Why shouldn’t Trump deport Prince Harry?

There are many things Americans admire about Britain – Shakespeare, Churchill and parliamentary democracy (on a good day). Above all, we admire the monarchy: that ancient, faintly miraculous institution which maintains its dignity even as the rest of the West dissolves into hashtag-fueled hysteria. What we do not admire, however, is being used as a backdrop for Prince Harry’s increasingly frantic attempts to remain relevant.

No, I do not actually wish for President Trump to deport Harry to the Tower of London – although the image is, I confess, delicious, and might conceivably enjoy rare cross-party support on both sides of the Atlantic. But a man can dream and, if the Duke insists on turning America into the rehearsal studio for his political neuroses, one can’t help wandering into the realm of fantasy.

Harry swaggered on to the set of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show this week in order to offer up a glib little jab at President Donald J. Trump. “I heard you elected a king,” he quipped, wearing the self-satisfied smirk of a man convinced he has coined something Wildean.

Except the joke collapsed, quite magnificently. He was booed – by a New York liberal audience. Achieving that requires an almost athletic level of misjudgment. It is the political equivalent of being asked to leave a vegan café for excessive piety.

All this, mind you, while his father-in-law lies seriously ill in a Filipino hospital. Any ordinary son-in-law might have managed a momentary display of concern. Harry, by contrast, is on American television performing sketches and mocking the president of the country he now depends upon for wealth, status and the perpetuation of his Californian cosplay of aristocratic grievance. It is tone-deafness elevated to an aesthetic.

More to the point, it places his family – his real one, in Britain – in an excruciating position. The late Queen Elizabeth II set the gold standard for royal political neutrality. She neither dabbled nor sniped. She certainly did not ascend late-night sofas to titter about the occupant of the Oval Office. Her sense of duty was immaculate. It is a quality conspicuously absent in her grandson, who seems determined to turn the Crown into a cudgel and his title into a bargaining chip. At some stage, the King will have to contemplate the question of forfeiture.

Harry appears to forget a crucial fact: he is a guest in America. Not a commentator, not a philosopher-king and certainly not a comedian, though often unintentionally, a clown. A guest with a visa, no less – a visa whose continued viability depends on the goodwill of the administration he has chosen to mock. This would be reckless for anyone. For a man who publicly boasted of drug use – something that can, in the United States, complicate one’s immigration status – it is spectacularly ill-judged.

There was a time when Harry possessed a certain rakish charm. That time has long since expired. We inhabit the Prince-for-Hire epoch: the mercenary phase in which every grievance becomes a monetizable asset, every podcast an opportunity for therapeutic rambling and every public appearance a means of flogging the brand formerly known as His Royal Highness.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, William and Catherine – the future of the institution Harry claims still to revere – carry out their duties with unshowy grace, greeting visiting dignitaries with the kind of quiet professionalism the Crown used to be known for. The contrast is blinding. They are the monarchy’s promise. Harry, its cautionary tale.

If an international competition existed for sustained public embarrassment, Harry would not merely win – he would secure permanent ownership of the trophy.

And here is the part that rankles for many Americans: when Harry sneers at Trump, he is not simply mocking the man. He is sneering at the tens of millions who voted for him. One may disapprove of that electorate, but any foreign national who chooses to live among them should at least feign respect for their democratic choices.

America deserves better house-guests. Britain deserves better representatives. And the British monarchy deserves better than to be hauled, repeatedly, into Harry’s Californian melodrama. To insult the host nation’s president while monetizing one’s royal status is, to put it kindly, unbecoming. Consequences – real ones – are overdue, just as they were for his uncle.

The Palace must, at some point, draw a line. The monarchy survives because it is apolitical, dignified, and – crucially – seen to be both. Harry’s perpetual cringe-fest corrodes these principles. If he refuses to stop, his titles must be reconsidered.

President Trump has so far dismissed various campaigns to revoke Harry’s visa. But he’s never been shy about tidying up America’s guest list. And if he decides, in the years ahead, to remove Harry, he might be surprised by the popularity of such a move.