Daily Mail, Thursday, August 1, 2019 Page 21
We oldies
may be left
bemused, but
Meghan has
millennials
on her side
A
n analysis of the
Royal Family’s remark-
able success in modern
times — barring the
occasional hiccough
— might run as follows.
at the top sits the Queen. she is a
great unifying figure. One of the
reasons she can bring almost
the whole nation together is that
she has striven all her life not to
offend any part of it.
indeed, we don’t know — though we
may guess — what she thinks about
almost anything. admittedly there
are a few subjects, such as her pas-
sion for the Commonwealth, about
which she has made herself plain, but
these are unlikely to be controversial
or divisive.
she symbolises the nation, and
stands for all of us except a few
unpersuadable and curmudgeonly
diehard Republicans. it is quite an
achievement.
Meanwhile, other members of the
Royal Family have identified them-
selves with particular causes or
groups. One associates Princess anne
with scotland, and the Duke of
Edinburgh with the testing and
improving scheme that bears his
name. also with the odd risqué joke.
Prince Charles has championed
environmentalism, and terrified us
over global warming. He has also
attacked modern architecture with
gusto. Unquestionably he splits his
audience. On the other hand, one can
disagree with him about one issue
while cheering him on over another.
as for Prince andrew, he has
upheld the interests of business. if
he ruffled a few feathers in the
process, this was not so much on
account of the cause he embraced as
the one or two shifty characters withStephen Glover
whom he rubbed shoulders.M
Ost of the Royal
Family, including
the Queen, are
happy to encour-
age showbiz and almost all
varieties of sport, which goes
to show that they identify with
the People’s pastimes. their
support for countless charities
also confirms that their hearts
are in the right place.
i suppose that a royal
strategist looking ahead
several decades might reflect
that there is one group which
has not been properly catered
for. i mean the millennials, and
the subsequent cohort,
Generation Z. let’s just say
anyone under 35.
if the monarchy is to survive
and prosper, which is its central
and enduring aim, it must win
the support of the younger
generation who do not neces-
sarily share the interests of all
the Royals, though Prince
Charles’s obsession with global
warming doubtless plays well
with them.
and so we come to the Duke
and Duchess of sussex — Harry
and Meghan.
i admit that whenever either
of them opens their mouth
these days, i am apt to be
apoplectic — and i don’t expect
i am alone. a few months ago,
i blew a gasket after Prince
Harry flattered a young audi-
ence with a lot of hippy non-
sense while taking gratuitous
swipes at the media.
He told them they were ‘the
most engaged generation in
history’ who ‘care about values
[and] doing the right thing’. in
contrast to those who have
gone before, they were
‘progressive, open-minded
change-makers’. Unlike, say,those silly fuddy-duddies who
fought for their country.
the latest contribution from
the Harry-Meghan double act
is her guest-editing of the
september issue of Vogue, and
his suggestion in an article in
the magazine that many of us
are racist without knowing it.
a contentious charge — and
perhaps an over-judgmental
one from a young man who,
while at sandhurst, had to
apologise publicly after being
caught on video using two
highly offensive racial slurs
when referring to ethnic
minority comrades.
nor was i much bucked by
his disclosing that he and his
wife will limit themselves to
two children. the birth-rate in
some developed countries is so
low (1.33 children per woman
in italy, 1.11 in south Korea)
that indigenous populations
are likely to dwindle at an
alarming rate.
Unless we can envisage a
world without italians or south
Koreans, or for that matter
without Germans or Japanese,
people in these countries had
better start breeding faster.
two children per couple is the
bare minimum, not the
maximum, to keep the show
on the road.
suffice to say, much of
what Harry says in his piece,
and a great deal of what
Meghan has put in her
magazine, irritates me.
But that is not necessarily
the point. Millions — perhaps
tens of millions — of people
probably share my views (or
prejudices) but relatively few
of them are millennials.
When i look at Meghan’s
Vogue front cover, and see theface of salma Hayek Pinault, a
Hollywood star married to a
French billionaire business-
man whose luxury goods
companies are some of
Vogue’s chief advertisers, i
wonder why she deserves to be
put on a pedestal.
However, i can imagine that
many young people will regard
Hayek Pinault and the other
‘change-makers’ in a more
positive light and will
probably warm to Meghan for
extolling them.J
Ust as millions of the
couple’s instagram
followers will have
been touched after
Meghan recently penned
motivational messages such
as ‘you are brave’ and ‘you are
loved’ on bananas in food
packages to be given
to prostitutes.
Perhaps i am being rather
rude to the young. lots of
millennials will doubtless be
thrilled to see the faces on the
front cover of Vogue of Meghan’s
‘trail-blazing change-makers’.
But, equally, i am sure some
won’t be dazzled by these
usually mega-rich, often
divisive, radical women whom
the Duchess admires, and upon
whom the future of our civilisa-
tion apparently depends.
and i wonder whether some
young people may not be trou-
bled by the reflection that,
however progressive and right-
on Meghan may seem, she is a
very wealthy and privileged
woman whose issue of Vogue
recommends several exorbi-
tantly priced products.
But i concede that the 37-year-old, hip, Californian-
born, former tV star is on the
same wavelength as many
millennials, and that she
could be as popular with them
as she may be becoming
unloved in bowls clubs, the
members’ pavilion at lords,
and the snug bar of the Dog
and Duck.
in other words, if there is
indeed a royal brainbox
plotting the future of the
monarchy, he or she may be
quite pleased with Meghan
and Harry for connecting
with their target audience
so effectively.
yet it seems to me that such
a person — or perhaps someone
of greater royal authority —
should issue a health warning.
the main danger is not, as
some commentators have
suggested, being political. it
is the risk of being divisive
and sectional.
Prince Charles has been
political for most of his adult
life, and he has doubtless
sometimes alienated a lot of
people, including me on
several occasions. But he has
never, i think, set himself to
leave a whole generation a
little bewildered.
By all means, let Harry and
Meghan cultivate those whose
future backing the monarchy
will need. let them nurture
those in whose minds the
Royal Family may seem distant
and old-fashioned.
But they need to take care —
and those who i hope are super-
vising them would be equally
wise to ensure — that their
proselytising does not offend
the millions of non-millennials
upon whose support the
monarchy also depends.sHE is patron of
Gibraltar’s literary
Festival, but Princess
anne’s invitation to the
event in november might test Boris
Johnson’s bulldog spirit against the
spanish, who threaten retaliation if she
accepts. Her 2016 visit was scuppered
by the Brexit referendum. the
Gibraltarians desperately want her to
reinforce their Britishness. How will the
spanish react? their royals were banned
from Charles and Diana’s wedding
because the couple chose to begin their
honeymoon on the Rock. and Edward
and sophie’s 2012 visit prompted Madrid
to veto Queen sofia’s attendance at the
Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.DIEHARD Labourite rocker Mick Hucknall
describes Jeremy Corbyn as ‘spineless
and cowardly’, adding: ‘I could never
back Corbyn – he’s not fit to lead this
country. And the same goes for John
McDonnell and Diane Abbott.’ Can the
Simply Red warbler be henceforth
described as ‘Simply’?anDREW neil, who grilled both tory
leadership hopefuls, reveals: ‘i read that
my interviews with Messrs Hunt and
Johnson generated 179 complaints to the
BBC alleging bias against one, or other,
or both.’ He adds: ‘i can understand that.
My approach, broadly, is to be biased
against whoever i’m interviewing.’JOHN Cleese’s come-
dian daughter Camilla,
35, pictured, mischie-
vously claims to have
learnt the facts of life
from a comedy sex
scene in her father’s
1983 Monty Python
film The Meaning
of Life, explaining:
‘That’s how I learnt
about sex – no birds
and bees talk.’BOOstERisM, Boris Johnson’s
description of his optimistic economic
policies, as revealed by the Mail,
originates in remote Duluth in Minnesota
where investment was sought for a new
railway with far-fetched claims. it
described itself as ‘a place of untold
delights, a terrestrial paradise, fanned by
the balmy zephyrs of an eternal spring,
with mines of gold, immeasurable veins of
silver’. Boris could have penned that!AWAITING heart surgery, Sir Michael Palin
is already planning a post-op excursion on
the Greater Anglian locomotive named in
his honour, explaining: ‘I have travelled on
the Delia Smith. So I can say that I have sat
on Delia Smith all the way to Lowestoft.’DisCUssinG snacks for ascot, the
Queen confides to a flunkey her love for
taramasalata, the Greek dish of cod’s roe.
Does her Hellenic-born husband Philip
share her passion? He was banished from
Greece as a child.COUNTRYFILE presenter John Craven’s long
career got off to a false start. ‘At 18 I’d been
“spotted” by an ITV youth programme
because I ran our church magazine,’ he
says. ‘But after only a few appearances I
was sacked – because I was too old!’Ephraim
Hardcastle
Email: [email protected]