Suzanne Harrington: Prince Harry isn't a spare — he's a role model

Harry is both complaining and explaining, something the institution has been trained to never do.

“I couldn’t think of a single human being in the 300,000 year history of the species who’d done more damage to our collective sense of reality,” writes Prince Harry in his memoir Spare.

You might have heard a bit about it recently. The book, I mean. There were a few interviews too, and something on Netflix. Apparently he’s a bit miffed.

But even if you have reached peak Harry, it’s hard not to agree with him on this — he’s talking about Rupert Murdoch, and how Murdoch uses his global media empire to shape and distort the narrative for reasons of…. what? Power, control, megalomania, money? Nothing altruistic, that’s for sure. And people buy it. They literally pay money every day to be told what to think about people they have never met. And to vote for people who actively operate against their best interests and the common good. Over and over. Year in, year out.

What’s interesting about Harry’s book and interviews is that he has punched a hole in the accepted narrative. The details of who did what to whom are not as compelling as the overall dismantling of the fourth wall; he is both complaining and explaining, something the institution has been trained to never do. He and his wife have been thrown under the gilded bus by the entire family, but instead of going quietly, he has exposed the machinations of The Firm, and revealed that beneath the blank public smiles is a structure more savage, ruthless, and competitive than your average meerkat colony.

Imagine your own father briefing the press about you, leaking snippets to stay afloat himself. When oiks do this — third division reality stars being betrayed in The Sun by their mums in return for a few grand — we clutch our pearls. Yet it transpires the UK royal brand is built upon this business model, and has been for years, allowing the royals to stay in place in return for favours to Murdoch and the right wing press.

Imagine your stepmother inviting someone to a formal lunch who has written publicly, in a Murdoch tabloid, that he would like to see your wife naked and pelted in the street with lumps of actual shit. In your most surreal four-cheese nightmares, you could not make this up.

The existence of royalty —particularly the neighbouring lot — serves only to highlight the unacceptable disparity between footmen and foodbanks. And they absolutely know this, hence the desperate placating of the gutter press to not turn the oiks against them. It works. They even got away with Prince Andrew.

Harry, however, post-therapy and more emotionally evolved, recognises how the truth could set him free. We can add our own words to his story — petulant, privileged, whatever — but the fact remains that he has spoken openly, honestly, courageously.

He has headbutted the stiff upper lip, while loving and supporting his wife.

In terms of detoxifying masculinity, he has become a total role model; in terms of The Firm, he has disrupted a toxic narrative.