America’s race-obsessed elites are waging war on British institutions

Our universal tolerance and respect for duty are anathema to those who benefit from racial divides

What does America have against the Royal family? Strangely enough, given the history, in the main the answer is “almost nothing”. I was in the States when Queen Elizabeth II died and was struck by the surge of public sentiment there. Many of the American broadcasters were likewise surprised by the extraordinary welling-up of feeling that occurred in the US. As Robert Hardman has observed, she felt like “our Queen”, of course, but also “the Queen of the World”. Nowhere more so than in America. When the news of her death broke, American audiences demanded wall-to-wall coverage of events from the UK.

Yet as I mentioned here at the time, underneath the mainstream a tiny undercurrent of unpleasantness could be sniffed. Tentative at first, it soon grew as the Left-wing media in the US decided to change their focus from the passing of a much-loved monarch. In the case of the New York Times, having only waited a couple of hours, they soon began to push the news into the same remorseless groove of identity politics into which everything else in America is now played.

Local writers were drafted in to attack the Empire and Commonwealth (which will sound awfully familiar to Netflix subscribers).

And, as though 10 days of mourning was too much to ask, the one-time American “paper of record” was soon bringing in people every couple of hours to assault the late Queen and her legacy. Left-wing broadcasters like CNN and MSNBC did the same, seeing the death of the monarch as the ideal time to spread exaggerations about the British Empire.

Now these elite anti-british bigots are going to have new material, provided to them by one of their own – the woman born Meghan Markle. As the Duke and Duchess of Sussex bask in the attention surrounding their “tell-all” Netflix show, we can already see the groove that they have been pushed into. It is a peculiarly American groove and one that bears no relationship with either Britain or the truth.

It was the British novelist Zadie Smith who once observed that race in America is what class is in Britain – the discussion beneath every discussion. Whether or not that is still the case with class in Britain, it is certainly the case with race in America. As the summer of George Floyd in 2020 proved, America is only ever one bad police interaction away from major riots and cities burning down. It is a country on a perpetual knife-edge over any issue to do with race. Some people would say it is unfinished business from history. Others that it simply provides many people in America with an excuse for their own underperformance.

Whatever the cause, it is beyond question that America looks at everything through the lens of race. So it was probably inevitable that the Sussexes, now living in America, would use race as the main lens through which to view the British public and monarchy.

Of course, nothing could be more inadequate as a tool. To many British people Meghan does not even look black. They had to be told that she was a person of colour. We do not go on the “one drop” rule in multicultural Britain. But when the public were told, it is hardly as though there was any negative reaction. Far from it. As the crowds that turned out for the 2018 royal wedding in Windsor showed, the British people were thrilled by the union of the Sussexes. If there were comments on the race of Meghan it was mainly in a feeling that here Britain was doing something very British – seeing its institutions adapt. In a multi-ethnic society it seemed a positive boon to have a multi-ethnic Royal family. What better way to head into the 21st century?

But then Harry and Meghan chose their own way, for reasons they will doubtless now try to justify at inordinate length. Not only on Netflix but also in the Duke’s forthcoming memoir, Spare. For the Sussexes seem to have been surprised by aspects of the Royal family. It seems to have come as a shock to the couple that there is a “hierarchy” in the monarchy – a fact that you might have thought was obvious. To Meghan, it clearly wasn’t. She married into one of the most carefully stratified institutions in the world and then expressed amazement that people had their own distinct place in it. Perhaps she was shocked that hers was lower than she had hoped.

In the years since, the couple gave up their royal duties and retreated to California. Ostensibly to escape the press, they have in fact spent all the while invading their own privacy for their own financial benefit. Now the couple seem genuinely surprised that there should have been any turn in public sentiment against them in the UK.

Both of them have retreated into the only explanation that Meghan could possibly have; the explanation for everything in America: “racism”. An innocuous comment from an unnamed member of the Royal family was already blown up through the megaphone of Oprah Winfrey into “evidence” that the Windsors are (wait for the originality of insult) “institutionally racist”.

The truth is less exciting, far less scandalous, and without doubt something that the Sussexes will never want to hear: the British public only turned against the couple because the couple turned against the British public and one of our great institutions. When the Sussexes chose to keep their titles but spend their time chasing celebrity in California, they rejected the idea of public service to which every other royal is committed. Even worse was that the couple should have made the final months of the Duke of Edinburgh and the late Queen that much more unhappy by appearing as wrecking balls against the institution that had so carefully nurtured Prince Harry and welcomed his wife.

If Meghan were interested in any of this, she could speak to black Britons, many of whom retain an utter devotion to the monarchy. There is no surprise in that. The great secret of all institutions is that people are loyal to institutions that are loyal to them.

The Sussexes could have been something great – a jewel in the British crown – but they wrecked themselves. If they want an explanation as to why they have become what they have, and ended up where they have, it lies in their own selfish actions.

They have in fact spent all their time in California invading their own privacy for financial benefit