Harry and Meghan book shows Britain and the Sussex duo have definitely parted company

Sometimes, due to a change in circumstances, the behaviour of people previously regarded as licensed clowns ceases to be amusing and becomes offensive. Such is the case with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, now hoping for rehabilitation from a new book “Finding Freedom: Harry, Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family,” by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, due to be published on 11 August.

As recently as a few months ago the Sussex couple provided a parodic soap opera featuring themselves as caricatures of celebrity culture, fixated on the plastic myth that is Hollywood, anguished by imagined victimhood, voluble in parroting “woke” airhead groupthink, futilely obsessed with a PR exercise that was usually disastrous, mired in self-obsession and engorged with entitlement. It was crass, it was vulgar but, in a slightly morbid way, it furnished entertainment.

That is no longer the case. The current crisis has harshly restored a sense of proportion to most people’s existence and the Sussex circus, predicated on the trendy trivialities of more relaxed times, is incompatible with the new realities. Court jesters are not wanted while the Black Death rages. It was (just) tolerable when Prince Harry and his consort paraded their supposed grievances against the British monarchy and public; it is now intolerable when the same solipsistic egotism prompts ignorant and insensitive interventions regarding the ordeal Britain is enduring.

“…I think things are better than we’re led to believe through certain corners of the media,” the Duke of Sussex told us last month. “It can be very worrying when you’re sitting there and the only information you are getting is from certain news channels, but then if you are out and about or you are on the right platforms, you can really sense this human spirit coming to the forefront.”

So, there you are: things are not as bad in Covid-ridden Britain as they are made out to be. In fact, the pandemic alarm is got up by the media. That will come as a huge relief to the families of the 33,186 Britons who have so far died of Covid-19 and the 230,000 people who have been infected. Clearly, to get a proper perspective on this over-hyped pandemic it needs to be viewed from offshore, preferably California. Yet not everybody has displayed a fitting gratitude to Prince Harry for his illuminating insight into the realities of Britain’s coronavirus experience. There is always one – one troublemaker who claims the emperor has no clothes.

“What are his qualifications for making these comments – other than deserting his country in its hour of need?” That was the forthright response of Professor Karol Sikora, a physician and former Number 10 adviser. “I think these remarks are outrageous. As for the media, I really don’t understand what Harry’s beef is. Journalists have been reporting the facts and have been doing great work in holding the government to account.”

Evidently Professor Sikora has been listening to the media, and has not been out and about nor on the right platforms. Otherwise he would know that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have excommunicated the British media and are even locked in legal battle against a newspaper. It follows, therefore, that anything reported by British journalists must be false, including inflated claims of a dire pandemic situation. If someone battered by Covid-19 is so self-centred as to prioritize that experience over the injured feelings of the Duchess of Sussex, is that not a perfect illustration of why the victimized couple had to depart these hostile shores?

“We are all in this together,” claimed the Sussex duo, in an original turn of phrase, when they first addressed the pandemic issue on Instagram in mid-March. “As a global community we can support each other through this process – and build a digital neighbourhood that feels safe for every one of us.” Published from North America, that phoney supportive guff has an unhappy resonance of a First World War general (“Over the top now, chaps – God, I wish I were going with you! Right, gentlemen, if the driver puts his foot down we should get back to Div HQ in time to sink a couple of pink ’uns before luncheon…”).

Of course “we” are not all in this together. The ducal pair are in a mansion within a gated community in Los Angeles, not among the Duke’s compatriots in Britain. He and his wife were ambushed by the dreaded media (who could have tipped them off?) distributing food to the needy in Los Angeles, not Liverpool.

The Duchess is reportedly anxious that the biography of the couple “Finding Freedom” – the title epitomizes the absurdity of the synthetic culture of victimhood the pair have fabricated around themselves – should be published as soon as possible. The book has allegedly been written “with the participation of those closest to the couple” (coded language, cynics will claim, for the two people closest of all). Are they so deluded as to imagine that any biography, however partisan and exculpatory it may turn out to be, could possibly cancel out their very public abandonment of Britain  during its most appalling crisis of post-War years?

It is a measure of the total lack of self-awareness of this couple that they should continue issuing online advice and commendations to the British public, in the throes of the pandemic, from 5,400 miles away. Professor Sikora’s reproach about Prince Harry “deserting his country in its hour of need” said it all. The prince has followed the path of Auden and Isherwood in 1939. It is strange conduct from a man who has served bravely in our armed forces and been trained from birth as a Prince of Great Britain.

The British public had a huge investment – institutional, emotional, even financial – in the Duke of Sussex. His departure coinciding with the onslaught of pandemic, which nonetheless did not inspire him to postpone his migration, leaves a very nasty taste. It will not be forgiven. Nobody, of any age or social class, has anything to learn from the Sussex ménage; they would be better advised to stop issuing their vapid and hypocritical communications.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are up there with Edward and Mrs Simpson, an earlier royal disaster displaying a remarkable symmetry with the current charade. We should waste no more consideration on two embarrassingly crass individuals who have repaid adulation with contempt and tried to manipulate the Monarchy, the keystone of constitutional stability, to the perceived advantage of a project of self-aggrandisement that is as insubstantial as it is pathetic. Finding freedom? Good luck with that. They will find themselves at home in Hollywood, never again in Britain.