Meghan Markle and the Dim Prince of Bel-Air have told us to vote. They have told us who to vote for too. Noblesse oblige, and all that.
It is generous of these ducal Democrats to save us, their digital peasants, from having to think for ourselves. We can now get back to tilling the soil, planting the turnips and milking the dog, or whatever it is that they have in mind for us in the coming neo-feudal order.
A ‘close friend’ of Markle has told Vanity Fair that the Duchess of Malibu retained her American citizenship when she married Prince Harry, as she wanted to retain ‘the option to go into politics’. This is curious, as she entered politics the day she married Harry.
Incredible as it sounds, the royals are part of the constitutional order in Britain. History is replete with hilarious examples that being thick as a brick is no obstacle to the discharge of royal duties, though it might lose you America.
The people of Meghan and Harry’s damp little kingdom took them to their hearts, but Meghan and Harry have dumped them. The British now dislike her intensely, and are now only mildly interested as to if and when Harry might emerge from his delirium, stop posting hostage videos from Hollywood and beg his grandmother’s forgiveness with a view to returning to Britain and getting back to his duties of visiting hospitals, opening supermarkets and falling out of nightclubs.
Meghan and Harry have lost Britain in the hope of winning America. ‘I think if Meghan and Harry ever gave up their titles, she would seriously consider running for president,’ said Meghan’s ‘close friend’, who might possibly be close and friendly with the Sunshine Sachs PR firm.
I don’t expect they’ll surrender their titles voluntarily. They’re the golden thread of the Meghan and Harry franchise, the touch of class that ennobles, their best shot at avoiding a fate worse than an afternoon slot on QVC. But it might be time for a family intervention.
The Queen should request the British government to disinvest the couple of their titles, their pretensions and any monogrammed towels and slippers they may have lifted from the palaces of their ex-family. The Count and Countess of Cringe would then be free to say and do as they like. The British public will be shot of them. And the American public can, in its instinctually democratic way, vote them up or down.
If Meghan Markle does not run for president soon — Vanity Fair mentions 2024 — then someone like Meghan Markle will, sooner or later. The drift of American politics and society makes it all but inevitable, for three reasons.
The first is that sooner or later, one of the parties will produce a candidate who is both female and not Hillary Clinton. The second is that the Democrats, as the electoral face of America’s unelected oligarchy of bureaucrats, require a cosmetic candidate who ticks the identitarian boxes.
They had one in Barack Obama, whose biography was lone of his most appealing qualities. They might have had one in Oprah Winfrey, who has a similarly appealing biography (rags-to-impossible-riches) but keeps her private life private. They currently have one in waiting in Kamala Harris, who is currently deploying her strategic Woman of Color routine. They would have one in Markle, who is professional where the politicians are amateurs.
The third reason is that the conversion of the United States from a highly literate democratic republic to a television-addled oligarchy makes Markle, or someone like her, unavoidable. Ronald Reagan, derided at the time but now an admired consensus figure between establishment Democrats and Republicans, was a reformed actor. Donald Trump, derided all the time and now a despised consensus figure between establishment Democrats and Republicans, is an unreformed actor: before he broke the fourth wall of politics, he broke the partition between wealth and fame by playing the character of ‘Donald Trump’ on The Apprentice.
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And, looking back, Barack Obama was more actor than politician. Obama looked and sounded great, but he was as much use as a president as asking Hugh Laurie to perform open-heart surgery because he looked the part on House.
So there is no reason why Meghan Markle shouldn’t be president, and plenty of reasons why the office, as Conrad Black said of Donald Trump, is calling her. But to what?
As I said, the sticking point will be the question of titles. What happens if Meghan ascends to the White House as a duchess, and Harry ascends the ladder of succession after a series of unfortunate accidents befalls his family back home? After all, oligarchy prefers monarchs to elected leaders.
