaste for the British media, which they regard as intrusive and untrustworthy. It’s not just that Meghan is suing this title’s sister paper, The Mail on Sunday, for breach of copyright and infringement of her privacy.

Over the past year, Harry has inveighed against the Press. Indeed, in a valedictory statement a few days ago before leaving for Canada, he had one more swipe at it. I don’t suppose it will be his last.

They hope that in North America they will be able to enjoy something of the freedom enjoyed by private citizens, and won’t be harassed by journalists or paparazzi. If so, they are tragically deluded.

Two days ago, one newspaper in this country, and some websites here and abroad, published a picture of a smiling Meghan carrying their eight-month- old son Archie in a park on Vancouver Island, accompanied by officers from Scotland Yard and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The pair are incandescent. They have instructed their London lawyers, who maintain the photos were taken without Meghan’s consent by a photographer hiding in the bushes. They claim paparazzi are camped outside their mansion.

What are we to make of this? No sooner have Meghan and Harry set up shop in what is supposed to be the vast, free space of Canada than they are, according to their lawyers, being pestered by paparazzi, very possibly in a more invasive way than they would have experienced in Britain.

One can certainly sympathise with their plight. I don’t suppose many of us would relish being snapped by photographers as we took a walk in the park in a country in which we had just arrived, seeking peace and quiet.

I fear that what happened earlier this week is a mere precursor. The couple have exchanged the frying pan for the fire. There will be no respite in Canada. In fact, unfortunately for them, things may well get worse.

GRANTED, in a few weeks’ time the appetite for stories and photos may abate slightly. The frenzied excitement of recent days — largely precipitated by Harry and Meghan’s unnecessarily dramatic public disengagement from the Royal Family — can hardly persist for ever.

But they will discover the world’s media remain besotted with their every move. Whether they think of themselves as royals or part-time royals, they are still associated with the most famous family in the world.

Nor are they likely to do much to lessen that connection. I don’t just mean their website, which is still branded

They will be celebrated and asked to endorse people and products for pecuniary advantage because of who they were.

They will, in fact, become mega- celebrities — a notch above the Clooneys of this world, not because they are more talented or interesting but because of the royal stardust that still clings to them, which they show no sign of wishing to brush away.

Doubtless if they re- styled themselves Mr and Mrs Windsor, and lived like church mice in unostentatious obscurity, the media would tire of them. But they appear to have embarked on exactly the opposite course.

This being so, it is inevitable that the media will continue to be interested in their every public action — perhaps more so than when they were safely ensconced in the bosom of our sober Royal Family.

And there is one enormous difference. Believe it or not, the Press in this country observes certain rules of engagement. For example, it doesn’t cover the toing and froing to school of royal children.

During Prince William’s four-year stint at St Andrews University, newspapers and TV left him almost entirely alone. The only media company that flouted this arrangement — Ardent Productions — was run by his own uncle, Prince Edward.

I certainly don’t suggest the Press in Britain is saintly or retiring. But I do believe — though Harry and Meghan can’t see it — that it is capable of exercising restraint and is open to reason.

This won’t be the case in Canada. I accept the Canadian media may be staid and wellbehaved, and that the country’s people are possibly less interested in the antics of Harry and Meghan than their British cousins.

But the paparazzi reportedly camped outside the couple’s mansion are probably not supplying Canadian newspapers. Their putative clients are in many countries, including the U.S., France, Germany, Malaysia and even Britain.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex may also be unaware that, in common with the U.S., Canada has fewer onerous privacy laws than the UK.

It’s true that British Columbia ( where Vancouver is situated) strengthened its privacy law in 1996 to make it a civil wrong ‘wilfully to violate the privacy of another’.

But it’s highly doubtful whether it is an offence to take a photo in a public place in British Columbia or any part of Canada. Nor is it in Britain, by the way, unless the person being snapped is harassed.

I fear the couple have been so blinded by their dislike of the British media that it has simply not occurred to them that paparazzi operating in North America are likely to be far more feral than their UK counterparts, and operate under fewer constraints.

MOREOVER, should the British media collectively determine never to run another picture of Harry and Meghan — an unlikely outcome, I concede — the couple would still be pursued by paparazzi with their eyes on other, sometimes bigger, markets.

I don’t know who advises the Sussexes on such matters. Maybe no one very media savvy does. Or perhaps they simply don’t listen. I wish they did.

One further mistake of Meghan’s is her apparent belief that she can assert dominant control over her own image. This may be true of E- list starlets who distribute titillating ‘ selfies’ of themselves. It is impossible for a mega-celebrity.

Meghan yesterday released photos of a recent trip to a London dog charity. In effect, she was saying: this is what I like doing, being nice to unhappy dogs. This is me.

But the consequence of her releasing such images is to whet the appetite of paparazzi to supply more of their own photos, and to increase the desire of publications to run them.

I repeat my point. As Mr and Mrs Windsor eschewing publicity, and turning their backs on the world, they would have every right to privacy. But as a couple burnishing their own image, and no doubt in due course making tens of millions out of their fame, they don’t.

Oh dear, what a mess this promises to be. I wish the Duke and Duchess had stayed in Britain because I believe they would have contributed a great deal to this country and ultimately achieved fulfilment for themselves.

I fear that they — and Harry in particular — may find themselves rootless and without a proper role, fabulously rich, no doubt, yet harried by an insatiable and unrestrained international media.

Obviously, I hope not. Why shouldn’t we wish them well? But it would be an immense and painful irony if, at the end of it all, the thing they hate most — a disobliging and critical media — stopped being an irritation and became a scourge.