Harry and Meghan what they’ll do next

[PelicanPie]

Let’s strive to keep on topic and not engage with posts designed to disrupt.

I know many people admire them for standing up for themselves and I do understand this. Their statements seem to address a lot of points they want to ensure is given as fact to avoid misreporting. They've actually put this on their website. The only problem with this is it backfires on them a bit, because when they ignore other points that have been raised, then it's more likely to be seen as fact. Because if it was misreported then surely they will continue to stand up again and correct it?

Hope that makes sense.

Oh dear, I'm really not trying to twist anything Dandy! Apologies it came across that way but I was thinking about press harassment in general. When I said I could see how she might have got on people's nerves I was more thinking about your perspective.

Ok fair enough rocking! I’m aware that some people don’t read all the posts and I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong view of mine from reading yours.

Definitely agree with a lot of what SF1269, Needthechat and others are saying too.

This would be great It would mean these stupendously lovely and historic assets could be enjoyed by more than just one family.

All in favour of more openness and fairness.

Hearing about Blair's costs made my eyes water as well.

I suspect that they'll keep protection for the transition period and then they will be required to fund their own.

Me too. And I think they'll remove it from Andrew at the same time so it's seen to be fair.

Sorry, I meant if H&M don't want to be part of the RF anymore for all the reasons they have said, then why does H want to stay in the line of succession? Surely, he should just walk away properly?

Well we know that HaM think they deserve taxpayer funded protection as their statement included THEY (I.e. both of them) were internationally protected people and will always be royal or thought of as royal

And mentioned H's line in succession to the throne.

It's this type of audacity that astound me. The entitlement.

I agree a lot with the posts questioning payment source of any protection any people feel they need

Why on earth should Canada have been expected to fund the massive cost of their security, anyway, particularly when they are just using them for a stopover?

It's this type of audacity that astound me. The entitlement.

Exactly. They should fund it themselves or slink back to the UK and have it provided in the normal way. That would mean no gas guzzling flights back and fore across the Atlantic, of course.

The inconsistencies are laughable. I don’t want to be a front line Royal but yeah I want to keep my place in the line of succession. Pfft

Would it be morally right for Harry to relinquish Archie's claim to the throne? If something happened to the Cambridges, by rights it would then pass to Andrew and then Beatrice if H & A stepped down.

I have wondered if that's why the Duke and Duchess of Windsor didn't have children. "So sorry, darlings, all that fabulous wealth could have been yours...."

I think if ex-PM's get lifelong security even when they are no longer working for the country then I'm not opposed to doing the same for ex-royal. Harry has done more service for the country in his lifetime than a PM I would imagine.

So it is interesting to see Blair's costs. It did cross my mind if an ex-PM decided they wanted to live in North America, would we be expected to pick up the costs.

But it doesn't seem to work like that for the RF.
The sticking point seems to be position in the line of succession. should it be based on what your highest posting has ever been or what it currently is. So Harry has been 3rd but now 6th. Andrew has been 4th but now 8th. Beatrice was 5th now 9th. It seems the precedent is as they've moved down the line of succession/stepped back from duties then the public funding for security has been removed?
Andrew is still the brother of a future King in the same way as a Harry is. So not sure that argument stands currently.

Just to add I'm not sure on my thoughts for lifelong security for ex-PMs. Just that if they get it then I think the same rule should apply to royals. But there should at least be limits and I wonder if there are any for ex-PMs

It’s a huge mess and I feel for the queen.

I used to feel for the Queen, and I have a lot of respect for her any 90 year old woman who gets up, puts on an outfit and a hat and travels 300 miles to visit victims of a bombing gets extraordinary admiration from me but I'm now starting to suspect a lot of this problem with H&M might have actually been caused by the Queen in the first place.

I think a lot of the problem goes back to Andrew, and the way the Queen has fudged the role issues surrounding members of her family that slowly fall down the line of succession (Margaret, then Andrew, now Harry). And what indeed the line of succession actually means in real, practical terms.

I mean, lets face it ... there's no guarantee that William will actually be King. Charles is likely to become King in the next ten years, but you never know. Fate is strange that way.

So the only thing that marks these people as important is that they undertake duties on behalf of the Queen, that they act as the Queen in certain situations, that they are "working royals". But if we are going to go with that, then we have to consider that "the Monarchy" is actually not just one person, but more like eight: a titular head (the Queen) and the working senior royals.

And I'm fine with that, and I'm fine with those people being referred to as "Royalty". But within that, everyone of those eight people has to behave like the Monarch and undertake monarchical duties. And this is where it falls down with H&M, as it fell down with Andrew and Margaret.

And I suspect this is because the Queen doesn't actually want that definition of Monarchy to be the case. I suspect she wants it to mean her family regardless of what they do or don't do; how they behave or do not behave because she has taken an oath to God to undertake a role she did not particularly want to do.

I'm starting to get the feeling that we've been manipulated into accepting a very anachronistic model of royalty, monarchy and entitled privilege that benefits the Royal Family more than the country, and this has been done by virtue of the "duty and service" model that Queen has developed. That model has covered up what appear to be very entitled attitudes within parts of the royal family, which may very well come from the Queen herself.

So when we see some of this entitlement, as with Harry, this is why it's all WTF?! Because for ordianry people, it just seems unbelievably entitled bonkersness.

After all, the protocol surrounding Prime Ministers and their weekly audience with the Queen is very inappropriate in this age. One asks just exactly why a female PM should curtsey to the Queen and PMs should not speak unless spoken to and be dismissed by the sound of a bell. I mean, come on.

Actually given we know who is paying for the security of other members of the Royal family (public or private) then I don't see why it needs to be kept a secret for H&M on the basis of they don't want us to know safety reasons

Would it be morally right for Harry to relinquish Archie's claim to the throne?

Harry doesn't have the legal authority to renounce Archie's claim. Only Parliament can remove him from the line. Archie can do so himself by renouncing when he has legal capacity or by becoming a Roman Catholic.

Rainbow I think you've found an important distinction there - if arrangements are decided based on service so far, like with a PM or whether it should be current role and likely future service. Probably Harry would like it to be the first option, and he has been 'in' since childhood but I can see the case on both sides. I really hope this leads to better planning for the next generation, even if there isn't a wider overhaul.

Packing Yes, that's so well put. It's highlighted a lot of problems with the monarchy and entitlement.

I think if ex-PM's get lifelong security even when they are no longer working for the country then I'm not opposed to doing the same for ex-royal.

I think the argument for Blair's extended protection is that there is a real and credible threat to his life because of the Iraq War in a way there just isn't for, say, John Major.

What, again, is interesting here is that the US now funds lifetime secret service protection for all former presidents, their wives and any children under 16. But it didn't always. Obama brought that back after it had been junked in 1994, and rather a few congresspeople had an issue with it because they felt the financial opportunities open to a former president meant they should be able to afford their own security details.

Now a former US president is a very different kettle of fish to someone like Harry in terms of past political and diplomatic power. But even then, some US politicians had an issue with lifelong, taxpayer-funded protection for past presidents.

To me, all of this casts a very intriguing light on the terms of the British debate over Harry and Megan's protection. The idea of it wouldn't even be entertained in other countries, even with significant political dynasties where actual members in presidential positions had been shot and killed. No one argued that JFK Junior should get lifelong secret service protection by virtue of his role as JFK's son and his profile as a son of Camelot.

I think that's the issue rockingchaircandle - Britons learn British history at school, we grow up in a culture where we have a monarchy which is both traditional and plays a big part on the diplomatic and financial life of the citizens. It was a trade off - we pay for you and you provide the diplomatic duties and boring pressing the flesh of people we (our Government at least) want to keep sweet.

The media has an unhealthy fascination with the celebrity of royalty. Only since Princess Diana has being royal suddenly become glamorous in this way. Before this you had royal correspondents and style correspondents talking about what the royal family are doing and what they are wearing but not in the same way at all.

As others have said, there appears to have been a blurring of the role of the royal family in the past 30 years and it's not a healthy dynamic on either side. I'm all for a discussion in Parliament on the future of the monarchy post QE2 and it's terms and conditions of service. It's a job ultimately and if you are not doing the job you should not be paid for it or have the perks associated with it.

It would seem like the perfect time to formally re-define what the monarchy should be, given the Prince Andrew scandal and the fact that H&M appear to want the Royal family to become a brand akin to the Kardashians (overstatement for effect).

(I thought MNHQ had brought down the ban hammer as it's taken ages to post on this thread, but apparently there was a brief site outage - phew!)

there a new post on blind gossip (sorry haven't managed to catch up on whole thread so might already have been mentions) which basically say that now UK and Canada have refused to pay for their security They are going to ask the US but as Megan has been very vocal in the past about her hatred for trump and snubbed a dinner he was attending while she was a working royal its not likely!!

My take is that if they want to be independent and make their millions to be on a par with oprah and beyonce etc and be free to party and take endorsement deals etc then they need to also take on the bad parts of that which is pay for their own security etc

Rockingchair: I think one of the problems around the security issue is that it's so tied to people's opinions of the couple as people.

I personally don't feel anything about them as personalities, negative or positive, they are unknown to me except as media figures and I think that one of the things which has gone wrong in this whole affair is the shift in status of royals to 'personalities', which they are not required to be in fulfilling duties to the state. What 'Harry and Meghan' are trying to do is survive as media personalities in an entirely different sphere (different purpose and function) to that in which the British royal family needs to operate. Trying to get people to 'like them' more, in the illusory way we 'like' celebrities is just compounding the problem.

I believe the security issue is separate from the problem of the status of the couple, and I think the British state owes them a duty of protection because the British state requires there to be a royal family, of which the couple are a result. If the monarchy were abolished, the state would owe all former members a similar duty in my view.

It isn't up to the members of the royal family to 'modernise' the institution, it's up to the U.K. state - the government generally keeps out of the public conversation because the royals are the state's public face but it's really the government / the people who would ultimately decide. It can't be done as part of a breakaway indie royalty.

I think the only way this can go without more social and political damage (not to mention the welfare of the actual people in these roles) is that 'Harry and Meghan' become ex-royals. They could then become 'personalities' I suppose although I don't think that's the road to good mental health, or they could be financed to live a private life from the state funds allocated to the royal family. Ironically, I think them not being royal is the main route to help from the U.K. state.

I do think the emotional dramatisation and personalisation of the royals has fuelled the unhappy idea that Meghan Markle has been rejected by Britons because she is mixed race. I personally don't believe this is the simple driver of the public reaction to this situation, I think that it is the setting up as independent-celebrities-but-still-royal which is the core problem, and it's impossible to separate that out from personal comments about the couple now. But racism, sexism and all sorts of prejudices aimed at individuals will thrive when people are exposed in global media soap operas in this way - it's a shame they were ever exposed to that because it's uncontrollable.

After all, the protocol surrounding Prime Ministers and their weekly audience with the Queen is very inappropriate in this age. One asks just exactly why a female PM should curtsey to the Queen and PMs should not speak unless spoken to and be dismissed by the sound of a bell. I mean, come on. I like this just fine.

So I think it’s like Packing says-

Some in the RF seem to subscribe to the ‘inherited by divine right’ view of royalty. At one end of the spectrum of interpretation that means that royal life can be lived just as the lucky inheritor sees fit, and that royal status and the public support (popularity and financial support) is inherent to any royal born individual and can never be lost, even if they are not doing royal work by their own preference.

Then on the other hand the HMQ view of royalty for the rest of the working RF seems to be that it is as more like a job, with some T&Cs and a job description imposing some boundaries on that job. We have this invisible ‘job description’ in the back of our minds as subjects when we think about the royals. This JD would (for me) not include any individual deciding not to be a working royal but then setting up their own businesses using a royal title, with taxpayer funded support, etc.

HMQ knows she needs tacit public consent in exchange for the support the RF gets from us and our continued consent for them to represent us. I don’t think H&M are old enough to have seen the hairy times for the RF like she has, where public opinion (like when Diana died) was very much against the RF.

However HMQ gives herself much higher expectations for her own personal service to the crown and to the people, because she sees her own monarch role as a lifelong vocation rather than a job. So elements of duty by divine right in there too for her I think. This is other end of the interpretation spectrum to the (literally) entitled ‘to do whatever I want’ end.

So for example:
-Prince Philip who has now retired from working life
-Andrew- should be ‘suspended’ while the accusations are properly investigated and then ‘sacked’ on the spot for gross misconduct if he is found guilty.

• people who resign from the job like Harry, shouldn’t then get the same level of job pay and benefits funded by the taxpayer to working royals, and certainly not after leaving at a higher level than when he was there. He certainly shouldn’t be reappointed without open competition as CEO after potentially years out of the industry, if the CEO post becomes vacant.

-the queen’s view of herself as monarch as her lifelong vocation, is partly why many people respect her so much. But also there could be limitations for us of that view, if she gets less able to do her job physically or mentally in time. then there may be tensions about this, we may one day want her to retire before she feels ready. but let’s see how it pans out, she is a sensible person and has no doubt been thinking her options through for years.

Harry will still need security whether he is Harry Mountbatten Windsor or Harry HRH /Duke /etc . Stii the Queen's grandson and brother of the next King

Why?
The Phillips children don’t have security
The York girls have limited security, and are titled HRHs.

Harry is just another grandchild