We have been informed over the last few days that apparently newlywed Prince Harry and his American bride Meghan Markle are unhappy with their current life performing charitable works inside the Royal Family and wish to step outside its perimeter and move to become financially independent over the coming years.
Not to forget the couple were offered a house within the Kensington Palace compound, Nottingham Lodge, which they turned down for being too small. They were then offered accommodation within the Windsor estate, where six dwellings were knocked into one to provide Frogmore Cottage, renovated at a cost of £2.4 million paid for by the Queen dipping into the controversial Sovereign Grant, from which they already received money, along with the £2.3 million Charles gives his son annually from his Duchy of Cornwall revenue.
In the statement issued today by Her Majesty the Queen we are told she fully supports the couple's choice and will attempt to smooth over the transition where they will spend part of the year in Canada as well as maintaining their taxpayer-funded residence in the UK. How this will work in practice with Harry having no friends in Canada whatsoever has not been explained. The Queen, it seems to me, has been frightened by the spectre of the Diana saga and the concomitant crowd pressure it generated whereby the very existence of the Monarchy came into doubt in 1997, and has caved in to all the couple's demands. Make no mistake: the shroud of Diana looms over this statement and as such it is shoddy, specious, and in the long run will do the Monarchy as a whole more harm than good.