The Sussexes’ ‘extinction burst’ is coming

From the point of view of New York City, where I live, everything is going Meghan and Harry’s way. News items about their folly vs the worthy Waleses are a standard trope of the US home page of the Daily Mail, but they are the wrong side of America’s zeitgeist. True, no one could have expected a weaponised lady-in-waiting to sink the strenuous efforts to update the House of Windsor brand, but it is also true that to anyone with a modicum of PR smarts, the where-are-you-really-from flap involving Lady Susan Hussey – a Cretaceous-era courtier often glimpsed beneath a flower-pot hat riding beside the late Queen in the car to church – was a debacle waiting to happen. Exhibit A was the roll-out of the news that the Queen Consort is replacing the mouldy concept of ladies-in-waiting with something new – unpaid ‘companions’ doing pretty much the same thing. It was glaring to American eyes that this bold new line-up from the ‘modernising’ monarchy featured six posh white women of a certain age. And three more, just as old and white (including Lady Hussey, who was retained), dubbed ‘ladies of the household’, to assist the King. The question must be asked: in these sensitive times, why did no one suggest adding some able and seasoned women of colour to the new roster to welcome a modern mix of guests to the Palace? Would this moment not have been an elegant opportunity for 83-year-old Lady Hussey to retire? And at the very least, couldn’t Camilla’s new equerry, Major Ollie Plunkett of the Rifles, have been swapped out for some esteemed officer who was less snow-white?

All of which has been a public relations gift to the House of Sussex. However the Palace tries to spin it, a racist miasma from the Hussey incident settled over William and Kate’s US trip and dimmed the lustre of their arrival in a city that was ill-chosen in the first place.