Harry and Meghan’s US adventure just self destructed – no wonder they want UK return
OPINION
Meghan and Harry have started to see new money-making avenues in the US dry up (Image: Getty)
This month’s UK visit may have been a PR disaster, but do not fear – you’ve not seen the last of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on our shores! In fact, some insiders warn that Prince Harry, 41, and Meghan Markle, 44, could be due to return to Britain permanently, maybe due to some awkward personal and business missteps.
In many ways, Harry and Meghan’s return to the UK to launch the one-year countdown to the Invictus Games 2027 in Birmingham was a huge success – as they managed to avoid the cameras. But it was also a huge failure for exactly the same reason – no public walkabouts meeting well-wishers, no waving to the cameras, nothing.
The couple managed it for days in Australia. They put in so many steps up and down the streets of Oz and across Bondi Beach during that four-day tour last April they probably wore out their shoes.
Yet after a bitter legal row with the UK Government over taxpayer-funded police protection during their UK visit, it was clear they decided that Meghan and their two children would not be seen when here.
Before long the Sussexes were all back on a plane to their Californian mansion, but sources claim Meghan now feels like an “outcast” in the US – and their “American dream is cooling”.
They have seen the end of a number of big value money deals, like their huge Netflix agreement, and Harry’s book ‘Spare’ is done and dusted. Unless he writes a sequel (‘Sparer’?) he can’t crank that money-maker back up.
Some TV executives appear to have got a bit bored by the Sussex whine-a-thon, while Meghan is reported to have fallen out with a number of huge Hollywood society and fashion players – such as Dame Anna Wintour.
The pro-monarchy Vogue magazine supremo is rumoured to have disapproved of the Sussexes talking down the Royal Family.
Wintour also allegedly resented Meghan guest-editing the September 2019 “Forces for Change” issue of British Vogue with then-UK editor Edward Enninful – rather than the US Vogue team led by Wintour.
An ally of Prince Harry has reportedly admitted there is “a feeling that the American dream might not be all that it was cracked up to be”.
The friend went on that “there is definitely a feeling in his camp that he has started to feel a bit unwelcome in America”, and “that has been an increasing and significant shift in sentiment”.
Meghan and Harry made many public appearances in Australia in April (Image: Getty)
It’s claimed Harry and Meghan could use their holiday home in Portugal as a staging post back to the UK, although no return from the US is said to be permanent or imminent.
But this ‘reverse Megxit’ may not see the grass being greener on the UK side for the family.
Firstly, they have burned a lot of bridges here, dumping the supportive British public like a bad smell and jetting off for fame, glory and wealth in the US.
But also, what sort of life do they want here?
If they cannot even attend their own PR functions as a couple that had been planned for months, all because they do not feel safe – how can they expect to live any sort of normal life here?
They have put themselves and their children Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, between a rock and very hard place.