How damaging are the revelations in the Meghan and Harry interview this week?
Meghan Markle’s claim in her interview with Oprah Winfrey on Sunday that she was refused help when she was suicidal reinforces the royal family’s image as cold and unfeeling and calls into question their public expressions of concern about mental health. But it is the allegation of racism, that a member of the family expressed concern about how dark her unborn son’s skin would be, that is most damaging.
The British monarchy has no real constitutional or political power but the queen plays an important role as what Buckingham Palace calls “head of nation”. She can act as a focus for a shared sense of identity in a multinational state, embody a sense of stability and continuity, and unite the country at moments of national crisis.
The accusation of racism undermines the royal family’s legitimacy as a symbol of national unity in a multiracial, multicultural society.
Can the family survive the latest allegations?
The queen certainly can but at 94 she is entering the final years of her reign. Her death was always likely to trigger a debate about the succession because Prince Charles is less popular and his ambition that his wife Camilla should become queen remains controversial.
Prince Andrew’s association with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has driven him out of public view, while American lawyers continue to demand that he answer questions about what he knew of Epstein’s behaviour.
Harry and Meghan’s revelations, and particularly the charge of racism, have divided the British public along generational lines, with young people backing the couple while the over-50s take the side of the royal family.
A YouGov poll last October showed two out of three British people wanted to keep the monarchy but 41 per cent said Prince William should succeed the queen, compared with 37 per cent who wanted Charles to do so.
What will the family do now?
After Princess Diana’s death in 1997, when much of the British public turned against the royal family, there was still plenty of time to turn opinion around while the queen was still on the throne. Over the next few years, Charles rehabilitated his image and Diana’s memory faded to the point that he was able to marry Camilla in 2005 without causing too much public outrage.
This time is different, because of the queen’s age but also on account of the faster pace of news and opinion introduced by social media. The royal family will hope that the reverberations from Harry and Meghan’s interview fade as the weeks pass, but they will have to be proactive in countering the charge of racism.
Much of the burden of damage limitation will fall to William and his wife Catherine, who are popular even among the young. Although the couple are conservative in style, they are more at ease than older royals in discussing issues such as mental health, and few would suspect them of being racists.
The palace has darker materials at its disposal too, and while Meghan’s allegations against the royal family will be dealt with in private, the outcome of an investigation into accusations of bullying against her is likely to become public, just as the accusations themselves did ahead of the interview with Oprah Winfrey.
What will Harry and Meghan do?
The couple have lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify and if they are successful they could enjoy a successful career as producers in Hollywood. If that does not work out, they are doomed to walk the dismal path of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, hawking their personal stories to a dwindling audience in an effort to maintain their expensive lifestyle.
