Set to steam into Harry pity party
● Ex-PM rules out return and raps Trump ● He blasts successors on defence and aid
IT’S CARDS on the table time.Yes, I want to watch Oprah’s Harry and Meghan interview next Sunday even if, as I suspect, it’ll make me squirm. Yes, I expect to be glued to the sofa. Yes, I anticipate toe-curling, tooth-grinding and indignant expostulation emanating from my good self. Should I refuse to watch on principle? Forget that. I’m in, agog, even if there’s a faint whiff of motorway crash rubber-necking about it.
Actually, I’m also pre-fuming. I haven’t seen a second of the thing and already steam is pouring out of my lugholes.
In the fragments released in advance Prince Harry tells Ms Winfrey: “I’m just really relieved and happy to be sitting here, talking to you with my wife by my side, because I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for her, going through this process by herself, all those years ago. Because it has been unbelievably tough for the two of us, but at least we had each other.”
Frankly it’s hard to imagine a more inflammatory couple of sentences. Harry manages to muddy the historical waters, insult his father, grandmother and sick grandfather and invite the viewing hordes to a pity party all at the same time. “Her” is obviously his late mother Princess Diana, but what Harry means by “this process” is far from clear. Is he suggesting that Meghan’s induction into the Royal Family and Diana’s were identical?
DOES he think the audience will buy into the notion that the virginal 19-year-old Diana and the 37-year-old divorced showbusiness veteran Meghan endured similar tribulations? Are we supposed to think Prince Charles was utterly absent from his new bride’s side? Does Harry intentionally imply that the Queen and Prince Philip were cold and distant? Has he been watching too many episodes of The Crown?
The most infuriating phrase here is, “it has been unbelievably tough for the two of us”. Which part of being welcomed by an enthralled nation, given a dream wedding and housed in the lavishly appointed Frogmore Cottage caused mortal suffering? Why has Harry not learnt from his ill-judged whingeing to ITV’s Tom Bradby while on a South Africa tour? “Unbelievably tough” is losing a loved one to Covid, lockdown in a tower block, working from home while home schooling three children and caring for a baby or watching the business you have built up collapse.
I’m still going to watch it, though.
DAVID Cameron has said the prospect of Donald Trump making a comeback is “enough to keep us all spinning over”.
The ex-prime minister ruled out a return to frontline politics as he also criticised his two Tory successors yesterday.
Insisting he was “happy doing what I am doing”, the former Tory leader confessed to not missing Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons. He also defended holding the Brexit vote, which ended his premiership, saying it was “properly thought through” before the 2015 general election.
Mr Cameron said Theresa May made a “very bad mistake” merging the role of cabinet secretary and national security adviser.
Sir Mark Sedwill held both in her tenure in No 10. Mr Cameron told the National Security Strategy Committee: “For one person, even if you were a cross of Einstein, Wittgenstein and Mother Teresa, you couldn’t possibly do both jobs and I think that temporarily weakened the National Security Council.”
Mr Cameron also blasted Boris Johnson’s scrapping of the Department for International Development and ditching the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid.
He said: “I think abolishing DfID is a mistake too for all sorts of reasons but one of which is actually having the Foreign Office voice around the [National Security Council] table and the DfID voice around the table I think is important – they are not necessarily the same thing.
“Can you really expect the Foreign Secretary to do all of the diplomatic stuff and be able to speak to the development brief as well? That’s quite a task, so I think it is good to have both.”
But Mr Cameron, who set up the NSC in 2010, admitted more should have been learnt from SARS in 20022004. He said the NSC had a “good flu pandemic plan” but it should have been a “respiratory disease plan”.