Buckingham Palace has released a statement on behalf of the Queen in response to Harry and Meghan's scandalous interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Video / AP
COMMENT:
Today, the Queen is "sad". We know that because she just deigned to tell us.
Nearly two days on from Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, unleashing a barrage of devastating and shocking allegations about the royal family, the world is still reeling.
Meanwhile, the house of Windsor as they face a historic crisis, the biggest to breach the palace gates since the tragic death of Harry's mother Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, is "sad".
Overnight, nearly 40 hours after the Sussexes prime-time royal coup de grace aired, Buckingham Palace finally responded, putting out a 61-word statement which was breathtaking in its brevity.
"While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members."
The royal house famously moves at a glacial pace but by god – how the dickens did it take them the better part of two days to come up with this stunningly concise riposte?
Make no mistake: Issuing such a short, "nothing to see here" statement is an egregious miscalculation on the parts of Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace and Clarence House, all of whom were reportedly involved in drafting this flub of a document.
To understand why this statement will fail to douse the wall of flames bearing down on the royal house look no further than their use of one particular word – "privately".
This whole "sad" situation, in the royal house's telling, is a "private" one, a sorry affair to be dealt with inside the hushed, Aubusson-carpeted corridors of the palace and behind closed doors. This is Windsor business you see, the statement seems to suggest, so off you pop. One says one's family is sad, so now off you all toddle.
And that is a fatal miscalculation – this is not a family ruction; this is not a wayward aunt indulging in a spot of French toe-sucking or a naughty younger son pelting off to Las Vegas to play snooker sans his M&S undies.
Nor is this another tabloid spectacle but a once-in-a-generation international moment of reckoning which goes to the very character of the monarchy and the people currently in charge of the whole institution. All of this could very well irrevocably damage the house of Windsor – and may already have done.
The Queen's short response to Meghan and Harry's accusations isn't enough. Photo / Getty Images
Kris Jenner can plead privacy when she wants to pull one of her wayward brood into line and to do it away from lurking cameras; a woman who is the head of state for 16 countries simply does not have the luxury.
Because what the Queen and the royal family, in their attempt to drag this contretemps back into the realm of "private," have spectacularly been unable to see or acknowledge is the global tidal wave of anger bearing down on the house of Windsor right now.
Her Majesty does not have to agree with this anger but she simply cannot ignore it.
Nor should the palace have issued a line-by-line rebuttal of the Sussexes' Oprah outpouring but nor can they think that three anodyne sentences will in any way diffuse this combustible situation.
In trying to yank this crisis out of the public realm and back behind closed doors, what the Queen is doing is essentially dismissing the vast, vast well of fury currently directed at London. While this ploy might have worked, to some degree, with Meghan's accounts of royal wrongdoing, where this approach wholly, badly falls down is on the issue of racism.
Buckingham Palace, in putting out this missive, seems to be suggesting that conversations about whether racism in the royal house should be treated the same way as Fergie's latest ignominious imbroglio.
With this statement and their "private" handling of the racism allegations, they have wholly failed to fully appreciate the moment we are in now in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Accusations of racism cannot be dealt with in private when there is a pressing global conversation going on right now about this very thing.
This week the Queen presided over remote Commonwealth Day celebrations. Given that 94 per cent of the men and women who live in Commonwealth countries live in Asia and Africa, the royal house's absolute refusal to engage in any way publicly is wholly untenable.
The palace's failure to address the Sussexes' racism revelation is a miscalculation that could have profound repercussions. Already this week's events have reawakened the slumbering giant that is the republican debate in Australia and New Zealand.
Prior to all of this, there is already concern that the passing of the Queen and the ascension of Charles to the throne will see republican sentiment foment in the Commonwealth.
This week's events have only made that situation even more acute.
What the palace is either blind to, or is refusing to admit, is that they are in an unprecedented fight for survival, which means that traditional purse-lipped silence is not going to cut the English mustard.
At the time of Diana's death, the Royal Standard was the only flag to fly at Buckingham Palace and only when the Queen was in residence.
As Her Majesty was then at Balmoral, flying a flag at half-mast to acknowledge Diana's death went against protocol (this was changed in 1997 so now a Union Jack flies at Buckingham Palace when the Queen is not in residence.)
While the Queen at the time was doggedly following custom, her staunch refusal to bend the rules was read by the UK – and the world – as failing to acknowledge the global outpouring of grief.
In the days after the princess' death, Buckingham Palace finally understood the depth of the public's grief and exasperation and responded: As a compromise the Union Flag was lowered and the Queen returned to London from Balmoral to greet the mourning crowds.
Similarly, rewind to only November 2019 and Prince Andrew's horrifying BBC interview. Two days after it aired, the palace put out a statement saying he would be stepping down as an official working member of the royal family, essentially being exiled from public life.
In both of these instances, faced with a vast outpouring of public feeling, the palace, albeit slowly, responded accordingly, changing course to assuage, and in accordance with, public feeling.
What the palace, based on their Sussex statement, seems wholly ignorant of, or is simply refusing to recognise, is that the temperature is alarmingly flammable.
Harry and Meghan aren't bothersome young 'uns, as the palace's statement seems to suggest, but represent a cultural and generational flashpoint.
With this interview Meghan has, in the minds of younger viewers, wholly assumed the position Diana did in the '90s – the beautiful princess cruelly mistreated by the monarchy who were resentful of her innate talents for reaching out and touching (literally and figuratively) the common people.
The charges levelled by Harry and Meghan go to the heart of what the monarchy represents and stands for and in their hands this week "the royal family" has become a byword for chilly cruelty and racism.
Failing to tackle these issues in any way in the public sphere is a terrible mistake and it is impossible not to wonder, does the palace actually realise how much danger they are in right now?
In 2013, reflecting on his naked Vegas escapades, Harry said it was a "classic example" of being "too much army and not enough Prince".
Today, the Queen clearly wants to deal with the Sussexes as a grandmother rather than a head of state. Sorry Ma'am: It's time to put your crown on and get to work.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
