A week or so ago the Daily Mail devoted 17 (seventeen) pages to Harry and Megan, and their decision to leave ‘The Firm’, as the Royal Family calls itself, and settle in Toronto. I take little interest in our royal goings-on, even when they concern the deplorable Prince Andrew, and so am not qualified to comment on this matter here. Except to say that, as I understand it, one of the reasons for the couple’s discontent is the treatment meted out to them by the British tabloid press; and especially the scarcely-veiled racism it directs at the ‘ethnically mixed’ (apparently) Megan. That immediately warms me to them. I wonder what the tabloids now feel about their role in exiling what until now has been a major source for their journalism? Will it make them pull back? Of course not. They’ve still got whomever Labour chooses as its next party leader to smear.

All this comes at a time when major events both in Britain and the world should be much more newsworthy, and so have taken up at least some of those seventeen pages. It’s almost as if the Harry/Megan story were a planned distraction from, for example, Trump’s impeachment, climate change and the fires in Australia, eruptions in Indonesia, the Israeli elections; and – nearer to home here in the UK – the report on Russian interference in British elections that is being deliberately held back by Johnson (who should have released it before the last election), and his plans to emasculate Parliament to the advantage of the Executive. All this, quite apart from the much larger story of the grotesque corruption of our politics by the Right-wing media itself. But then you wouldn’t expect them to report on that.

Toronto, incidentally, seems a good choice, partly because it’s a fine and pleasant city, secondly because it’s still in the Queen’s beloved Commonwealth, and thirdly because it’s not the USA. Canada is getting a good press here in Britain nowadays. Perhaps it could be said to represent what the USA might have become if it had not broken away from the British Empire. – No, of course not; but it’s worth a thought.