Piers Morgan: 'Shame on Meghan and Harry for this gross racism smear'

"Meghan and Harry don't want to get off the royal train at all - they just want to get off the boring bits." Photo / Getty Images

COMMENT:

It's all down to racism.

And sexism.

And bullying.

And, of course, damaging to their mental health.

Yes, poor downtrodden vulnerable innocent Meghan and Harry have been suffering the full gamut of victim hood issues, as befits the most woke, over-sensitive, woe-is-me couple in the world, write Piers Morgan for the Daily Mail.

That's why they want to get off the royal train, we're told.

Except they don't want to get off it at all.

They just want to get off the boring bits.

They still want to be royal stars, they still want British taxpayers to fund a lot of their luxury lifestyles, and they still want to parade around the world as global celebrities trading off their royal titles.

But they don't want to do any of the less glamorous hard yard stuff that goes with being a full-time working royal.

I've been watching this unedifying saga unfurl over the past few days with mounting fury.

Predominantly, at the disgracefully disrespectful way the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are treating Her Majesty the Queen.

Queen Elizabeth II says the talks at Sandringham were 'very constructive'. Photo / AP

How dare they try to lay down the law to our long-serving Monarch in this way?

How dare they not inform her about their demands before telling the world?

And how dare they so arrogantly announce they're going to pursue a more "progressive" agenda for the Royal Family without having the courtesy to run it past a woman who has presided on the throne for more than six decades - and done a magnificent job of it.

But I'm also enraged by the specific growing narrative that the only reason Meghan's been so harshly criticised by the media is because we're all a bunch of racists living in a racist country.

That's just a downright lie.

And a particularly nasty, disingenuous lie.

From the moment Meghan Markle came on the royal scene, and it was revealed she was from a mixed-race background, she was welcomed with warm open tolerant arms by a wonderfully multi-cultural and diverse modern Britain that was thrilled to finally see a non-white member of the Royal Family.

She was showered with almost universal praise, especially when the engagement was announced.

The media, in particular, was unanimous in its verdict that this was a great thing for the country. In fact, I haven't seen a press so united in joy for anything royal since Diana first became Charles's girlfriend.

This extraordinary tidal wave of goodwill continued through to the big wedding in May 2018, which by common consent was a triumph.

As I wrote myself in the Daily Mail the following day, "it mixed the best of traditional British pomp and majesty with large dollops of Markle Sparkle and the result was a biracial, Hollywood-fused union of very different cultures that worked magnificently well."

I added: "It's hard to overstate the significance of this ceremony, beamed live around the world, to black people everywhere. To borrow the words of Dr King, this was a day when little black girls could watch TV and genuinely share little white girls' long-held dreams of one day marrying a Prince."

These, I would politely suggest, do not indicate the thoughts of a racist.

Yet that is what I, and others working in the British media, have now been shamefully branded for daring to criticise Meghan for her erratic conduct – and Harry's - since the wedding, which has been spectacularly ill-advised.

Was it "racist" of me to criticise her and Harry for disowning Meghan's father Thomas after he foolishly but naively colluded with the paparazzi?

Was it "racist" of me to express dismay and concern when so many similar stories to my own (Meghan ghosted me after an 18-month friendship the second she met Harry, which I only repeat because it illustrates the saying, "If someone shows you who they are, believe them") emerged involving her family and friends, including her ex-husband, of being ditched by Meghan when she no longer had use for them?

Was it "racist" of me to say it was hypocritical of Meghan to have a $500,000 celebrity-fuelled baby-shower party in New York, including a lift on George Clooney's jet, on the same day she and Harry tweeted a plea for people to think of the poor?

Was it "racist" of me to find it bizarre they went to such ridiculous lengths to hide basic details of their baby Archie's birth from the public that pays for much of their lavish lives?

Queen Elizabeth II has expressed regret at Harry and Meghan's decision to step back as senior royals. Photo / AP

Was it "racist" of me to feel it was appalling when Meghan's bodyguards stopped members of the same public taking her photo at Wimbledon?

Was it "racist" of me to think it was outrageous that she refused to meet President Trump during his UK state visit, despite being the only American member of the Royal Family?

Was it "racist" of me to say it was dreadfully two-faced of her and Harry to preach about the need to watch every carbon-footprint, as they jumped on Sir Elton John's private jet every ten minutes?

Was it "racist" of me to find it even more absurd when she ended a tour of poverty-strewn parts of South Africa by moaning about her own 'struggle'?

Was it "racist" of me to find their incessant war with the media, throwing hysterical abuse-laden warnings and lawsuits out like confetti, so pathetically thin-skinned and self-defeating given how much positive press they've also enjoyed?

Finally, it is "racist" of me to now find the way they're treated the Queen so deplorable and cruel, given her age (93), the fact her 98-year-old husband Philip has been so ill, and the recent enormous stress she has suffered over having to fire her own son Andrew over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal?

No.

None of this is racist, either overtly or subliminally.

You might not agree with all or any of my criticisms, but they are all perfectly justified ones to make which is why many others have made them too.

I don't have any issue with Meghan Markle because of her skin colour, or her gender.

But I do have a lot of issues with the way she has behaved and treated people since marrying Harry, and with Harry too.

As I have said many times, I've sadly come to the conclusion Meghan's a selfish, ruthless social climber who's spent her life using and dropping people, and is now doing it to the royals.

Morgan has been notoriously harsh of Markle after she stopped returning his messages after meeting Prince Harry. Photo / Getty Images

I also think Harry's become a weak, whiny, miserable, entitled parody of the fun-loving army prince we all loved. And I don't say that because I am 'gingerist'.

Now they're bleating about being "bullied" as they themselves are trying to bully the Queen into turning the Monarchy "woke".

And they're bleating about sexism and racism despite the fact that other royal women like Camilla Parker-Bowles, Diana and Fergie all had ten times more criticism than Meghan, and last time I checked they all identified as white.

Yet this cold hard fact hasn't stopped a Twitter-driven bandwagon developing that says criticism of Ms Markle is racist.

In a disgraceful column for the New York Times headlined "BLACK BRITONS KNOW WHY MEGHAN MARKLE WANTS OUT – it's the racism", British author Afua Hirsch attacked the "racist treatment of Meghan" and said "the British press has succeeded in its apparent project of hounding Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, out of Britain."

She cites as examples of the supposed press racism two things that appeared in the Daily Mail.

The first was a headline saying she was "(almost) straight outta Compton", one of the most gang-ravaged parts of America in south central Los Angeles, immortalised in a rap movie.

But that's not racist; Meghan comes from Crenshaw, just a few miles from Compton, and also a place with a lot of gang-related crime. This wasn't used as a stick to racially beat her, but as simply an interesting observation about her very different upbringing to normal royal brides.

Hirsch also lambasted a journalist, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's sister Rachel, for saying Meghan had "exotic DNA". But again, why is that racist? By comparison to any other royal bride, a mixed-race African-American woman unarguably has exotic DNA.

But no, according to Ms Hirsch, this was all evidence the British press is inherently racist and has deliberately driven out Meghan because we can't stand the fact she's only half-white.

What a load of inflammatory bilge.

Hirsch should be ashamed of spewing such hateful race-baiting nonsense in one of American's most prominent newspapers.

But she's not been alone.

Other mainstream news outlets like CNN and the Washington Post have published similar garbage intimating it's all about racism.

And of course, Harry himself attacked the media soon after their romance was made public claiming non-existent "racial undertones" in the tabloid newspapers.

I saw none then and I have seen none since - because there has been none.

It's a lie.

And now that lie is being extended from a charge against the media to even bigger targets with sinister threats of a "tell-all" TV interview in which Meghan and Harry might apparently level sensational charges of sexism and racism at the door of other senior royals and their households.

I refuse to believe that has happened either, and I'm repulsed at this veiled attempt to blackmail the Queen into giving them what they want.

The reality is that Meghan and Harry have brought this ugly situation entirely on themselves and should somehow find the strength in their faux-victim-ravaged, virtue-signalling, self-obsessed souls to admit it has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with their fragile egos and a simmering feud with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who will always be more important in the Royal Family as they will one day be King and Queen.

By crying "RACISTS!" in the face of perfectly legitimate criticism, this petulant duo has made a mockery of true victims of racism.

Shame on them, and all those who promote this grotesquely false smear.