Sorry, but apart from anything else, how the actual duck do they think they can afford a £15m property? That’s about half of their reported capital, which would therefore reduce their income still further.My Mum is a Telegraph subscriber and sent me this scathing piece.
Meghan and Harry's LA move may be their worst yet
CELIA WALDEN
30 MARCH 2020 • 7:00PM
Donald Trump tweeted that the US will not pay for Harry and Meghan's security protection when they move to LACREDIT: HENRY NICHOLLS/ REUTERS
Fun fact: Petra Manor – the 12,249 sq. ft, £15 million Malibu mansion that Meghan and Harry are said to be “smitten by” – was once occupied by Kylie Jenner.
That’s the lilo-lipped youngest member of the Kardashian clan, should your pop culture need refreshing, a 22-year-old cosmetic “entrepreneur” whose inspirational quotes include: “I would want to hopefully start more businesses, and just be, like, a businesswoman.”
Why it should matter that the Sussexeswould prefer to live there, and in LA, than in a historic British, Grade II country home commissioned by Queen Charlotte in 1801 – a royal retreat previously occupied by the father of novelist Henry James, whose own inspirational quotes included: “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind” – I don’t know.
But I do know why the revelation that Meghan and Harry had “left Canada and are now settled in LA” on Friday has prompted the annoyance it has.
It is just annoyance; our anger currently being reserved for the spherical particle with a “corona” of spikes that’s killing tens of thousands across the world and has brought our lives to a standstill. Only not Harry and Meghan, you understand, who chose this moment to leave the Vancouver smokescreen of a bolthole they had been residing in since Megxit, and hop on a private jet to the place that had been their final destination all along: Hollywood.
It felt sneaky, because it was sneaky, like so many of the soon-to-be-ex royals’ actions – from the setting up of their own breakaway Royal faction and the assertion that they wanted to “step back”(and not forward, into a carefully choreographed and lucrative limelight of their own choosing), to the blurring of their intention “to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America”.
Why not just come out and say it? Because, as I wrote in this very column three months ago: “If you rephrase that statement ‘We’ve had enough – we’re off to La La Land’, it confirms every ruthless social-climbing, celebrity-seeking stereotype Meghan has worked hard to rebut.”
Only in Los Angeles, I pointed out, can Meghan not so much have her cake and eat it, as scoop off the icing and cast the boring, dry part aside. Only there, can the couple ditch the duty and the criticism, whilst retaining all the status and the perks. Celebrity hypocrisy, it’s important to understand, isn’t just accepted in LA but de rigueur.
Only they’d overlooked one thing: namely that the President of the US has the memory of an elephant and the petulance of a toddler. He wasn’t about to forget Meghan calling him “divisive” and “misogynistic” on a talk show in 2016, just as he wasn’t about to forget the former actress’s assertion that she could never live in a Trumpian America.
So when he took to Twitter on Sunday to tell the world that, despite being “a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom […] the US will not pay for [Harry and Meghan’s] security protection” – adding for emphasis: “They must pay!” – it was pretty clear that POTUS wasn’t just talking about the estimated £8 million-a-year bill that has hitherto been covered by the British taxpayer.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom. It was reported that Harry and Meghan, who left the Kingdom, would reside permanently in Canada. Now they have left Canada for the U.S. however, the U.S. will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!
508K
20:00 - 29 Mar 2020
The couple hit back yesterday, saying they didn’t expect the US to pay, and that “privately funded security arrangements have been made”. But their pique was as obvious as it had been in their infamous response to the Queen telling them they could no longer sell themselves as “Royal” after stepping down.
That ban comes into force tomorrow, when the Duke and Duchess officially cease to be working royals. But anyone thinking this will impact either the couple’s social standing or their earning capacity is wrong. It’s not simply about who you are in LA, but who you know – and how good a performer you’ve proved yourself to be.
So just as a hefty percentage of Angelenos would probably curtsey to both Dame Helen Mirren and Olivia Colman, convinced that something Queen-like or royal must have rubbed off on them, people will continue to bow and curtsey to the Sussexes as they make their pots of cash and settle into the Malibu home that boasts “an enormous dedicated theatre room”, “full-size dance studio”, “culinary wonder” of a kitchen, and “vast pool and pool-side cabana”.
But as the pair are branded “distant memories” in the UK by royal biographer Penny Junor - in stark contrast to the other members of the royal family, who are helping to combat the deadly coronavirus pandemic – and Canada mourns what it is branding “Megxit 2” (“It’s Canada that deserves to feel ‘stunned and horrified’,” the Toronto Star remarked after their hasty departure) – it seems unlikely that there won’t be more Megxits to come.
They’re going to blow through his inheritance and her reported nest egg in less than a year at this rate, Prince Charles’s hand outs notwithstanding. I’m sure that Charles’s tenants who’re facing a rent rise are delighted to know it’s going to fund MM’s KarTrashian aspirations.
