Sarah Vine
UNDER normal circumstances, the fact that today is the first day of Harry and Meghan’s new life as ‘ordinary’ citizens would have dominated the news.
But most people have more pressing matters on their minds.
Against a background of economic meltdown and the life-and-death battle against this damned virus, the plight of Harry and Meghan pales into insignificance.
What do the concerns, real or imagined, of this pampered pair matter in a world where thousands are dying every day? Where an unseen enemy is keeping friends apart, and tearing families to shreds?
Ordinary people are having to endure the unimaginable; yet this is a couple who barely gave their relationship with the British public 18 months before chucking in the towel.
No wonder, as the royal biographer Penny Junor put it, they now seem ‘pretty irrelevant’. For months, other members of the Royal Family, not to mention friends, advisers and those of us in the Press reckless enough to incur the wrath of the pro-Meghan trolls, have been urging them to get some perspective. NOW events have done that for them and their decision to abandon Britain in favour of life in LA has been exposed for what it is: ill-judged, premature — and, in many ways, rather sad.
Because, make no mistake, Harry and Meghan could have had it all. Correction: they did have it all; the fancy wedding, the lavish lifestyle, the adoration of the British public — and, of course, the status that comes with being an HRH.
As of today, they are just another celebrity couple touting for work in la la land. And work they will have to. Thanks in part to their disobliging comments about Donald Trump, the U.S. President is in no mood to bankroll their security detail, so they will have to find a minimum of around £4 million a year just for that.
Add to that the cost of even a starter mansion in Malibu (give or take £25 million) and their wellpublicised private jet habit, and it’s hard to see how they will have much change out of £30 million for their first year of freedom.
luckily, Prince Charles has said he will fund Harry in the short term. But the Duke will have to get a job, as will Meghan.
I don’t imagine she will have any trouble. But Harry? Even assuming he can get a Green Card to live in the States permanently, he has never known anything apart from the Army and royal patronage.
Now he is thousands of miles from home, surrounded by people not renowned for their sincerity or kindness — while his own people, the British public, face the greatest challenge of a generation and are crying out for that chutzpah and cheek we used to love.
Harry may be many things, but he is not a shirker. His unique capacity for empathy, inherited from his late mother, would have proven invaluable in boosting the morale of frontline staff. Instead he is reduced to spouting Americanised platitudes on the pair’s Instagram feed and communicating via emoji.
I can only imagine the shame he must (surely) feel as he watches his brother consider returning to work as an air-ambulance pilot to help the NHS, while he’s loafing about on the other side of the Pond.
One day, when he’s all grown up, Archie may ask Harry: ‘What did you do in the war against Covid-19, Daddy?’ The answer, dearest Harry, is up to you.