‘I say, Harry’, I said, or words to that effect, and I fixed the gingery young prince with what I hoped was a look of manly frankness.
It must have been just over six years ago, right at the beginning of 2020 – just before Covid was really freaking us all out.
Prince Harry was the star turn at a highly successful Docklands summit on UK-Africa investment and I had decided – with what now feels like epic pomposity – to give him a pep talk.
I had heard or read that he and his beautiful wife Meghan Markle were about to leave the country. They were off somewhere warmer, more congenial, possibly the USA; and you know what, I felt it would be a loss.
I had worked with both of them, seen them in action. When I was Mayor of London, I’d seen Harry do an excellent job of leading the Invictus Games, a sporting competition for disabled veterans. When I was Foreign Secretary they came to an event on female education and Meghan struck me as especially passionate and well briefed.
I noticed how much zing they seemed to add, how people’s eyes lit up when they came into the room. I had vaguely concluded that Harry and Meghan were a national asset, and I decided to see if I could talk him out of leaving.
So some time in the middle of the morning, our officials cleared a meeting room. We were standing eyeball to eyeball. As I say, I felt that I could speak to him in an avuncular sort of way, as if offering career advice. I think one of my brothers was briefly in the same class at school. So I cleared my throat and had a bash.
Former PM and Daily Mail columnist Boris Johnson sits in front of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex at a remembrance service in 2019
When I was Foreign Secretary in 2018, Harry and Meghan came to an event on female education, and Meghan struck me as especially passionate and well-briefed
I honestly think it’s a pity, I said. I think there is so much good you can do here, so many good causes.
Why not stick around?
That was the gist, and because he is basically a polite and forbearing fellow, he heard me out without the slightest sign of impatience. But it was clear I was getting nowhere.
I may have delivered Brexit, but I couldn’t avert Megxit. I am reminded of all this, because I saw a brilliant piece in yesterday’s paper by Jan Moir, in which she mentioned that after six years in Montecito, California, things are not going quite as swimmingly as they were.
She said that Netflix has stopped making so many documentaries about Meghan, for instance; and the general impression was that there were at least some in America who felt, on the whole, that the Harry and Meghan show had delighted the nation long enough.
Well, I have no idea about the intricacies of their many charitable ventures, or about their finances, but since I have a huge regard for Jan Moir I am inclined to believe there must be something in what she says. In which case my message is simple: Come back, the pair of you!
Come back to Britain, with your heads held high. I don’t care what anyone else says, it looks to me as if your American sojourn has been a triumphant success. According to one report, Meghan has managed to sell not far short of a million pots of jam, retailing at $42 (£31) for a fruit spread box.
That is astonishing. Now I too have made jam at home. It is very laborious, and you risk being scalded by the boiling bituminous fluid – used in the Middle Ages as an actual weapon of war. In my case the results were so bad that I literally couldn’t give it away (I tried: I once gave a pot of lovingly homemade hand-wrapped Christmas damson jam to my executive assistant of 30 years’ standing, and found it a year or two later, its seal unbroken, in an office cupboard). And yet Meghan has not only made a million pots, she has persuaded huge numbers of people to buy them, at eye-watering prices. You do the math.
It’s why Harry was right back then to ignore me, and why they were right to go to America. That’s why there are so many former UK PMs stacked in a holding pattern over New York or Chicago, waiting for clearance to give keynote speeches to vast conferences of cardiologists and gastro-enterologists. That’s why so many talented Brits go to America, from Charles Dickens and PG Wodehouse to Gordon Ramsay and Harry Styles.
I am firmly with WH Auden, who concludes a funny poem about giving speeches in America with the stanza: God bless the lot of them, although I don’t remember which was which. God bless the USA, so large, so friendly and so rich.
Except that it’s not just about the money. It’s about the zap, the energy, the sense of boundless possibility.
Harry and Meghan during an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021. ‘There is no disgrace in going to America, giving it your best shot, and then jacking it in,’ says Boris
Ask yourself seriously: how many pots of jam could Meghan have possibly hoped to sell in Britain? They don’t stock it at Fortnums. They don’t even stock it in the King’s farm shop at Highgrove.
You can’t get a pot of Meghan’s As Ever jam for love nor money in this country because whoever is advising her has explained, correctly, that the British customer is just too inveterately cynical.
The reason that the American economy is so astonishingly innovative is partly that people are not cynical, and so relatively eager to celebrate start-ups, even if it is only making jam. That’s why so many of us love America, and why you hear British voices everywhere in New York and Hollywood. And yet of course there comes a point – and six years is a long time – when everyone’s thoughts eventually turn to home.
There is absolutely nowhere lovelier than England in the spring. The blossom is already out here in Oxfordshire. The grass has had its first mow.
A pair of ducks has just winged its way past my window. Isn’t it time for this pair of royal ducks to wing their way home?
There is no disgrace in going to America, giving it your best shot, and then jacking it in. Robbie Williams did it. So did Piers Morgan. One Direction eventually went in both directions.
If Harry and Meghan come back, they would of course have to smooth things over with the rest of the family – but that is surely not impossible. Their return would be an important signal – in grim times – of confidence in this country. Since my abortive pep talk in 2020 we have acquired a diabolical Labour government.
Tens of thousands of talented people are fleeing the country in what is turning into a national economic disaster that is costing the Exchequer squillions in tax.
So I say, help us stem the Starmer haemorrhage. Swim against the tide. Show a lead, Harry and Meghan. Come back to poor old Blighty. Cheer us up with your jamtastic household tips and your richly comic family feuds.
Above all, get stuck back into those conspicuously thinned-out royal ranks and champion some things that really matter – like educational equality and injured veterans.
You once did a great job, when you were allowed to. You can do it again. Come back, Harry and Meghan – all is forgiven!
