Strange though it might seem now, at the beginning of 2020 Boris Johnson came close to achieving his childhood ambition of being ‘World King’. Johnson had led the Conservative party to its first decent majority since 1987 the previous month, was in the process of ‘getting Brexit done’ with an ‘oven-ready deal’ and was airily dismissing rumours about the ‘Wu-Flu’ with the indomitable air of a winner who will not have his victory lap interrupted by anyone or anything. Yet what the prime minister had not bargained on was Megxit: the decision of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle to upstage him, and everyone else, with their quasi-abdication and subsequent flight to California.
The first major story to appear in Johnson’s eagerly anticipated (in some quarters) memoir Unleashed is about how he was sent to bring the errant prince into line in a one-to-one at a UK-Africa investment summit in January 2020. His errand was, Johnson concedes, ‘a ridiculous business… (a) kind of manly pep talk. Totally hopeless’.
If anyone could have done it, surely Boris Johnson could have managed to
According to a well-placed and gossipy ‘friend’ – always the best kind to have if you’re a royal or a politician – ‘[Boris] thought they were a great asset to UK plc and it was a real shame they were leaving when they were doing such great work.’ The loquacious chum added: ‘It was a man-to-man conversation, they were totally alone. But Harry wasn’t for turning – he was unpersuadable by that point. Boris succeeded in delivering Brexit but even he couldn’t stop Megxit.’
There will be those who read these revelations and curse the former prime minister’s name to the heavens. How dare he not use his undeniable powers of charm and persuasion, which have won over so many men and women to his cause over the years, to halt Prince Harry in his tracks and persuade him to do the decent thing and remain in his home country! But if anyone could have done it, surely Boris Johnson could have managed to. After all, there were numerous hints in that first year that Harry was flirting with a semi-detached relationship with ‘the Firm’ rather than the full-strength estrangement that has unfolded since. If he was having doubts about the wisdom of his actions, then surely his fellow Old Etonian could have brought his considerable influence to bear and convinced him that to take the steps he planned was simple folly that he would come to regret.
Yet reading between the lines, there is another interpretation of Johnson’s ill-fated manly pep talk. The Duke of Sussex is a man who combines obstinacy with a belief in noblesse oblige, and if he was insufficiently obliged by those around him then it was only likely to strengthen his resolve. The spectacle of the shambling, Wodehousian figure bumbling and spluttering in front of him was unlikely to do much to endear him to his native land and its inhabitants. If anything, it must have made him even keener to quit Britain.
This, perhaps, was the plan all along. If those who knew the PM’s inability to follow through on matters had taken the considered gamble that his embassy would have precisely the opposite effect to that intended, then the result would be Harry’s swift, and unmourned, departure from the country.
To this end, it paid off in spades. Prince Harry left the United Kingdom the next day. It is hard not to feel that, when Johnson heard about this, his response would have been somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. Perhaps the plan had succeeded, after all.
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