“Woke Royals”

The Sussexes’ lack of self-awareness is at the root of their long list of failures. But how did the couple get it so wrong?

“The thing you’re escaping is the reason you’re compelling.” The killer line comes a third of the way through Vanity Fair’s 8,000-word Meghan and Harry annihilation. It’s the only line that matters, when all is said and done – and five years on, we must be nearing that moment.

The quote is attributed only to a “former Spotify employee”. Someone who was, presumably, working at the streaming platform when the couple first moved to LA in 2020 to enjoy the anonymity they would have basked in, had there been time in between all the frenzied deal-making, the celebrity shmoozing and the self-promotion.

If you want to know how far the Sussexes’ star has fallen in America, consider this. The other day, Harry and Meghan visited Pasadena in LA to offer hugs and sympathy to survivors of the wildfires. Surely even the couple’s sternest critics, you might have assumed, would give them credit for that.

Far from it. “Meghan Markle and Harry are no better than ambulance chasers,” fumed the Hollywood film-maker Justine Bateman, in a social media post that has been enthusiastically shared by thousands of other users. “What a repulsive ‘photo op’ they achieved. They are ‘touring the damage’? Are they politicians now? They don’t live [in Pasadena]; they are tourists. Disaster tourists.”

The Sussexes’ performative compassion is as unbearable as ever.

Haven’t the poor people of Los Angeles suffered enough? Imagine losing everything in the incomprehensibly devastating wildfires, only to find yourself in the background of the latest photo-op by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have lost favorability in the United States — and one royal expert believes she knows why.

“I give a lot of talks to Americans and they all dislike Harry and Meghan,” Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine and author of the royal biography “My Mother & I,” recently told The Standard.

“They hate that they let the Queen down,” Seward added.

Prince Harry’s role at mental health firm BetterUp is to ‘advocate for mental fitness’ and ‘guide the company’s social mission’.

The Duke of Sussex is also a vocal champion for its app, described as ‘life coach Tinder for millennials’, revealing that he used it to find his own ‘truly awesome’ mental health trainer when he joined in 2021 post-Megxit.

But past and present employees suggest there is much work to be done after describing the US-based business as a ‘toxic train wreck’ and ‘psychologically unsafe place to work’ where ‘everyone is uncomfortable and living in fear’.

Quite rightly, the entire population of Britain has been rolling its collective eyes at the fact that Harry and Meghan’s official Christmas card doesn’t say “Happy Christmas”. Instead, it says: “Happy Holiday Season”. For pity’s sake. A prince, an actual English prince, referring to Christmas as “the holidays”.

The use of such a phrase isn’t just toe-curling, however. In my view, it also provides a revealing insight into the Sussexes’ marriage.

An alleged Chinese spy was unmasked on Monday as the founder of the Duke of York’s money-making venture in China.

Yang Tengbo was named as the suspected foreign agent at the heart of the spy scandal after a court order giving him anonymity was lifted.

The Chinese businessman, who has mixed with figures from across the British establishment, was a founding member of Prince Andrew’s venture Pitch@Palace China.

The alleged Chinese spy with links to Prince Andrew and who made connections at the heart of the UK establishment has been named as Yang Tengbo, a businessman also known as Chris Yang.

Yang, whose identity was previously protected by an anonymity order, can be named after a judge lifted the ban on Monday afternoon.

In a statement, Yang said he had applied for the order to be lifted in order to issue a public denial about the claims made about him. He said he was not a spy and had “done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded”.

The ancient property empires that fund the King and the Prince of Wales have remained a closely guarded secret within the royal family and its small circle of advisers for centuries.

Even parliament has been denied access to the list of landholdings held by the royals.

A single future woke utterance by either should end with a trip to the Tower and hasty dispatch.

The King has severed the Duke of York’s “£1 million-a-year” allowance in recent weeks, it has emerged.

In an updated biography about the monarch, author Robert Hardman revealed that King Charles has instructed his Keeper of the Privy Purse to “sever” his brother’s living allowance.

The new chapters of Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, serialised by the Daily Mail, includes a palace insider confirming that “the Duke is no longer a financial burden on the King”.

His finest hour came in 1982 when he returned, coated in glory, from Falklands War duty with a rose between his teeth. Andymania was rife and teenagers were reported to swoon in his presence. But alas from then on it was all downhill – his service record was sufficient to promise a successful career as a naval officer, but while on secondment to the Ministry of Defence he allegedly fell foul of the admirals, towering figures who weren’t prepared to put up with his high-handed manner.

To them he was a sailor, not a prince – and if he couldn’t conform to accepted standards of behaviour there was no place for him in the service.

His life is a train wreck.

The Duchess of Sussex has been cropped from a photograph shared online by the Royal family to mark Prince Harry’s 40th birthday.

The King and the Prince of Wales took the surprising step of using their official social media profiles to send the Duke of Sussex birthday wishes on Sunday.

The Royal family account on X, formerly Twitter, posted a message that said: “Wishing The Duke of Sussex a very happy 40th birthday today!” It was accompanied by a picture of the Duke, taken during an official royal engagement in Dublin in 2018, when the Sussexes were still working members of the family.

Why Hollywood Keeps Quitting on Harry and Meghan

Looks like Harry and Meghan have done it again — they’ve chewed up yet another American adviser.

Josh Kettler, the Santa Barbara-based consultant who’d been serving as chief of staff to the Duke and Duchess, reportedly resigned in August — after just three months on the job — becoming the latest member of the ever-expanding “Sussex Survivors Club,” as some former employees have taken to calling themselves. Before Kettler, there was Toya Holness, who was their global press secretary until 2022, and Christine Weil Schirmer, the onetime Pinterest communications director who quit as Harry and Meghan’s PR head in 2021. Samantha Cohen, Markle’s top aide and private secretary, departed the same year.