In 2005, the then 20-year-old Prince Harry appeared as a Nazi at a fancy dress party. Perhaps the uniform had been inherited from his great-great-uncle, Edward VIII, who was not averse to a spot of recreational sieg heiling.
But next year Prince Harry is to marry the mixed-race descendant of a black American slave, his wedding garments scrupulously stripped of any stray swastikas. Cosmic order is restored.
Has the Prince nobly taken upon himself the symbolic role of a healing force in our rapidly unravelling world, suddenly riven with the sort of open racism and fears of nuclear annihilations that we had assumed had been laid to rest? I’m all for 70s and 80s revivals, but these aren’t the parts of my childhood I feel nostalgic for. A Fab lolly, an Altered Images 12-inch remix and a vibrant trade union movement would have done.
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Today, western world leaders openly praise neo-Nazis, but instead of forming a grass roots rock’n’roll resistance, young people remain passively plugged into their PS4s playing PacMan Go, waiting for their braindead fuck-buddies to come round with some pacifying bong-weed, I expect, while laughing at You-net films of people gobbling down more cinnamon than is necessary, squandering bakers’ dwindling spice reserves.
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And here come the prince and his scion of slaves, to make us whole again. Meghan Markle. Her name even sounds like “Mrs Merkel”, and she symbolises an America far better than Trump’s, a virgin new land coming into conjugal union with a grizzled Britain that, like the Prince himself, could still choose to divest itself of its unattractive fascist garments and begin again.
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