Ayear after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped back from their royal duties and embarked on a life outside the United Kingdom, the couple sat for an interview with Oprah Winfrey. The result was two hours of television in which Meghan Markle and her husband, Harry, chronicled the alienating treatment they faced inside the British monarchy. Markle said that she reported feeling that she “didn’t want to be alive anymore,” but that she was denied access to mental health care. She also described racist and discriminatory behaviors within the royal institution. During her first pregnancy, at least one member of the Royal Family expressed concerns about what color her son’s skin would be. Around the same time, Markle said, the Family discussed changing a rule so that her son would never become a prince, a title which would have entitled him to security protection.
A statement from Buckingham Palace said that the Royal Family was “saddened” to hear of the couple’s difficulties, and that “the issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning.” The incident recalls an earlier public-relations crisis for the monarchy, when Princess Diana talked publicly about her mistreatment by the royals during her marriage to Prince Charles.
Harry and Meghan’s interview was met with anger by many in the United Kingdom, particularly the tabloid press, which has long been hostile to Markle. The conservative broadcaster Piers Morgan said on air that he disbelieved Markle, walked off the set of his show in response to criticism, and resigned later that day. I recently spoke about the controversy with Anthony Barnett, the founding editor-in-chief of openDemocracy, a liberal politics Web site, and the inaugural director of Charter 88, a British advocacy group that pushed for a new constitutional settlement, including a bill of rights. He has written and edited several books about British politics, including “The Power and the Throne: Monarchy Debate” and, most recently, “The Lure of Greatness: England’s Brexit and America’s Trump.” During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the differences between this controversy and the one involving Diana, the way the monarchy uses the tabloid press to maintain its legitimacy, and why a conflict in the royal family is evidence of a country in crisis.
Is there something different or new about this scandal in comparison with other royal scandals?
I think what’s special about this episode is that it is a human allegory for Brexit, in that Brexit was the equivalent of a supernova. Great Britain emitted this great pulse of angry democratic energy. And it is now collapsing into a black hole, with all kinds of strange gravitational pulls, as you can see in Scotland. A million people, partly due to covid-19, have left the United Kingdom over the past year or so. Meghan and Harry are part of that million people, and they represent—as they argued in the interview—a form of multiracial modernization that the monarchy turned down. So you have this sense of imploding self-belief taking place in Britain that is becoming more intense and more angry, but it is closing in on itself. This is a country that used to be more expansive. So, in that sense, the context for this is different.
There is another difference. This is the Crown after “The Crown.” It is reinforcing the sense of the royals as being a peculiar family. The monarchy was something which you didn’t let light in on.
This is the old Walter Bagehot quote: “We must not let in daylight upon magic”?
Yes, exactly. The more they are normalized, the less they can become the substitute of the constitution. They are the representatives of the nation. So that fundamental aspect of the British state—its undoing is accelerated.
The Brexit analogy is very interesting, in part because you described it as having angry, democratic energy. Aligning the monarchy with forces of tradition or reaction makes sense, but you are describing Brexit a little differently.
Brexit was driven by the English, not the Welsh or the Scots or the Northern Irish, and a whole set of what I call “England without London,” who just said, “We have had enough.” They were quite justified in saying that they had had enough, but, of course, what was going wrong wasn’t caused by Europe. The slogan of Brexit was “take back control.” That is a democratic slogan and a constitutional one in a country that doesn’t have a codified constitution and doesn’t talk about one. There was a sense of rage, of saying “we want to govern ourselves,” which was directed against the way austerity was being imposed, extreme economic inequality, the rise of insecurity, a rise in immigration, and then the government turning around and saying that they couldn’t do anything about it. There was a democratic impulse, but it was exploited by a narrow and reactionary grouping—British nationalism. And that won’t work. The thing is that Brexit won’t work. That’s why the supernova is important as an analogy. It emits this enormous pulse of energy and then the star collapses.
And what Harry and Meghan did, within the Royal Family, was that they were offering not a democratic modernization, but one with celebrity culture and outreach. They were saying, “We are really good for the Royal Family.”
People have been making comparisons to Diana, how she went public with her complaints about the Royal Family. Some said that she represented a more modern and less hidebound United Kingdom. What do you think about that comparison?
There are different things going on here. One is that Meghan said quite early in the interview that she was used to celebrity, but that this wasn’t celebrity. In his great book on the monarchy, “The Enchanted Glass,” Tom Nairn makes the argument that it is quite wrong to see the royals only as celebrities. This is an institution of ongoing power and the embodiment of the state, and, therefore, while it exists within celebrity culture, and seeks consent through the press, it’s not entertainment. It is not part of the entertainment industry.
Diana confronted this in a different way, with an appalling marriage she had to break out of. So, in one sense, she was a modernizing figure. But, in another sense, she was not. In one of her interviews, she said she did not believe in monarchists “riding round bicycles.” She explicitly said she is not in favor of what I would regard as a democratic modernization of the monarchy. So, although she was a modern figure, her basic pitch was ultratraditional. The curing touch, almost. I don’t think Harry and Meghan are part of that. His voice is remarkably modern. He doesn’t have the stuffy, patronizing tones that you get in the traditional British upper class. He has a much more modern, military voice.
The critique that has been lodged against Harry and Meghan, and that was lodged against Diana, is that, when it comes to press and attention, they want to have their cake and eat it too—even if cake is the wrong metaphor for royals. Do you see similarities?
I thought it was very striking that Harry talked about an invisible contract between the tabloid press and the Royal Family. This is a very revealing remark about the Royal Family’s precariousness and vulnerability in how they see their power. They personally embody the state and the regime.
So Diana broke out of a confining, almost religious cult. Now, the problem they have is this: in a more democratic age, when you don’t have an empire with all those symbols to call on, or a gentlemanly civil service and military culture to reinforce consent, you have a problem, and the problem is, What is your role? If you had a democratic constitution, the monarch would have sworn an oath to the constitution, and there would be something they would defend. But they are the constitution. All the supports were falling away from them, so they relied on the press for support. And this relationship was a crucial part of the way they existed.
And, when [Prince Charles and Diana’s] marriage collapsed, the two sides started to leak very revealing material to the tabloid press, run particularly by Rupert Murdoch, who has absolutely no time for the Royal Family at all. So they found themselves in this odd position of being dependent upon this dark power, itself organized by a proprietor who is a republican. And I think what Harry said about them being trapped in this relationship is probably an accurate one. The Society of Editors got their chief functionary to say there is absolutely nothing bigoted or racist about the British press. [Laughs.] More than a hundred and sixty journalists signed a letter saying, you must be joking. One of the issues people have raised is that Diana was a master of using the tabloids. She complained about them, but she was a master of using them. [Meghan and Harry] are trying to call time on that relationship, and the press—the Mail, the Sun, and so on—are furious that they have been attacked, because this is part of the way they sell papers.
So you are saying Harry and Meghan want to use publicity for their own ends, as most people do, but not through tabloids?
They would like to use publicity, but celebrities use publicity by trying to control it. What they found was that the tabloids were playing to the prurient, racist parts of their readership and publishing lies, and nobody was stopping them. In Harry’s view, the family was too frightened to take them on. So what you are looking at is not just a normal spat between a celebrity and a bad story. What you are looking at is a deep relationship of British power and also a sign of a country in breakdown.
Murdoch is a republican, but he knows this stuff sells, so he is happy to fill his paper with it?
Yeah. You will find a book about Murdoch by William Shawcross. He asks Murdoch about his republicanism, and his answer is more or less, “If you are so foolish, if you want to be weak, that is fine by me.” [When asked about ending the monarchy, Murdoch said, “I'm ambivalent about that. I think you’d have to say no, because I don’t think the country has the self-confidence to live without it.”] He is not going to bring the monarchy down, because he can always have a shout against élitism and sell newspapers, or say “what a wonderful baby” and sell newspapers. He is perfectly happy with it.
I am reminded of the Nietzsche quote, “Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.”
Well, by all means, if you want to put that into your question, do.
It’s striking, when looking back over the 20th century, to see how many royal scandals and troubles involved marriages, from Edward VIII in the nineteen-thirties to the Queen and her sister in the fifties, Diana, to this. Why do you think that is? Is monarchy incapable of being integrated with human lives and emotions?
The monarchy has to reproduce itself, as a family. And this family is trying to reproduce the state, and therefore questions of who comes in and who goes out have a different significance, and therefore they can’t be simply treated as minor. They are all matters of state. William is married to Kate, who is a commoner, and the question is whether she is the “right” kind of commoner. But, of course, what she has managed to do as a public-school-trained person is that she is more royal than the royals. She absolutely down-the-line behaves like a royal.
But they are not matters of state in an instrumental fashion. It is particular and a quite difficult thing to put into words. If you are in the United States, everyone is familiar that you make an oath to the Constitution, which is bigger than yourself and bigger than everybody. In this country, the Royal Family is the constitution. The more democratic the society, the more difficult for the sovereign. How can this person represent democracy? Monarchs are not accountable to the people. And the interim solution to this was this pact which became a prison, with the tabloid press, who presented themselves as the voice of the people. And, once that starts to break down, you are in trouble.
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