August 21 2026 - 7:00am
As the media “silly season” nears its end, British newspapers will be thanking their lucky stars for the news that a certain couple have decided to return to Blighty. Harry and Meghan are reportedly moving to the Cotswolds to have their children educated in British schools. The Windsors’ Prodigal Son has returned. Chefs at Buckingham Palace won’t need the fatted calf recipes just yet, however; there are no plans for the Sussexes to return to involvement with the Firm, and apparently the King was only informed of their plans last weekend.
A good deal has changed since the pair departed for California six-and-a-half years ago. As well as the Covid-19 pandemic, we have had four changes of prime minister. Nigel Farage has retired and then unretired. The England Test cricket team has seen the rise and fall of Bazball.
Harry would be ill-advised to make any public statements on politics at the moment, given how volatile and fragmented the nation seems to be. But if he feels the need to rebuild his reputation in his homeland, he might try speaking out on matters of widespread public concern. Adding his voice to the campaign against queuing in pubs, for example, would surely go down very well with the great majority of his father’s decent law-abiding subjects. Perhaps he could set up as a black-market dealer in disposable barbecues, recently declared to be contraband and targeted by a national Emergency Alert. Or he could have a word with Thomas Tuchel about the appropriate tactical response to going 1-0 up in a crucial World Cup tie.
It may be, however, that in terms of public image, a quiet return home as private citizens might be just what the doctor ordered. Contrary to some of the more excitable commentary on the Sussex Wars, and some of the couple’s own assertions, there was never any significant public hostility towards them before they decided to become international freelance celebrities.
Harry had always been popular, for his youthful high-jinks and his frontline military service, and at the time of his and Meghan’s wedding there was enormous goodwill. Ill-feeling developed later, when the couple began to grumble about their public duties and to make vague unfounded insinuations about racism in the royal household, and when it emerged that Meghan was rude and high-handed towards staff. Even after the escape to the United States, there were many who saw them as more sinned against than sinning.
The image projected by the Sussexes during much of the last five or six years has not helped, either. There was something approaching self-parody in the way they leaned into the stereotype of out-of-touch West Coast celebrities, preaching second-hand therapeutic Leftism from their enormous mansion.
But the damage is probably not irreparable. They are figures of fun, not hatred, joked about as ivory tower airheads rather than reviled as monsters of ingratitude — the South Park jibe about their Worldwide Privacy Tour was cruel but perceptive. It seems that Charles himself has extended the hand of reconciliation towards his son and his family, having met with them privately earlier in the summer. The pre-2020 status quo is not on the cards, presumably, but if Harry and Meghan do intend to stay here for some time — and with two young children enrolled in school it certainly looks that way — then with care they might find themselves back in the good graces of both the royal family and the nation as a whole.
