What do Harry and Meghan stand
for these days? That is the question I ask myself as the Sussexes gallop hither
and thither across America, cherry-picking good causes, tragic incidents, or
graveyards upon which to lavish their concern.
They spare no one, not even
themselves when they offer comfort to all. Sometimes with a camera crew in tow
to capture every last glutinous drop of Sussexian compassion, sometimes not.
Yet from the school shooting
in Texas to the abortion debate to the war in Ukraine, nothing
escapes their attention.
You can depend on this self-styled royals-in-exile to turn up, perhaps even uninvited, but always
mustard keen to be seen applying their dripping poultice of paternalistic
sympathy onto society’s wounds.
Meghan and Harry, please
exactly describe your brand of modern compassion, I hear you all cry. And they
oblige on their Archewell website, explaining that ‘compassion means listening
with open ears to the suffering of communities’.
And then to channel their
troubles and woes ‘into action for those who need it the most’. Unless they
happen to be members of their own staff, of course.
For now, we learn that a
long-awaited report into how allegations of staff bullying by the Duchess of
Sussex were handled by Palace officials — and what, if any, changes to working
practices were made — will never be published. What?
No comment, nothing to see
here. Please move along quietly as frantic courtiers beat the retreat on the
royal drums of discretion.
Fearing heightened tensions
between the Sussexes and The Firm — or future damaging revelations from the
eternally peeved pair — the findings will never be made public.
Instead, the report will be
sealed inside a lead-lined casket, tied to a ten-ton gargoyle and hurled into
the depths of the Buckingham Palace lake.
Really? What a slap in the
face for those employees who risked personal and reputational damage by
speaking out about the Duchess’s alleged bullying in the first place. How must
they feel, realizing that they are merely collateral damage in a much bigger
war?
The Palace should be ashamed
of themselves. A few years ago, a number of royal staff members believed they
were targeted, bullied and persecuted by the Duchess of Sussex when she was a
working royal. It was said that she left staff in tears and drove two
assistants out of their jobs — although her lawyers claimed this was untrue and
that Meghan was the victim of an ‘orchestrated smear campaign’.
The problem is that now no one
is willing to have a tootle on the trumpet of truth.
So we will never know what
really happened — which suits the Sussexes just fine.
For now, it is becoming clear
that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are officially bombproofs. The sinking of
this report suggests that the Palace are terrified of them and that no one can
dare criticize them, else they will be accused of racism, sexism, colonialism
or of bullying a poor, motherless son who never got over himself and never
will.
It just makes things worse.
For in the end, the smears — on both sides — only get bigger and bigger, an oil
slick of obfuscation and mystery that drags everyone into its greasy maw.
This week, some demented
Meghanites are even suggesting that the report named the Duchess of Cambridge
as the bully in residence and not the sainted Meghan. And that is the reason
why it has been hushed up.
